Boys are sometimes told that they must swim with the stream at school and join in bad talk because “everybody does it,” but the nice boy stands out and does not, and helps weaker ones thereby.

Girls have a much smaller temptation in that way—­more to silliness than to actual wrong; but your tone—­in these matters that I speak of—­helps your brothers in their battles with downright wrong.  Every boy who knows his sister’s standard is very high, is helped far more than he is conscious of, by her influence,—­and far more than she ever knows, for she does not know all his temptations.

Women have been trained to nice-mindedness by centuries of public opinion—­they have always been admired for it, and blamed if they lack it; while men have not been so trained; therefore women have a special power of helping men, who are, consequently, not likely to be born so particular about these things as women are.

Always feel responsible for what you laugh at:  very often people say things tentatively to see if you will laugh:  you help to fix their standard by the way you take it, and you often throw your weight into the wrong scale because you are afraid of seeming priggish.  A man’s sense of humour is different from a woman’s; when you go into the world you must be careful not to laugh just because a man makes a joke, until you are quite sure that it is one to laugh at.  Perhaps your host makes it, and his wife looks a trifle grave:  then be quick to take your cue from her and to notice what nice women think nice for a woman.

Very often in talking to girls and preparing them for life, the whole question of flirtation and nonsense is left out—­there is not even as much said as in Mrs. Blackett’s village, where the clergyman’s wife put every girl through a special catechism before she left to go to service, part of which was, “Lads, Sally?” The correct answer briskly given by Sally was, “Have naught to do with them—­but if they will, tell mother.”

The whole subject of getting married, or falling in love, or meeting a man you may fall in love with, is often smothered up out of sight, as if it were something wrong.  If you have your life so full of other interests that it does not concern you till the real thing comes, so much the better—­you will lose the pleasantest five years of your life if you turn your mind in this direction too soon.

What often happens is that it is plentifully thought of and talked of among the girls, and hidden away from the mothers and any older friends.  Either do not speak of it at all, or let it be an open straightforward thing, instead of a Rosa Matilda mystery.  So often a girl feels a delightful spice of impropriety in any remark about a man or a boy.  If she had more to do with them she would not be so silly—­unless she had a very odd sort of menkind belonging to her; but you will find girls (very unattractive ones, too) always imagining that a man is in love with them, or else being silly themselves over every other man they meet.