"Why, no, Mrs. Bell," Miss Kimpsey said earnestly, with a protesting buff-and-gray smile, "I didn't mind waiting a particle--honestly I didn't. Besides, I presume it's early for a call; but I thought I'd drop in on my way from school." Miss Kimpsey was determined that Mrs. Bell should have every excuse that charity could invent for her. She sat down again, and agreed with Mrs. Bell that they were having lovely weather, especially when they remembered what a disagreeable fall it had been last year; certainly this October had been just about perfect. The ladies used these superlatives in the tone of mild defiance that almost any statement of fact has upon feminine lips in America. It did not seem to matter that their observations were entirely in union. "I thought I'd run in--" said Miss Kimpsey, screwing herself up by the arm of her chair. "Yes?" "And speak to you about a thing I've been thinking a good deal of, Mrs. Bell, this last day or two. It's about Elfrida." Mrs. Bell's expression became judicial. If this was a complaint--and she was not accustomed to complaints of Elfrida--she would be careful how she took it. "I hope--" she began. "Oh, you needn't worry, Mrs. Bell. It's nothing about her conduct, and it's nothing about her school work." "Well, that's a relief," said Mrs. Bell, as if she had expected it would be. "But I know she's bad at figures. The child can't help that, though; she gets it from me. I think I ought to ask you to be lenient with her on that account." "I have nothing to do with the mathematical branches, Mrs, Bell. I teach only English to the senior classes. But I haven't heard Mr. Jackson complain of Elfrida at all." Feeling that she could no longer keep her errand at arm's length, Miss Kimpsey desperately closed with it. "I've come--I hope you won't mind--Mrs. Bell, Elfrida has been quoting Rousseau in her compositions, and I thought you'd like to know." "In the original?" asked Mrs. Bell, with interest. "I didn't think her French was advanced enough for that." "No, from a translation," Miss Kimpsey replied. "Her sentence ran: 'As the gifted Jean Jacques Rousseau told the world in his "Confessions"'--I forget the rest. That was the part that struck me most. She had evidently been reading the works of Rousseau." "Very likely. Elfrida has her own subscription at the library," Mrs. Bell said speculatively. "It shows a taste in reading beyond her years, doesn't it, Miss Kimpsey? The child is only fifteen." "Well, _I've_ never read Rousseau," the little teacher stated definitely. "Isn't he--atheistical, Mrs. Bell, and improper every way?" Mrs. Bell raised her eyebrows and pushed out her lips at the severity of this ignorant condemnation. "He was a genius, Miss Kimpsey--rather I should say he _is_, for genius cannot die. He is much thought of in France. People there make a little shrine of the house he occupied with Madame Warens, you know." "Oh!" returned Miss Kimpsey, "_French_ people."