moment it was spoken she coloured.

"What?"

"Dost thee not think--perhaps--if we steal out and take
the shirts to the stable, thy mother will never--?"

"Tibbie Drinker! Go out of the house in a sack? I'd as
soon go out in my night-rail."

"Thee breakfasts in a negligee, even when Philemon is here,"
retorted Miss Drinker. "Wouldst as lief breakfast in thy
shift?"

"No," said Miss Janice, with a wicked sparkle in her eyes,
"because if I did Philemon would come oftener than ever."

"Fie upon thee, Janice Meredith!" cried her friend, "for a
froward, indelicate female."

"And why more indelicate than the men who'd come?"
demanded Janice.

"'Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of modesty is want of sense,'"

quoted Miss Drinker.

"Rubbish!" scoffed Janice, but whether she was referring
to the stanza of the reigning poet of the eighteenth century, or