There was a little pause. The ladies rose without replying, and Archibald followed them into the drawing-room, feeling indefinitely that he had been too forward. As he lit his cigar and sat near an open window, feeling the cool southern breeze, he reflected that it was not improbable that in East Village the only landlord known to them was the keeper of a common tavern. It amused him to think of their primitive, quaint ignorance of city ways. He pictured the small life of East Village, Vt., the narrow social horizon, the strange interest in politics, the religious intolerance, the “strong” views on the temperance question which obtained there, and which leaked out from Miss Perkins as the days went on into August. The easy sense of accommodation to their new surroundings also amused him. [Illustration: [Man]] Archibald returned to the portrait. “I’d rawther like to have one for the dining-room,” he said; “I think it would interest some of my boarders when they come back next winter. I could give you no end of sittings, Miss Price——” Elvira exhibited some hesitancy: “Well, I might try,” she said. “But I’m not at all good at hair——” “Shave off my mustache if you like,” said the infatuated Archibald, with a grimace. The ladies changed the subject decorously. It was plain that Archibald’s little advances toward an intimacy, to be derived from portrait-painting, were being met in rather an unencouraging spirit, don’t you know! The next day he invited them, as an agreeable diversion, to visit Coney Island; but Elvira made an excuse that she had no time for “pleasuring.” They seemed, indeed, to have few pleasures. The morning walk in Central Park was given up; Miss Perkins spent the greater part of the time when Elvira was at the Art School in riding to and fro, apparently, upon street-cars. One day she came home very late to dinner, saying that she had discovered the “Belt Line.” While waiting her return for dinner, Archibald had an agreeable _tête-à-tête_ with Elvira. IV. He was growing more and more in love with this self-contained, charming, young New Englander. It had come to a time when he felt that he must speak. They had been at No. 41 now these four weeks, aunt and niece, and yet they had managed to preserve their distance. He was no nearer than the day they arrived.