"I don't know. I'm awfully afraid of--_nice_ girls!"

"Sylvie, I'm ashamed of you! As if you had any other kind of
acquaintance, or weren't as nice as any of them! I wouldn't suggest
it, even to myself, if I were you."

"And I don't," said Sylvie boldly--"when I'm _by_ myself. But
there's a kind of a little misgiving somehow, when they come, or
when I go, as if--well, as if there _might_ be something to it that
I didn't know of, or behind it that I hadn't got; or else, that
there were things that they had nothing to do with that I know too
much of. A kind of a--Poggowantimoc feeling, mother! Amy Sherrett is
so _fearfully_ refined,--all the way through! It doesn't seem as if
she ever had any common things to say or do. Don't you think it
_takes_ common things to get people really near to each other? It
doesn't seem to me I could ever be intimate--or very easy--with Amy
Sherrett."

"You seemed to get on well enough with her brother, the other day."

"Boys aren't half so bad. There isn't any such wax-work about boys.
Besides,"--and Sylvie laughed a low, gay little laugh,--we got spilt
out together, you know."

"Well, don't stand talking. You mustn't keep them waiting. It isn't
time to speak about tea, yet. Look over the album, and get at some
music. _Keep_ them without saying anything about it. When people
think every minute they are just going, is just when they are having
the very pleasantest time."