"I don't wish to be rude, dear: but I really must decline; for I cannot know such people, even though I meet them here," said Rose, remembering Charlie's revelations on New-Year's night, and hardening her heart against the man who had been his undoing on that as well as on other occasions, she had reason to believe. "I couldn't help it! Old Mr. Randal and papa are friends; and, though I spoke of it, brother Alf wouldn't hear of passing that bad boy over," explained Kitty, eagerly. "Yet Alf forbade your driving or skating with him; for he knows better than we how unfit he is to come among us." "I'd drop him to-morrow if I could; but I must be civil in my own house. His mother brought him, and he won't dare to behave here as he does at their bachelor parties." "She ought not to have brought him till he had shown some desire to mend his ways. It is none of my business, I know; but I do wish people wouldn't be so inconsistent, letting boys go to destruction, and then expecting us girls to receive them like decent people." Rose spoke in an energetic whisper, but Annabel heard her, and exclaimed, as she turned round with a powder-puff in her hand,-- "My goodness, Rose! what is all that about going to destruction?" "She is being strong-minded; and I don't very much blame her in this case. But it leaves me in a dreadful scrape," said Kitty, supporting her spirits with a sniff of aromatic vinegar. "I appeal to you, since you heard me, and there's no one here but ourselves: do you consider young Randal a nice person to know?" and Rose turned to Annabel and Emma with an anxious eye; for she did not find it easy to abide by her principles when so doing annoyed friends. "No, indeed: he's perfectly horrid! Papa says he and Gorham are the wildest young men he knows, and enough to spoil the whole set. I'm so glad I've got no brothers," responded Annabel, placidly powdering her pink arms, quite undeterred by the memory of sundry white streaks left on sundry coat-sleeves. "_I_ think that sort of scrupulousness is very ill-bred, if you'll excuse my saying so, Rose. _We_ are not supposed to know any thing about fastness, and wildness, and so on; but to treat every man alike, and not be fussy and prudish," said Emma, settling her many-colored streamers with the superior air of a woman of the world, aged twenty. "Ah! but we do know; and, if our silence and civility have no effect, we ought to try something else, and not encourage wickedness of any kind. We needn't scold and preach, but we _can_ refuse to know such people; and that will do some good, for they don't like to be shunned and shut out from respectable society. Uncle Alec told me not to know that man, and I won't." Rose spoke with unusual warmth, forgetting that she could not tell the real reason for her strong prejudice against "that man."