Then, however, she paused. I daresay she had been going to observe that
if he were changeable he would long ago have given her up. After an
instant she went on: "He wouldn't have stuck so to his profession. You
can't make much by it."

I sought to attenuate her rather odd maidenly grimness. "It depends on
what you call much."

"It doesn't make you rich."

"Oh of course you've got to practise it--and to practise it long."

"Yes--so Mr. Porterfield says."

Something in the way she uttered these words made me laugh--they were so
calm an implication that the gentleman in question didn't live up to his
principles. But I checked myself, asking her if she expected to remain
in Europe long--to what one might call settle.

"Well, it will be a good while if it takes me as long to come back as it
has taken me to go out."

"And I think your mother said last night that it was your first visit."

Miss Mavis, in her deliberate way, met my eyes. "Didn't mother talk!"

"It was all very interesting."

She continued to look at me. "You don't think that," she then simply
stated.