It was a rondeau; I knew that by the shape, and the mother apologized for the indelicacy of it before permitting my own cheeks to blush thereat.

The dominant line of the composition I saw to be-- "When love lights night to be its day." I turned from the stricken mother to cough deprecatingly when I had read.

She likewise had the delicacy to turn away and cough.

But an emergency of this momentous import must be discussed in plain terms, however disconcerting the details, and Mrs.Eubanks had nerved herself for the ordeal.
"I can't think," she began, "where the boy _learned_ such things!" I had not the courage to tell her that they might be entirely self-taught under certain circumstances.
"Such shameless, brazen things!" she persisted.

"We have always been _so_ careful of Euty--striving to keep him--well, wholesome and pure, you understand, Major Blake." "There are always dangers," I said, but only because she had stopped speaking, and not in any hope of instructing her.
"If only we can keep him from making a fool of himself--" "It seems rather late," I said, this time with profound conviction.