curtains. So I bought a calendar pad and put down my date for reading
proof with you last week, when you first reminded me of it."

Dorothy had followed Beatrice's instruction to take off her coat. Now she
sat down resignedly before the writing-table, pulled a long strip of
printer's proof off the spindle, and dipped her pen in the ink, ready for
work. "How do you happen to be here, Bess?" she asked.

"Came to read my mail," said Beatrice. "Some of the best exchanges are
out about this time in the month. When you didn't come, I tried to
correct proof with Frances, but we couldn't either of us remember the
printers' marks; and our Webster's dictionary, that has them in the back,
got lost in the shuffle of house-cleaning last vacation."

"Then if the dictionary is lost, you must stay," said Dorothy, "because I
can correct proof, but I can't spell, and neither can Frances. Come,
Frances, here's the copy for you to read."

Frances West's voice had a peculiarly charming quality, and her manner of
reading was so absorbed and sympathetic that she never failed to interest
her auditors; so that even the mechanical drudgery of correcting proof
was endurable with her help. The work went on rapidly, Dorothy bending
over the long printers' galleys, adding mysterious little marks here and
there in the wide margins, Frances reading as expressively as though she
were doing her best to entertain Beatrice Egerton, who curled herself up
on the window-seat, listened, made flippant comments, perused her
exchanges when the "Argus" articles did not interest her, and when
appealed to by Dorothy, acted as substitute for the missing Webster's
dictionary.