"Good gracious, Kit! What are you driving at?" "I'm young," I said. "I know that. But I'm not ignorant. And a really nice girl with ideals----" "I'll have to get up," he said suddenly. "I'll stand with my back to you, if you insist, but I'll have to get up. What's all this about ideals?" "You know very well," I put in with dignity. "If every time I meet a nice man people come to me with stories about him, or mother and father warn me against him, what am I to do?" "Can't you stand behind a chair and let me face you? This is serious." "Oh, turn round," I said recklessly. "If I hear any one coming I can run. Anyhow, it may be unconventional but I'm fully clothed." "Are you being warned against me?" he threw at me like a bomb. "Because, if--if you are, it's absurd nonsense. I'm no saint, and I'd never be fit for you to--What silly story have you heard, Kit?" He was quite white, and his red hair looked like a conflagration. "It's not about you at all; it's about Russell Hill." It took him a moment to breathe normally again. "Oh--Russell!" he said. "Well, that's probably nonsense too. You don't mean to say your people object to your knowing Russell?" "Not quite that," I said. "But I can't have him here, or go round with him, or anything of that sort." "Do they venture to give a reason?" "Toots Warrington." It's queer about men, the way they stand up for each other. Henry knew as well as he knew anything that most of the girls we both knew were crazy about Russell. And if he cared for me--and the way he acted made me suspicious--he had a good chance to throw Russell into the discard that night. But he didn't. I knew well enough he wouldn't. "That's perfect idiocy," he said sternly. "Society is organised along certain lines, and maybe if you and I had anything to do with it we'd change things. But there is no commandment or social law or anything else against a man having a married woman for a friend." "Friend!" "Exactly--friend." "I don't care to have anything to do with him." "You needn't, of course. But you owe it to Russell to give him a chance to set things straight. Any how he and Mrs. Warrington are not seeing each other much any more. It's off." "The very fact that you say it is 'off' shows that it was once 'on.'" He waved his hands in perfect despair. If I'd rehearsed him he couldn't have picked up his cues any better. "I'm going to tell him," he said. "It's ridiculous. It's--it's libellous." "I don't want him coming here explaining. I am not even interested." "You're a perfect child, a stubborn child! Your mind's in pigtails, like your hair." Yes, my hair was down. I have rather nice hair. "If he comes here," I said with my eyes wide, "he will have to come when mother and father are out."