"Del, I don't think I ever met anyone who could talk more nonsense than you, in a given space of time."
"Nonsense! Oh, Lynn, if I could only get you to understand that what I am saying, although delivered as if it were the merest airy persiflage, is the soundest common sense. If you want to be admired and respected by the male sex—sweep! Or, if you don't like sweeping, don't sweep; but talk about sweeping as if it were the one thing that you doted on; convey the impression that you would rather sweep than go motoring any day. The man in question may have thought you a charming girl before, but, after that, his feelings will take a deeper tinge; you will advance in his mind to the status of a womanly woman. Delicious! Instead of these lectures girls are always attending at Y.W.C.A.'s and colleges, about Browning and the Pyramids and the condition of the poor and the prevalence of frivolity, what a pity it is they can't attend lectures given by some past-master in the art of flirting—such as I, for instance! Wouldn't those lectures be crowded, though; that is, if girls knew what was good for them. And here you have all the advantages of a private course of instruction and you won't take the trouble to learn the first rules of the game. Ah, the golden words of wisdom wasted! the opportunities lost. Ah me!"
"Del, I strongly object to your speaking as though I had no opportunities. Haven't I always at least one person who wants to marry me? even though I do tell the truth occasionally?"
"You have. But that's by good luck, not by management. You might have twenty if you exerted yourself properly."
"You make me feel as though I were a sort of derelict. It's a horrid feeling."
"If I succeed in making you feel a derelict I have succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. Don't you know, my dear child, that you are experiencing in a faint degree what you will experience all your life if you don't hurry up and settle yourself. Don't you know that for the next fifty years you will, not only feel, but be a derelict if you don't accept Lighton and marry him before he changes his mind."
"Thank goodness, this drive can't last forever," exclaimed Lynn, laughing. "Otherwise I should be compelled to get out and walk. You are perfectly unendurable sometimes, Del, and this is certainly one of the times."
"I'm going to be unendurable again and to better purpose, I hope, a little later on," said Mrs. Hadwell, darkly. "But now I suppose we'll have to descend—or ascend, if you like it better—from practical life to pictures. Mr. Amherst paints well, doesn't he? And what a nice man he is. I don't know anyone who doesn't like him, do you?"
"No, I don't think I do. He's nice and very popular."
"And a great friend of yours too, isn't he? I haven't heard you speak of him, lately. I thought at one time"—