“That is so doubtful, just now—­”

“They’re introducing drawing from casts in the High School,” Miss Kimpsey went on, with a note of urgency in her little twanging voice, “and Mrs. Bell told me I might just mention it to you.  She thinks you could easily get taken on to teach it.  I just dropped round to one or two of the principal trustees the day before I left, and they said you had only to apply.  It’s seven hundred dollars a year.”

Elfrida’s eyebrows contracted.  “Thanks very much!  It was extremely kind—­to go to so much trouble.  But I have decided that I am not meant to be an artist, Miss Kimpsey,” she said with a self-contained smile.  “I think my mother knows that.  I—­I don’t much like talking about it.  Do you find London confusing?  I was dreadfully puzzled at first.”

“I would if I were alone.  I’d engage a special policeman—­the policemen are polite, aren’t they?  But we keep the party together, you see, to economize time, so none of us get lost.  We all went down Cheapside this morning and bought umbrellas—­two and three apiece.  This is the most reasonable place for umbrellas.  But isn’t it ridiculous to pay for apples by the pound? And then they’re not worth eating.  This room does smell of tobacco.  I suppose the gentleman in the apartment below smokes a great deal.”

“I think he does.  I’m so sorry.  Let me open another window.”

“Oh, don’t mind me!  I don’t object to tobacco, except on board, ship.  But it must be bad to sleep in.”

“Perhaps,” said Elfrida sweetly.  “And have you no more news from home for me, Miss Kimpsey?”

“I don’t know as I have.  You’ve heard of the Rev. Mr. Snider’s second marriage to Mrs. Abraham Peeley, of course.  There’s a great deal of feeling about it in Sparta—­the first Mrs. Snider was so popular, you know —­and it isn’t a full year.  People say it isn’t the marriage they object to under such circumstances, it’s—­all that goes before,” said Miss Kimpsey, with decorous repression, and Elfrida burst into a peal of laughter.  “Really,” she sobbed, “it’s too delicious.  Poor Mr. and Mrs. Snider!  Do you think people woo with improper warmth—­at that age, Miss Kimpsey?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Miss Kimpsey declared, with literal truth.  “I suppose such things justify themselves somehow, especially when it’s a clergyman.  And of course you know about your mother’s idea of coming over here to settle?”

“No!” said Elfrida, arrested.  “She hasn’t mentioned it.  Do they talk of it seriously?”

“I don’t know about seriously.  Mr. Bell doesn’t seem as if he could make up his mind.  He’s so fond of Sparta you know.  But Mrs. Bell is just wild to come.  She thinks, of course, of having you to live with them again; and then she says that on their present income—­you will excuse my referring to your parents’ reduced circumstances, Miss Bell?”