A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY
by Sara Jeannette Duncan




CHAPTER I.

Miss Kimpsey dropped into an arm-chair in Mrs. Leslie
Bell's drawing-room and crossed her small dusty feet
before her while she waited for Mrs. Leslie Bell. Sitting
there, thinking a little of how tired she was and a great
deal of what she had come to say, Miss Kimpsey enjoyed
a sense of consideration that came through the ceiling
with the muffled sound of rapid footsteps in the chamber
above. Mrs. Bell would be "down in a minute," the maid
had said. Miss Kimpsey was inclined to forgive a greater
delay, with this evidence of hasteful preparation going
on overhead. The longer she had to ponder her mission
the better, and she sat up nervously straight pondering
it, tracing with her parasol a sage-green block in the
elderly aestheticated pattern of the carpet.

Miss Kimpsey was thirty-five, with a pale, oblong
little face, that looked younger under its softening
"bang" of fair curls across the forehead. She was a
buff-and-gray-colored creature, with a narrow square chin
and narrow square shoulders, and a flatness and straightness
about her everywhere that gave her rather the effect of
a wedge, to which the big black straw hat she wore tilted