rooms. I didn't like that."

"I did. And you can see that they were perfect ladies; or at least one of
them." Alma laughed at herself, but her mother did not notice.

"Their being ladies won't help if they've got no money. It 'll make it
all the worse."

"Very well, then; we have no money, either. We're a match for them any
day there. We can show them that two can play at that game."




III.

Arnus Beaton's studio looked at first glance like many other painters'
studios. A gray wall quadrangularly vaulted to a large north light; casts
of feet, hands, faces hung to nails about; prints, sketches in oil and
water-color stuck here and there lower down; a rickety table, with paint
and palettes and bottles of varnish and siccative tossed comfortlessly on
it; an easel, with a strip of some faded mediaeval silk trailing from it;
a lay figure simpering in incomplete nakedness, with its head on one
side, and a stocking on one leg, and a Japanese dress dropped before it;
dusty rugs and skins kicking over the varnished floor; canvases faced to
the mop-board; an open trunk overflowing with costumes: these features
one might notice anywhere. But, besides, there was a bookcase with an
unusual number of books in it, and there was an open colonial
writing-desk, claw-footed, brass-handled, and scutcheoned, with foreign
periodicals--French and English--littering its leaf, and some pages of