"Hem!" she observed, critically, as her eyes roamed over the spacious
spendor of the place, "quite an epitome of the whole rococo period; done,
too, with a French grace and a German thoroughness. Almost a real
_jardin d'hiver_, in fact. Very handsome indeed."

Mrs. Bates pricked up her ears; she had not expected quite such a
response as this. "You are posted on these things, then?"

"Well," said Jane, "I belong to an art class. We study the different
periods in architecture and decoration."

"Do you? I belong to just such a class myself--and to three or four
others. I'm studying and learning right along; I never want to stand
still. You were surprised, I saw, about my music-lessons: It _is_ a
little singular, I admit--my beginning as a teacher and ending as a
pupil. You know, of course, that I _was_ a school-teacher? Yes, I had a
little class down on Wabash Avenue near Hubbard Court, in a church
basement. I began to be useful as early as I could. We lived in a little
bit of a house a couple of blocks north of there; you know those
old-fashioned frame cottages--one of them. In the early days pa was a
carpenter--a boss-carpenter, to do him full justice; the town was
growing, and after a while he began to do first-rate. But at the
beginning ma did her own work, and I helped her. I swept and dusted, and
wiped the dishes. She taught me to sew, too; I trimmed all my own hats
till long after I was married."

Mrs. Bates leaned carelessly against the tortured framework of a
tapestried _causeuse_. The light from the lofty windows shattered on the
prisms of her glittering chandeliers and diffused itself over the