"Is that the way you regard the charming, well-born, well-bred, clever, cultivated girls of your own circle, whose parents were the friends of your parents?" "Oh, mother, I like them of course.... But there's something about a business girl--a girl in the making--that is more amusing, more companionable, more interesting. A business girl seems to wear better. She's better worth talking to, listening to,--it's better fun to go about with her, see things with her, discuss things--" "What on earth are you talking about! It's perfect babble; it's nonsense! If you really believe you have a penchant for sturdy and rather grubby worthiness unadorned you are mistaken. The inclination you have is merely for a pretty face and figure. I know you. If I don't, who does! You're rather a fastidious young man, even finicky, and very, very much accustomed to the best and only the best. Don't talk to me about your disinterested admiration for a working girl. You haven't anything in common with her, and you never could have. And you'd better be very careful not to make a fool of yourself." "How?" "As all men are likely to do at your callow age." "Fall in love with her?" "You can call it that. The result is always deplorable. And if she's a smart, selfish, and unscrupulous girl, the result may be more deplorable still, as far as we all are concerned. What is the need of my saying this? You are grown; you know it already. Up to the present time you've kept fastidiously clear of such entanglements. You say you have, and your father and I believe you. So what is the use of beginning now,--creating an unfortunate impression in your own set, spending your time with such a girl as this Greensleeve girl--" "Mother," he said, "you're going about this matter in the wrong way. I am not in love with Athalie Greensleeve. But there is no girl I like better, none perhaps I like quite as well. Let me alone. There's no sentiment between her and me so far. There won't be any--unless you and other people begin to drive us toward each other. I don't want you to do that. Don't interfere. Let us alone. We're having a good time,--a perfectly natural, wholesome, happy time together." [Illustration: "'I _like_ her,' repeated Clive, Jr., a trifle annoyed."] "What is it leading to?" demanded his mother impatiently. "To nothing except more good times. That's absolutely all. That's all that good times lead to where any of the girls you approve of are concerned--not to sentiment, not to love, merely to more good times. Why on earth can't people understand that even if the girl happens to be earning her own living?" "People don't understand. That is the truth, and you can't alter it, Clive. The girl's reputation will always suffer. And that's where you ought to show yourself generous." "What?" "If you really like and respect her." "How am I to show myself generous, as you put it?" "By keeping away from her." "Because people gossip?"