. John's Wood was all the brighter for
Claudia's presence; but she could not suffer herself to remain for more
than a day or two in the light of an ordinary visitor.

"I came this time, you know," she early explained to Aunt Jane, "on a
voyage of exploration."

"Of what, my dear?" said Aunt Jane, to whom great London was still a
fearsome place, full of grievous peril.

"Of exploration, you know. I am going to look up a few old friends, and
see how they live. They are working women, who----"

"But," said Aunt Jane, "do you think you ought to go amongst the poor
alone?"

"Oh, they aren't poor in that sense, auntie; they are just single women,
old acquaintances of mine--schoolfellows indeed--who have to work for
their living. I want to see them again, and find out how they get on,
whether they have found their place in life, and are happy."

Aunt Jane was not wholly satisfied; but Claudia was not in her teens,
nor was she a stranger to London. So the scheme was passed, and all the
more readily because Claudia explained that she did not mean to make her
calls at random.

Her first voyage was to the flat in which Babette Irving and her friend
lived. It was in Bloomsbury, and not in a pile of new buildings. In
old-fashioned phraseology, Miss Irving and her friend would have been
said to have taken "unfurnished apartments," into which they had moved
their own possessions. It was a dull house in a dull side street.

Babette said that Lord Macaulay in his younger days was a familiar
figure in their region, since Zachary Macaulay had lived in a house hard
by. That was interesting, but did not compensate for the dinginess of
the surroundings.

Babette herself looked older.

"Worry, my dear, worry," was the only explanation she offered of the
fact. It seemed ample.

Her room was not decked out with all the prettiness Claudia, with a
remembrance of other days, had looked for. Babette seemed to make the
floor her waste-paper basket; and there was a shocking contempt for
appearance in the way books and papers littered chairs and tables. Nor
did Babette talk with enthusiasm of her work.

"Enjoy it?" she said, in answer to a question. "I sometimes wish I might
never see pen, ink, and paper again. That is why I am overdone. But I am
ashamed to say it; for I magnify my office as a working woman, and am
thankful to be independent."

"But I thought literary people had such a pleasure in their gift," said
Claudia.

"Very l