that splendid singing lessons were now within measurable distance of her,
it was small wonder that her conscience gave up the unequal fight and
retired from the field in despair.

"We must change tickets," Margaret announced presently, with the
business-like air of one who is determined to overlook no detail, however
apparently unimportant, "for you will have to get out at Chailfield,
Eleanor, which is three or four stations before we come to Seabourne."

"Very well, yes, I suppose so," Eleanor said somewhat absently. She was
deep in consideration as to which opera she should study first with
Madame Martelli. The latter would probably wish to take one in which she
had scored a success herself, and Eleanor was racking her brain to
remember the particular one in which she had read that the gifted singer
of past days had made her most signal triumph.

"And oh, Eleanor! what about our clothes? I have never, never thought of
them."

There was such a depth of tragic despair in Margaret's voice that it
could not but arrest Eleanor's wandering attention.

"Clothes," she said vaguely; "what clothes?"

"Why, our clothes," Margaret said impatiently. "We ought to change them,
you know, and you put on mine, and I put on yours."

Eleanor looked at her for a moment with the deep, earnest gaze one
unconsciously accords to people whose last remark one ought to have heard
but has not. But then, as the meaning of Margaret's speech slowly
penetrated to her brain, she smiled, and the smile broadened to a laugh.

"If changing clothes is part of the programme," she said, still laughing,
"I'm off. Why, Margaret, how do you suppose I'm going to get into your
clothes, and what do you suppose you would look like in mine? Why, I am
an inch taller than you are, and broader in proportion. No, we must take
our own things and cut the marking out of our linen. None of my
underlinen happens to be marked, so that simplifies matters for me."

"But mine all is," Margaret said ruefully; "Mrs. Parkes did it all last
week, and would it not look strange if I cut my name out of all my
things?"

"Yes, perhaps it would rather," Eleanor said thoughtfully. "I tell you
how you must manage. To begin with, don't let a maid do your unpacking
for you, and keep everything locked up until you have had time to go out
and buy a bottle of marking ink and some block tape. Then mark the tape
with your name and sew it over the name on your linen."

"And then," Elea