Jane looked at her with a puzzled expression.
Just then there came a tap at the door, and two girls named Alice and Florrie Smart, put in an appearance. They were fashionably dressed, and rushed up to Jane and kissed her.
“Dear old Janie, how are you?” said Alice.
“Oh, we have had such a jolly time,” interrupted Florrie. “We were out with the Davidsons all the afternoon, and thought we should be late. We wouldn’t miss the debate to-night for a thousand worlds. Freshers? Do I see freshers here? Pray introduce me, Janie.”
Jane performed her duties in a somewhat perfunctory manner. She was puzzled by Eileen and Marjorie, could not understand them, and was scarcely prepared to like them; but Leslie had already stolen into her heart.
[CHAPTER XIV—A COCOA PARTY—CONTINUED.]
“Are the graces forgotten by the modern woman?” was the subject of the debate that evening. The opener’s speech was made by Miss Frere, who boldly threw down the gauntlet, reminded the girls assembled before her of some of the perils which lay across their paths, and assured them that the old graces of politeness, of gentleness, of loving service, of all that made woman noble and graceful ought to be part of the new life which was opening its doors wider and wider each day for the happy modern girl.
“If in grasping the new we let go of the old, we make a vast mistake,” she continued, her eyes flashing with suppressed fire. “We leave out what has made woman noble and great in the past. We shut away deliberately a vast influence which would otherwise help to pervade the world, for a woman can be graceful, pleasant to look at, agreeable, and not silly. She may be sympathetic without being sentimental. She may be, in the best sense, womanly without sinking into a nonentity.”
Miss Frere’s words were full of feeling, and Leslie listened to her with an ever-growing admiration. In such tones, with almost similar words, had her own mother often spoken to her. From that moment she believed in Miss Frere, and determined to do her utmost to secure the friendship of one who looked so noble and spoke so well.
Marjorie and Eileen, however, fidgeted, rumpled up their short locks, and glanced impatiently one at the other.