"Selina was in Florida, Mamma, when her mother declined for her," put in Adele quickly. "Naturally she will come. Selina's popular; she may teach me how to be."
"If you wouldn't decry yourself in this way, Adele," began her mother.
"I tell her so all the time," said Mrs. Grosvenor.
"But you both, Mamma and Grandmamma, have decried me for so many years yourselves, trying to improve me, I can't see myself otherwise," pleaded Adele.
"For your own good, as you allow," from Mrs. Carter.
"A girl has to be formed," from her grandmother.
"I was a perfect failure at my first big party thus far, Selina," said Adele, laughing a little desperately, "and with Mamma and Grandmamma there to see. I——"
"Can't we let this fish go and have the roast, Adelia?" from Mr. Carter to his wife.
"If Adele would not talk so laboredly to men," said Mrs. Grosvenor, to no one in particular that Selina could discover. "Her mother and I overheard her speaking to young Tuttle Jones at this same dancing party. And on my word for it, Adele, I heard you ask that poor man, I put your actual speech to mind that I might confront you with it—if he thought Christianity was a revolt of Hebraism against Hellenism? These were your very words! I told them to your mother and asked her to help me to remember them. It's perfectly understandable why Mr. Jones has declined your affair. Men hate such things."
"I had to talk about something," said Adele wretchedly. "I'd been reading about it in Papa's Quarterly."