a little on one side somehow conduced. Miss Kimpsey might
have figured anywhere as a representative of the New
England feminine surplus--there was a distinct suggestion
of character under her unimportant little features--and
her profession was proclaimed in her person, apart from
the smudge of chalk on the sleeve of her jacket. She had
been born and brought up and left over in Illinois,
however, in the town of Sparta, Illinois. She had developed
her conscience there, and no doubt, if one knew it well,
it would show peculiarities of local expansion directly
connected with hot corn-bread for breakfast, as opposed
to the accredited diet of legumes upon which consciences
arrive at such successful maturity in the East. It was,
at all events, a conscience in excellent controlling
order. It directed Miss Kimpsey, for example, to teach
three times a week in the boys' night-school through the
winter, no matter how sharply the wind blew off Lake
Michigan, in addition to her daily duties at the High
School, where for ten years she had imparted instruction
in the "English branches," translating Chaucer into the
modern dialect of Sparta, Illinois, for the benefit of
Miss Elfrida Bell, among others. It had sent her on this
occasion to see Mrs. Leslie Bell, and Miss Kimpsey could
remember circumstances under which she had obeyed her
conscience with more alacrity.

"It isn't," said Miss Kimpsey, with internal discouragement,
"as if I knew her well."

Miss Kimpsey did not know Mrs. Bell at all well. Mrs.