etry into English prose, and English
prose into Greek iambics; he was an authority upon coins; and--one other
thing--oh yes, she thought it was vehicular traffic.

He was here either to get things out of the sea, or to write upon the
probable course of Odysseus, for Greek after all was his hobby.

"I've got all his pamphlets," she said. "Little pamphlets. Little yellow
books." It did not appear that she had read them.

"Has he ever been in love?" asked Helen, who had chosen a seat.

This was unexpectedly to the point.

"His heart's a piece of old shoe leather," Rachel declared, dropping the
fish. But when questioned she had to own that she had never asked him.

"I shall ask him," said Helen.

"The last time I saw you, you were buying a piano," she continued. "Do
you remember--the piano, the room in the attic, and the great plants
with the prickles?"

"Yes, and my aunts said the piano would come through the floor, but at
their age one wouldn't mind being killed in the night?" she enquired.

"I heard from Aunt Bessie not long ago," Helen stated. "She is afraid
that you will spoil your arms if you insist upon so much practising."

"The muscles of the forearm--and then one won't marry?"

"She didn't put it quite like that," replied Mrs. Ambrose.

"Oh, no--of course she wouldn't," said Rachel with a sigh.

Helen looked at her. Her face was weak rather than decided, saved from
insipidity by the large enquiring eyes; denied beauty, now that she was
sheltered indoors, by the lack of colour and definite outline. Moreover,
a hesitation in speaking, or rather a tendency to use the wrong words,
made her seem more than normally incompetent for her years. Mrs.
Ambrose, who had been speaking much at random, now reflected that she
certainly did not look forward to the intimacy of three or four weeks
on board ship which was threatened. Women of her own age usually boring
her, she supposed that girls would be worse. She glanced at Rachel
again. Yes! how clear it was that she would be vacillating, emotional,
and when you said something to her it would make no more lasting
impression than the stroke of a stick upon water. There was nothing
to take hold of in girls--nothing hard, permanent, satisfactory. Did
Willoughby say three weeks, or did he say four? She tried to remember.

At this point, however, the door opened and a tall burly man entered
the room, came forward and shook Helen's hand with an emotional kind of
heartine