"Then what about this young girl at his side?
Don't tell me she was luring him from his home here ?" "It will surprise you to know," said Juliana in her best style, "that this young girl before you is not a girl." Both Whipples ably professed amazement.
"Not a girl ?" repeated the suave Whipple incredulously.

"You do amaze me, Juliana! Not a girl, with those flower-like features, those starry eyes, that feminine allure?
Preposterous! And yet, if he is not a girl he is, I take it, a boy." "A boy who incited the light of our house to wayward courses by changing clothes with her." The harsher Whipple spoke here in a new tone.
"Then she browbeat him into it.

Scissors and white aprons--yes, I know her!" "He didn't seem browbeaten.

They were smoking quite companionably when I chanced upon them." "Smoking! Our angel child smoking!" This from Sharon Whipple in tones that every child present knew as a mere pretense of horror.

Juliana shrugged cynically.
"They always go to the bad after they leave their nice homes," she said.
"Children should never smoke till they are twenty-one, and then they get a gold watch for it," interjected the orator, Merle.