"Boys can't be like girls," said Esther.
"I don't see why they can't be as respectable as girls," said Maggie.
"They never are, my dear," said Flora. "Comfort yourself. They will run into what they don't like just to have their own way; because what they do like is ordered or advised by some kind friend."
"Not true without exception, Maggie," said Meredith; "but there is some truth in it. Don't worry about Fenton. I don't believe he means quite as bad as he says."
"But smoking is so disgraceful—in a boy," said Maggie.
"It is not disgraceful in a man," said Esther.
"Well, it isn't nice," returned Maggie. "I always hate to come near that Professor Wilkins, who always talks to me when he is here. He is kind, but his breath is dreadful."
Fenton was not so fond of the company of his cigar but that he soon forsook it. And then his company indoors was hardly an acquisition. He talked big of doings at the school where he was now placed, horrified Maggie by showing that he was quite as lawless as in old times, and put an effectual bar to any reading, or talk either, except of the sort that suited himself.
"What's up?" he asked at last. "What shall we do to make the time go?"
"Time does not need any whip with us," said Meredith. "He goes fast enough."