Reginald had always taken a good deal of this sort of thing from the sort of women produced by society (?), some of whom think it persiflage, and some of whom habitually talk that way because of the habitual state of unfaith in men, which, with or without cause, fills their minds and hearts. Reginald had never at any time in his life liked this; for with all his arrest of high manhood, no man could truly accuse him of lying, or of dishonor along that line toward males. And as a boy he never did lie to his mother, and as a son he had never lied to his father; and when these jocular accusations first began to meet him from pretty girls’ lips, he disliked them much. But when he saw all the fellows had to take it, he began to think that was “high style,” and that, after all, may be, if women took it for granted that the fellows lied and were bad, and yet still petted them and invited them to their homes, badness might, after all, not be badness, nor lying be lying; and that, may be, one thing was as good as another, all through the catalogue. At any rate, that women seemed to think so and that no one fellow could stand against this tide, even if he wanted to do so. But he always disliked this thing just the same, and never saw the wit of it. The word “parables,” somehow, too, this evening, struck him worse than it would if she had said “lies”; for “parables,” as they were taught him at his mother’s knee, were “beautiful words of life”; and besides, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,” was getting to be a fact which he was illustrating in himself. While he thought of these things he looked so glowering that Mrs. Mancredo said, lightly, “Now what ails you?” “How many times in a week, on the average, do you suppose you tell us fellows that we lie?” “Well, the times I tell you so, compared with the times you do it, are so infinitesimally small that a body could not be to the trouble of reckoning them,” said she lazily. He looked at her seriously. “Do you think men lie?” he said. She answered him in blank amazement: “Why, of course, child!” “All men?” “Might except a deaf mute or two, if you like.” “Will you except me?” “Did you say except or accept?” “I certainly said except. At this point in our conversation I could not ask you to accept me, for I can’t imagine what a woman would ever want of a liar.” She shrugged her shoulders and ejaculated: “Hobson’s choice as for that!” She looked as pretty as though she were being real good; in fact, she looked a great deal prettier. There was an impishness about her with which Reginald was more fully _en rapport_ than he was with high goodness. True, she expressed disbelief in him, even on the one point on which he could somewhat justly value himself; but she looked “sort of loving” out of her eyes all the time; and Reginald had never resisted that kind of flattery.