to learn Spanish. I wonder if I
could take lessons too; it would not be exciting, and I am not yet so
old but I may learn."

"You might ask the doctor. He has almost dismissed himself now; and
after we get back from the country perhaps Jennie would join us two in a
class. Mother and daughter can then go to school together."

"It is very fortunate," Mrs. Levice observed pensively, sipping her
necessary glass of port, "that C---- sent your hat this morning to wear
with your new gown. Isn't it?"

"Fortunate!" Ruth exclaimed, laughing banteringly; "it is destiny."

So Mrs. Levice slipped easily into Ruth's plan from a social standpoint,
and Ruth slipped out, trim and graceful, from her mother's artistic
manipulations.

Meanwhile Mrs. Levice intended writing some delayed letters till her
husband's return, which promised to be early in the afternoon.

She had just about settled herself at her desk when Jennie Lewis came
bustling in. Mrs. Lewis always brought in a sense of importance; one
looked upon her presence with that exhilarating feeling with which one
anticipates the latest number of a society journal.

"Go right on with your writing, Aunt Esther," she said after they had
exchanged greetings. "I have brought my work, so I shall not mind the
quiet in the least."

"As if I would bore you in that way!" returned Mrs. Levice, with a
laughing glance at her, as she closed her desk. "Lay off your things,
and let us have a downright comfortable afternoon. Don't forget a single
sensation; I am actually starving for one."

Mrs. Lewis smiled grimly as she fluffed up her bang with her hat-pin.
She drew up a second cosey rocking-chair near her aunt's, drew out her
needle and crochet-work, and as the steel hook flashed in and out, her
tongue soon acquired its accustomed momentum.

"Where is Ruth?" she began, winding her thread round her chubby,
ring-bedecked finger.

"She is paying off some calls for a change."

"Indeed! Got down to conventionality again?" "You would not call her
unconventional, would you?"

"Oh, well; every one has a right to an opinion."

Mrs. Levice glanced at her inquiringly. Without doubt there was an
underground mine beneath this non-committal remark. Mrs. Lewis rocked
violently backward and forward without raising her eyes. Her face was
beet-red, and it looked as if an explosion were imminent. Mrs. Levice
waited with no little speculation as to what act of Ruth her cousin
disapproved of so obv