ling, but not grimly, for she enjoyed logical fencing, even
to her opponent's fair hits.

"If I had beautiful hair like yours, I shouldn't need to," replied
Mildred. "But you know how endy and untidy mine always was."

Aunt Beatrice, embarrassed by the compliment, looked at her watch. "It
seems as if we women can't escape our fate," she said. "Here we are
gabbling about dress when we've plenty of important things to talk over.
Miss Burt wrote to me that you were overworked, run down, nerves out of
order, and all the usual nonsense. I'm thankful to find you looking
remarkably well. I should like to know what this humbug about not being
able to work means."

"It means that--well, I simply can't," returned Mildred, earnestly this
time. "I can't remember things."

"You must be able to remember; unless your brain's diseased, which is
most improbable. But I ought to take you to a brain specialist, I
suppose."

Milly changed color. "Please, oh please, Aunt Beatrice, don't do that!"

Lady Thomson, in fact, hardly meant it; for her niece's appearance was
unmistakably healthy. However, the threat told.

"I shall if you don't improve. I can't understand you. Either you're
hysterical or you've got one of those abominable fits of frivolity which
come on women like drink on men, and destroy their careers. I thought we
had both set our hearts on your getting another First."

"But, Aunt Beatrice, they say I can't. They say I'm not clever enough."

"Oh, that's what they say, is it?" Lady Thomson smiled in calm but deep
contempt. "How do they explain the idiots who have got Firsts? Archibald
Toovey, for instance?" Her eyes met her niece's, and both smiled.

"Ah, yes! Mr. Toovey," returned Milly, who had met Archibald Toovey at
the Fletchers', and converted his patronizing courtship into imbecile
raptures.

"But that quite explains your losing an interest in your work. Just for
once, I should like to take you away before the end of term. We would go
straight to Rome next Monday. We shall meet the Breretons there, and go
fully over the new excavations and discoveries, besides the old things,
which will be new, of course, to you. Then we will go on to Naples, do
the galleries and Pompeii, and come back by Florence and Paris before
Christmas. By that time you will be ready to settle down to your work
steadily again and forget all this nonsense."

Mildred's face had lighted up momentarily at the word "Rome." Then she
sucked her