“Late again!” said Mrs. Vanstone, as Magdalen breathlessly kissed her.

“Late again!” chimed in Miss Garth, when Magdalen came her way next.  “Well?” she went on, taking the girl’s chin familiarly in her hand, with a half-satirical, half-fond attention which betrayed that the youngest daughter, with all her faults, was the governess’s favorite—­“Well? and what has the concert done for you? What form of suffering has dissipation inflicted on your system this morning?”

“Suffering!” repeated Magdalen, recovering her breath, and the use of her tongue with it.  “I don’t know the meaning of the word:  if there’s anything the matter with me, I’m too well.  Suffering!  I’m ready for another concert to-night, and a ball to-morrow, and a play the day after.  Oh,” cried Magdalen, dropping into a chair and crossing her hands rapturously on the table, “how I do like pleasure!”

“Come! that’s explicit at any rate,” said Miss Garth.  “I think Pope must have had you in his mind when he wrote his famous lines: 

“’Men some to business, some to pleasure take, But every woman is at heart a rake.’”

“The deuce she is!” cried Mr. Vanstone, entering the room while Miss Garth was making her quotation, with the dogs at his heels.  “Well; live and learn.  If you’re all rakes, Miss Garth, the sexes are turned topsy-turvy with a vengeance; and the men will have nothing left for it but to stop at home and darn the stockings.—­Let’s have some breakfast.”

“How-d’ye-do, papa?” said Magdalen, taking Mr. Vanstone as boisterously round the neck as if he belonged to some larger order of Newfoundland dog, and was made to be romped with at his daughter’s convenience.  “I’m the rake Miss Garth means; and I want to go to another concert—­or a play, if you like—­or a ball, if you prefer it—­or anything else in the way of amusement that puts me into a new dress, and plunges me into a crowd of people, and illuminates me with plenty of light, and sets me in a tingle of excitement all over, from head to foot.  Anything will do, as long as it doesn’t send us to bed at eleven o’clock.”

Mr. Vanstone sat down composedly under his daughter’s flow of language, like a man who was well used to verbal inundation from that quarter.  “If I am to be allowed my choice of amusements next time,” said the worthy gentleman, “I think a play will suit me better than a concert.  The girls enjoyed themselves amazingly, my dear,” he continued, addressing his wife.  “More than I did, I must say.  It was altogether above my mark.  They played one piece of music which lasted forty minutes.  It stopped three times, by-the-way; and we all thought it was done each time, and clapped our hands, rejoiced to be rid of it.  But on it went again, to our great surprise and mortification, till we gave it up in despair, and all wished ourselves at Jericho.  Norah, my dear! when we had crash-bang for forty minutes, with three stoppages by-the-way, what did they call it?”