"Only to one portion of society. I hope you do not class yourself with them." "Do you mean," said Maggie, making big eyes, "do you mean, Fenton, that you are glad papa and mamma are in California?" "No. Only one of 'em. Mamma never interferes with me." "She leaves it to papa to do," said Maggie, with dignity and sageness. "I am glad she does. Shows her wisdom. I can tell what is good for me as well as anybody else." "Always do it, I suppose?" "That's just my affair," said Fenton. "There is no use in putting chains round a fellow--all the good of it is, he must just break the chains." "Do you call papa's commands, _chains_?" said Maggie. "Don't stare, Maggie; nothing is so vulgar." "I am glad Uncle Eden is coming, to make you behave yourself." "If he tries it on, I shall bolt," said Fenton. "I am out for some fun; and if I can't get it at home I'll get it somewhere else." Meredith succeeded in turning the conversation to a pleasanter subject; nevertheless Fenton's deliverances shocked his little sister several times in the course of the dinner. Among other things, Fenton would go down to the wine-cellar, to see if a bottle or two might not by chance have been left; and though the key was not to be had and he came back discomfited, Maggie could not get over the audacity of his proposition. She was further and exceedingly shocked after dinner when Fenton proposed to Meredith to have a cigar. Meredith declining, Fenton went out to enjoy his cigar alone. "Fenton is grown very wild," said Maggie. "Boys can't be like girls," said Esther. "I don't see why they can't be as respectable as girls," said Maggie. "They never are, my dear," said Flora. "Comfort yourself. They will run into what they don't like just to have their own way; because what they do like is ordered or advised by some kind friend." "Not true without exception, Maggie," said Meredith; "but there is some truth in it. Don't worry about Fenton. I don't believe he means quite as bad as he says." "But smoking is so disgraceful--in a boy," said Maggie. "It is not disgraceful in a man," said Esther. "Well, it isn't nice," returned Maggie. "I always hate to come near that Professor Wilkins, who always talks to me when he is here. He is kind, but his breath is dreadful." Fenton was not so fond of the company of his cigar but that he soon forsook it. And then his company indoors was hardly an acquisition. He talked big of doings at the school where he was now placed, horrified Maggie by showing that he was quite as lawless as in old times, and put an effectual bar to any reading, or talk either, except of the sort that suited himself. "What's up?" he asked at last. "What shall we do to make the time go?" "Time does not need any whip with us," said Meredith. "He goes fast enough." "Oh, we are going out in the woods to dinner," said Maggie. "You were there to-day."