“Be sure,” warned Miss Morrison, “to drive through the pleasantest streets.”

Then she turned to Kate with a deliciously reproachful expression on her face.

“Why didn’t you order blue skies for me?” she demanded.

* * * * *

Kate never forgot the expression of Miss Morrison’s face when she was ushered into Honora’s “sanitary drawing-room,” as Dr. von Shierbrand had dubbed it.  True, the towers of Harper Memorial Library showed across the Plaisance through the undraped windows, mitigating the gravity of the outlook, and the innumerable lights of the Midway already began to render less austere the January twilight.  But the brown walls, the brown rug, the Mission furniture in weathered oak, the corner clock,—­an excellent time-piece,—­the fireplace with its bronze vases, the etchings of foreign architecture, and the bookcase with Ruskin, Eliot, Dickens, and all the Mid-Victorian celebrities in sets, produced but a grave and unillumined interior.

“Oh!” cried Miss Morrison with ill-concealed dismay.  And then, after a silence:  “But where do you sit when you’re sociable?”

“Here,” said Kate.  She wasn’t going to apologize for Honora to a pair of exclamatory dimples!

“But you can be intimate here?” Miss Morrison inquired.

“We’re not intimate,” flashed Kate.  “We’re too busy—­and we respect each other too much.”

Miss Morrison sank into a chair and revealed the tint of her lettuce-green petticoat beneath her olive-green frock.

“I’m making you cross with me,” she said regretfully.  “Please don’t dislike me at the outset.  You see, out in California we’re not so up and down as you are here.  If you were used to spending your days in the shade of yellow walls, with your choice of hammocks, and with nothing to do but feed the parrot and play the piano, why, I guess you’d—­”

She broke off and stared about her.

“Why, there isn’t any piano!” she cried.  “Do you mean Honora has no piano?”

“What would be the use?  She doesn’t play.”

“I must order one in the morning, then.  Honora wouldn’t care, would she?  Oh, when do you suppose she’ll be home?  Does she like to stay over in that queer place you told me of, fussing around with those frogs?”

Kate had been rash enough to endeavor to explain something of the Fulhams’ theories regarding the mechanistic conception of life.  There was nothing to do but accord Miss Morrison the laugh which she appeared to think was coming to her.

“I can see that I shouldn’t have told you about anything like that,” Kate said.  “I see how mussy you would think any scientific experiment to be.  And, really, matters of greater importance engage your attention.”

She was quite serious.  She had swiftly made up her mind that Mary Morrison, with her conscious seductions, was a much more important factor in the race than austere Honora Fulham.  But Miss Morrison was suspicious of satire.