"You certainly don't approve of Mr. Brewster's conduct?" Barbara did not like to be placed in the wrong, and felt that she must endeavor to justify herself. "He is the most reckless of spendthrifts, we know, and he probably indulges in even less respectable excitement."
Peggy was not tall, but she carried her head at this moment as though she were in the habit of looking down on the world.
"Aren't you going a little too far, Miss Drew?" she asked placidly.
"It is not only New York that laughs at his Quixotic transactions," Barbara persisted. "Mr. Hampton, our guest from Chicago, says the stories are worse out there than they are in the east."
"It is a pity that Monty's illness should have made him so weak," said Peggy quietly, as they turned in through the great iron gates, and Barbara was not slow to see the point.
