id_ give one an idea. But of course you know
every stone in it by now!"

"I'm afraid I've not seen it," Elfrida confessed gravely.
"I know it's shocking of me."

"You haven't visited the Tower! Doesn't that show how
benumbing opportunity is to the energies! Now I dare say
that I," Miss Kimpsey went on with gratification, "coming
over with a party of tourists from our State, all bound
to get London and the cathedral towns and the lakes and
Scotland and Paris and Switzerland into the summer
vacation--I presume I may have seen more of the London
sights than you have, Miss Bell." As Miss Kimpsey spoke
she realized that she had had no intention of calling
Elfrida "Miss Bell" when she saw her again, and wondered
why she did it. "But you ought to be fond of sight-seeing,
too," she added, "with your artistic nature."

Elfrida seemed to restrain a smile. "I don't know that
I am," she said. "I'm sorry that you didn't leave my
mother so well as she ought to be. She hasn't mentioned
it in her letters." In the course of time Miss Bell's
correspondence with her parents had duly re-established
itself.

"She _wouldn't_, Elf--Miss Bell. She was afraid of
suggesting the obligation to come home to you. She said
with your artistic conscience you couldn't come, and it
would only be inflicting unnecessary pain upon you. But
her bronchitis was no light matter last February. She
was real sick."

"My mother is always so considerate," Elfrida answered,
reddening, with composed lips. "She is better now, I
think you said."

"Oh yes, she's some better. I heard from her last week,
and she says she doesn't know how to wait to see me back.
That's on your account, of course. Well, I can tell her
you appear comfortable," Miss Kimpsey looked around, "if
I _can't_ tell her exactly when you'll be home."

"That is so doubtful, just now--"

"They're introducing drawing from casts in the High
School," Miss Kimpsey went on, with a note of urgency in
her little twanging voice, "and Mrs. Bell told me I
might just mention it to you. She thinks you could easily
get taken on to teach it. I just dropped round to one or
two of the principal trustees the day before I left, and
they said you had only to apply. It's seven hundred
dollars a year."

Elfrida's eyebrows contracted. "Thanks very much! It was
extremely kind--to go to so much trouble. But I have
decided that I am not meant to be an artist, Miss Kimpsey,"
she said with a self-contained smile