"Why don't I?" he began, then catching her earnest expression, checked himself. "That's good logic, I suppose," he added.
"More—it's good sense," she argued. "I love oranges, for instance, but they make me ill. Do you suppose I go on eating them? That would be too foolish! Yet men are supposed to have more strength and self-control than women."
The attaché drew up a chair and dropped into it, not loth to linger, even to be lectured.
"I don't think men have more of such strength though," he said. "Their superiority is physical, not mental."
"They ought to be ashamed to own it!" cried Faith. "The two should go together."
"Well, we are ashamed—I am ashamed!" smiling upon her. "Yet we are willing to give you girls all the credit you like for your decision of character, only caring to retain just a little vanity on account of our own endurance in other ways. And you'll have to own there isn't one of you who likes a Molly Coddle!"
"Is it being a Molly Coddle to be strong and true to yourself?"
"Oh, well, you put it nicely, but just look at the fellows who will sit by and never join in the wine and the fun—aren't they a rather feeble-looking set?"
"Is my father feeble?" asked Faith, turning such a sweetly arch and tender face upon him that the young man felt his heart thump.
"Well no—hardly!" he laughed.