"No, I confess that it does not look to me at all right. Girls old enough to need cards are old enough to have 'handles to their names.' If I were that young woman I should spell 'Fanny' without the ie, and call myself 'Miss Frances C. Jones' on my card, and keep my pet name for the use of my friends, and not print it."
"I think I've learned a good deal to-day," said Candace. "The funny old book isn't right in what it says, but Cousin Kate knows; so it comes to the same thing in the end. I'm glad you gave it to me, Gertrude."
Gertrude had the grace to feel ashamed, as she saw Candace's perfect freedom from shame.
"Oh, dear! how much there is to learn!" continued Candace, with a sigh. She was still deep in the "Ladies' Manual of Perfect Gentility."
"Put away that book, Cannie," said her cousin; "or give it to me, and I will hide it where Gertrude shall not find it again. Good breeding can be learned without printed rules."
"Can it, mamma?"
"Yes; for, as I was saying this morning to Gertrude, good manners are the result of good feeling. If we really care about other people, and want to make them happy, and think of them and not of ourselves, we shall instinctively do what will seem pleasant to them, and avoid doing what is disagreeable. We shall refrain from interrupting them when they are speaking. We shall not half listen to what they say, while our eyes are roving about the room, and our attention wandering to other things. We shall be quick to notice if they want anything that we can get for them. We shall not answer at random, or giggle, or say the wrong thing. We shall not loll back in our chairs, as Georgie is doing at this moment, with one foot cocked over the other knee, and a paint-brush in our mouths."
"Mamma!" And Georgie hastily recovered the upright position, and took her paint-brush from between her lips.
"We shall not drum idly on window-panes, as Gertrude was doing just now, for fear that the little noise will be disagreeable to our neighbors."
"Now, mamma!"