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 FLAMING

YOUTH

19

There was no special selectiveness about the company. All that was required of them was that they should be superficially presentable and contribute something of amusement or entertainment to the composite life of the ménage. At least nine-tenths of them were making love to Constance or Mary Delia or Mona herself, openly or surreptitiously as the case might be. It made a pleasantly restless and stimulating atmosphere. In the city itself there would have been criticism of the easy standards; indeed there was more or less which drifted out to the Knoll. But judgments in the suburbs are kindlier. And Dorrisdale is quite fashionable enough to establish its own standards. Any week-end would find half a dozen or more cars bunched on the driveway, having brought their quota of pleasure-seeking youth out from New York or from Philadelphia or Baltimore or Princeton. The girls had carte blanche, within

reasonable

limits, for invitations,

which they were careful not to abuse. A few errors in judgment had reacted unpleasantly not only upon themselves but upon their undesirable guests. Mona Fentriss could act with decision and dignity within her own walls, Her social discrimination was keen if not rigid, and she possessed a blighting gift of sarcasm, mainly imitative, the most deadly kind used against the young. Neither of the girls was likely ever to forget her imitation of Connie’s friend from Minneapolis whose method of handling a fork, according

to Mrs.

Fentriss’s

theory, had been

derived from bayonet practice in camp; nor her presentation of a steamship acquaintance of Dee’s who had too pathetically bewailed his losses at bridge. Partly from theory, partly as a trouble-saving device, the mother seldom attempted any exercise of direct authority upon the children. A system of self-govern-