About this time, Miss Varian had a friend to stay with her. Mrs. Varian was always rather shy of her sister's friends; they were apt to be unusual people. This one, however, Mrs. Varian remembered in her youth, and had no doubt would be of an unobjectionable kind. Mrs. Hazard Smatter had been an inoffensive New York girl, not considered to carry very heavy guns, but good-looking and good-natured. That was the last Miss Varian knew of her. In the revolution of years she turned up again, now a middle-aged woman, with feeble gray hair, and misgivings about revealed religion. She had married a Bostonian, and that had been too much for her. She despised her former condition so much as not to desire to allude to it. She was filled with lofty aspirations and cultivated herself. There was nothing that she did not look into, though it was doubtful whether she saw very much when she did look. Having begun rather late, she had to hurry a good deal to know all that was to be known about History, Science, Art, Theology, and Literature; and as these rivers of human thought are continually flowing on, and occasionally altering their channels, it was perhaps excusable that while she kept up, she sometimes lost her breath, and was a little unintelligible. If it had only been one river, but there was such a lot of them, and of course a person of culture can't ignore even a little boiling spring that has just burst out. There's no knowing what it may develop into; one must watch its course, and not let it get ahead of one. Taking notes on the universe is hard work, and Mrs. Hazard Smatter felt that her gray hair was so to be accounted for. It was her one feminine weakness, the one remnant of her pre-cultured state, that led her to call it premature. What with dress reform, and want of taste, she was not a woman to reproach with personal vanity. She was rather a little person. She had pale blue eyes somewhat prominent; a high forehead, which retreated, and a small chin, which did, too. She attributed these defects to her place of nativity, and drew many inferences about the habits and mental peculiarities of her ancestors, which wouldn't have pleased them if they'd known about it. She had a very candid mind, and of course no family pride, and it was quite surprising to hear her talk on this subject. Mrs. Varian was quite frightened the first evening. Miss Harriet was delighted. She always had liked the dangerous edge of things, and had felt herself defrauded in being forced to live among such conventional people as her sister's friends. Mrs. Smatter was so unexpectedly changed from the commonplace comrade of her youth, that she could not be thankful enough that she had sent for her. The first evening they only got through Inherited Traits, the History of Modern Thought, the Subjection of Women, and a few other light and airy themes, which were treated, of course, exhaustively. To Miss Varian, it was a foretaste of rich treats in store.