“We would take a cheap little apartment to-morrow,” said the girl wistfully.

Mrs. Evringham gave an ejaculation of impatience.  “And do all our own work and live like pigs!” she returned petulantly.

Eloise shrugged her shoulders.  “I may flatter myself, but I fancy I should keep it rather clean.”

“You wouldn’t mind your hands then.”  Mrs. Evringham regarded the hands worthy to be imitated by a sculptor’s art, and the girl raised them and inspected the rose-tints of their tips.  “I’ve read something about rubber gloves,” she returned vaguely.

“You’d better read something else then.  How do you suppose you would get on without a carriage?” asked her mother with exasperation.  “You have never had so much as a taste of privation in any form.  Your suggestion is the acme of foolishness.”

“I think I could do something if you would let me,” rejoined the girl as calmly as before.  “I think I could teach music pretty well, and keep house charmingly.  If I had any false pride when we came out here, the past six weeks have purified me of it.  Will you let me try, mother?  I’m asking it very seriously.”

“Certainly not!” hotly.  “There are armies of music teachers now, and you would not have a chance.”

“I think I could dress hair well,” remarked Eloise, glancing at the reflection in a mirror of her own graceful coiffure.

“I dare say!” responded Mrs. Evringham with sarcastic heat, “or I’m sure you could get a position as a waitress.  The servant problem is growing worse every year.”

“I’d like to be your waitress, mother.”  For the first time the girl lost her perfect poise, and the color fluctuated in her cheek.  She clasped her hands.  “It would be heaven compared with the feeling, the sickening, appalling suspicion, that we are becoming akin to the adventuresses we read of, the pretty, luxurious women who live by their wits.”

“Silence!” commanded Mrs. Evringham, her eyes flashing and her effective black-clothed figure drawn up.

Eloise sighed again.  “I didn’t expect to accomplish anything by this talk,” she said, relapsing into listlessness.

“What did you expect then?  Merely to be disagreeable?  I hope you may be as successful in worthier undertakings.  Now listen.  Some of the plans you have suggested at various times might be sensible if you were a plain girl.  Your beauty is as tangible an asset as money would be; but beauty requires money.  You must have it.  Your poor father might have left it to you, but he didn’t; so you will marry it—­not unsuitably,” meeting an ominous look in her child’s eyes, “not without love or under any circumstances to make a martyr of you, but according to common sense; and as a certain young man is evidently more and more certain of himself every time he comes”—­she paused.

“You think there is no need for him to grow more certain of me?” asked Eloise.