‘I suppose girls do speak for themselves more than they did formerly.’

’A deal more, Mrs Hurtle; quite different.  You hear them talk of spooning with this fellow, and spooning with that fellow,—­and that before their very fathers and mothers!  When I was young we used to do it, I suppose,—­only not like that.’

‘You did it on the sly.’

’I think we got married quicker than they do, anyway.  When the gentlemen had to take more trouble they thought more about it.  But if you wouldn’t mind speaking to Ruby to-morrow, Mrs Hurtle, she’d listen to you when she wouldn’t mind a word I said to her.  I don’t want her to go away from this, out into the Street, till...