Just at first of course I was lonely because John had not yet come, and
Mrs. Baker, mother's cousin, was away from home. But I soon made friends
with my cousins, Ethel and Milly; shy, nice girls, twins and precisely
alike, except, that Ethel is slightly lame. And at my boarding place I
made the acquaintance of an art student from Cincinnati three or four
years older than I, who proposed that we should become girl bachelors and
live in a studio.

"But I didn't know people ever lived in studios," I objected.

"Oh, you dear goose!" said Kathryn Reid--it's really her name, though of
course I call her Kitty--"Live in studios? Bless you, child, everybody
does it. And I know a beyewtiful studio that we can have cheap, because
we're such superior young persons; also because it's ever so many stories
up and no elevator. Can you cook a little? Can you wash dishes, or not
mind if they're not washed? You got the blessed bump of disorder? You good
at don't care? Then live with me and be my love. You've no idea the money
you'll save."

That's just the way Kitty talks. You can't induce her to be serious for
three minutes at a time--I suppose it's the artistic temperament. But
she's shrewd; studio life _is_ better than the kind of boarding house
we escaped from. And so jolly! Kitty has more chums than I, of course. Her
brother, Prosper K., and Caroline Bryant--"Cadge," for short--a queer girl
who does newspaper work and sings like an angel, are the ones I see most.
Though for that matter the city's full of girls from the country, earning
or partly earning their living. One will be studying music, another art;
one "boning" at medicine, another selling stories to the newspapers and
living in hope of one day writing a great American play or novel. Such
nice girls--so brave and jolly.