thing
somewhere else than in that eternal picture paper."

"For instance?"

"Oh, in _Peterson's_, or the _London Magazine_, or
_Piccadilly_."

It was in the library after dinner, and Lawrence Cardiff
was smoking. He took the slender stem of his pipe from
his lips and pressed down the tobacco in the bowl with
a, caressing thumb, looking appreciatively, as he did
it, at the mocking buffoon's face that was carved on it.

"It seems to me that you are the influential person in
those quarters," he said, with the smile that Janet
privately thought the most delightfully sympathetic she
knew.

"Oh, I'm not really!" the girl answered quickly; "and
besides--" she hesitated, to pick words that would hurt
her as little as possible--"besides, Frida wouldn't care
about my doing it."

"Why?"

"I don't know quite why. But she wouldn't--it's of no
use. I don't think she likes having things done for her
by people anything like her own age, and--and standing."

Cardiff smiled inwardly at this small insincerity.
Janet's relation with Elfrida was a growing pleasure to
him. He found himself doing little things to enhance it,
and fancying himself in some way connected with its
initiation.

"But I'm almost certain she would let you do it," his
daughter urged.

"_In loco parentis_," Cardiff smiled, and immediately
found that the words left an unpleasant taste in his
mouth. "But I'm not at all sure that she could do anything
they would take."

"My dear daddy!" cried Janet resentfully. "Wait till she
tries! You said yourself that some of those scraps she
sent us in Scotland were delicious."

"So they were. She has a curious, prismatic kind of
mind--"

"Soul, daddy."

"Soul, if you like. It reflects quite wonderfully, the
angles at which it finds itself with the world are so
unusual. But I doubt her power, you know, of construction
or cohesion, or anything of that kind."

"I don't," Janet returned confidently. "But talk to her
about it, daddy; get her to show you what she's done--I
never see a line till it's in print. And--I don't know
anything about it, you know. Above all things, don't
let her guess that I suggested it."

"I'll see what can be done," Mr. Cardiff returned, "though
I profess myself faithless. Elfrida wasn't designed to
please the public of the magazines--in England."

When Janet reflected afterward upon what had struck her
as being odd about this remark of her father's, she found
it was Elfrida's na