"No," she replied from the dust of humiliation. "Have you never heard--just _heard_--of Ruskin?" "No." "Nor of Michael Angelo?" "N-no--ye-es, I think so--perhaps, but I don't know what he did." "Do you," she continued, very slowly, "do--you--know--anything--about--Worth?" "No, nothing." Her questioner clasped her hands with repressed emotion. "Oh," she cried, "how--how you have been neglected!" She was really depressed, but her _protégée_ was so much more deeply so that she felt it her duty to contain herself and return to cheerfulness. "Never mind," she said. "I will tell you all I know about them, and,"--after a pause for speculative thought upon the subject,--"by-the-by, it isn't much, and I will lend you some books to read, and give you a list of some you must persuade your father to buy for you, and you will be all right. It is rather dreadful not to know the names of people and things; but, after all, I think there are very few people who--ahem!" She was checked here by rigid conscientious scruples. If she was to train this young mind in the path of learning and literature, she must place before her a higher standard of merit than the somewhat shady and slipshod one her eagerness had almost betrayed her into upholding. She had heard people talk of "standards" and "ideals," and when she was kept to the point and in regulation working order, she could be very eloquent upon these subjects herself. "You will have to work very seriously," she remarked, rather incongruously and with a rapid change of position. "If you wish to--to acquire anything, you must read conscientiously and--and with a purpose." She was rather proud of that last clause. "Must I?" inquired Louise, humbly. "I should like to--if I knew where to begin. Who was Worth? Was he a poet?" Miss Ferrol acquired a fine, high color very suddenly. "Oh," she answered, with some uneasiness, "you--you have no need to begin with Worth. He doesn't matter so much--really." "I thought," Miss Rogers said meekly, "that you were more troubled about my not having read what he wrote, than about my not knowing any of the others." "Oh, no. You see--the fact is, he--he never wrote anything." "What did he do?" she asked, anxious for information. "He--it isn't 'did,' it is 'does.' He--makes dresses." "Dresses!" This single word, but no exclamation point could express its tone of wild amazement. "Yes." "A man!" "Yes." There was a dead silence. It was embarrassing at first. Then the amazement of the unsophisticated one began to calm itself; it gradually died down, and became another emotion, merging itself into interest. "Does"--guilelessly she inquired--"he make nice ones?" "Nice!" echoed Miss Ferrol. "They are works of art! I have got three in my trunk." "O-o h!" sighed Louisiana. "Oh, dear!" Miss Ferrol rose from her chair. "I will show them to you," she said. "I--I should like you to try them on."