yet, in face of all the possibilities which existed in the way of Dropmore, Ffarington, and Company; but yet they would not have refused him off-hand. Now I may as well tell the reader at once that Kate and Sophy Farrel-Austin were not what either I or he (she) would call _nice_ girls. I am fond of girls, for my own part. I don’t like to speak ill of them, or give an unfavorable impression, and as it is very probable that my prejudice in favor of the species may betray me into some relentings in respect to these particular examples, some softening of their after proceedings, or explanation of their devices, I think it best to say at once that they were not nice girls. They had not very sweet natures to begin with; for the fact is--and it is a very terrible one--that a great many people do come into the world with natures which are not sweet, and enter upon the race of life handicapped (if I may be permitted an irregular but useful expression) in the most frightful way. I do not pretend to explain this mystery, which, among all the mysteries of earth, is one of the most cruel, but I am forced to believe it. Kate and Sophy had never been very _nice_. Their father before them was not _nice_, but an extremely selfish and self-regarding person, often cross, and with no generosity or elevation of mind to set them a better example. They had no mother, and no restraint, except that of school, which is very seldom more than external and temporary. The young stepmother had begun by petting them, but neither could nor wished to attempt to rule the girls, who soon acquired a contempt for her; and as her invalidism grew, they took the control of the house, as well as themselves, altogether out of her hands. From sixteen they had been in that state of rampant independence and determination to have their own way, which has now, I fear, become as common among girls as it used to be among boys, when education was more neglected than it is nowadays. Boys who are at school--and even when they are young men at the university--must be in some degree of subordination; but girls who do not respect their parents are absolutely beyond this useful power, and can be described as nothing but rampant--the unloveliest as well as the unwholesomest of all mental and moral attitudes. Kate had come out at sixteen, and since that time had been constantly in this rampant state; by sheer force and power of will she had kept Sophy back until she also attained that mature age, but her power ended at that point, and Sophy had then become rampant too. They turned everything upside down in the house, planned their life according to their pleasure, over-rode the stepmother, coaxed the father, who was fond and proud of them--the best part of his character--and set out thus in the Dropmore and Ffarington kind of business. At sixteen girls do not plan to be married--they plan to enjoy themselves; and these noble young gentlemen seemed best adapted to second their intentions.