d her brow always
slightly knitted, and her manner as of one breathlessly shy but
determined. She had rather open blue eyes, and she spoke in an even
musical voice with the gentlest of stresses and the ghost of a lisp.
And it was true, she gathered, that Cambridge still existed. "I went
to Grantchester," she said, "last year, and had tea under the
apple-blossom. I didn't think then I should have to come down." (It was
that started the curate upon his anecdote.)

"I've seen a lot of pictures, and learnt a lot about them--at the Pitti
and the Brera,--the Brera is wonderful--wonderful places,--but it isn't
like real study," she was saying presently.... "We bought bales of
photographs," she said.

I thought the bales a little out of keeping.

But fair-haired and quite simply and yet graciously and fancifully
dressed, talking of art and beautiful things and a beautiful land, and
with so much manifest regret for learning denied, she seemed a
different kind of being altogether from my smart, hard, high-coloured,
black-haired and resolutely hatted cousin; she seemed translucent beside
Gertrude. Even the little twist and droop of her slender body was a
grace to me.

I liked her from the moment I saw her, and set myself to interest and
please her as well as I knew how.

We recalled a case of ragging that had rustled the shrubs of Newnham,
and then Chris Robinson's visit--he had given a talk to Bennett Hall
also--and our impression of him.

"He disappointed me, too," said Margaret.

I was moved to tell Margaret something of my own views in the matter of
social progress, and she listened--oh! with a kind of urged attention,
and her brow a little more knitted, very earnestly. The little curate
desisted from the appendices and refuse heaps and general debris of his
story, and made himself look very alert and intelligent.

"We did a lot of that when I was up in the eighties," he said. "I'm glad
Imperialism hasn't swamped you fellows altogether."

Gertrude, looking bright and confident, came to join our talk from the
shrubbery; the initial, a little flushed and evidently in a state of
refreshed relationship, came with her, and a cheerful lady in pink
and more particularly distinguished by a pink bonnet joined our little
group. Gertrude had been sipping admiration and was not disposed to play
a passive part in the talk.

"Socialism!" she cried, catching the word. "It's well Pa isn't here. He
has Fits when people talk of soc