"Now," said Mr. Carson, "I have no opinion of making blues of young ladies; but still, I think, Mrs. Nesbit, that a little useful information adds greatly to their charms. Don't you?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Nesbit. "I've been reading 'Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' lately."
"Yes," said Nina, "aunt's been busy about that ever since I can remember."
"That's a very nice book," said Mr. Carson, looking solemnly at Nina; "only, Mrs. Nesbit, an't you afraid of the infidel principle? I think, in forming the minds of the young, you know, one cannot be too careful."
"Why, he struck me as a very pious writer!" said Aunt Nesbit, innocently. "I'm sure, he makes the most religious reflections, all along. I liked him particularly on that account."
It seemed to Nina that, without looking at Clayton, she was forced to meet his eye. No matter whether she directed her attention to the asparagus or the potatoes, it was her fatality always to end by a rencounter with his eye; and she saw, for some reason or other, the conversation was extremely amusing to him.
"For my part," said Nina, "I don't know what sort of principles Aunt Nesbit's history, there, has; but one thing I'm pretty certain of,—that I'm not in any danger from any such thick, close-printed, old, stupid-looking books as that. I hate reading, and I don't intend to have my mind formed; so that nobody need trouble themselves to mark out courses for me! What is it to me what all these old empires have been, a hundred years ago? It is as much as I can do to attend to what is going on now."
"For my part," said Aunt Nesbit, "I've always regretted that I neglected the cultivation of my mind when I was young. I was like Nina, here, immersed in vanity and folly."
"People always talk," said Nina, reddening, "as if there was but one kind of vanity and folly in the world. I think there can be as much learned vanity and folly as we girls have!" And she looked at Clayton indignantly, as she saw him laughing.