"Thanks," the mother drawled with her eyes on the card. She probably had no clear sense of the favor done her. She lifted her eyes and smiled on Ludlow with another kind of intelligence. "You're visiting at Mrs. Burton's." "Yes," said Ludlow, remembering after a moment of surprise how pervasive the fact of a stranger's presence in a village is. "Mr. Burton can tell you who I am," he added in some impatience with her renewed scrutiny of his card. "Oh, it's all right," she said, and she put it in her pocket, and then she began to drift away a little. "Well, I'm sure I'm much obliged to you." She hesitated a moment, and then she said, "Well, good afternoon." "Good-by," said Ludlow, and he lifted his hat and stood bowing her out of the Fine Arts Department, while she kept her eyes on him to the last with admiration and approval. "Well, I declare, Cornelia," she burst out to her daughter, whom she found glowering at the agricultural implements, "that _is_ about the nicest fellow! Do you know what he's done?" She stopped and began a search for her pocket, which ended successfully. "He's given me his name, and told me just what you're to do. And when you get to New York, if you ever do, you can go right straight _to_ him." She handed Ludlow's card to the girl, who instantly tore it to pieces without looking at it. "I'll never go to him--horrid, mean, cross old thing! And you go and talk about me to a perfect stranger as if I were a baby. And now he'll go and laugh at you with the Burtons, and they'll say it's just like you to say everything that comes into your head, that way, and think everybody's as nice as they seem. But _he_ isn't nice! He's _horrid_, and conceited, and--and--hateful. And I shall _never_ study art anywhere. And I'd _die_ before I asked _him_ to help me. He was just making fun of you all the time, and anybody but you would see it, mother! Comparing me to a hired girl!" "No, I don't think he did _that_, Cornelia," said the mother with some misgiving. "I presume he may have been a little touched up by your pictures, and wanted to put me down about them----" "Oh, mother, mother, mother!" The girl broke into tears over the agricultural implements. "They were the dust under his feet." "Why, Cornelia, how you talk!" "I wish _you_ wouldn't talk, mother! I've asked you a thousand times, if I've asked you once, not to talk about me with anybody, and here you go and tell everything that you can think of to a person that you never saw before." "What did I tell him about you?" asked her mother, with the uncertainty of ladies who say a great deal. "You told him how old I was almost to a day!" "Oh, well, that wasn't anything! I saw he'd got to know if he was to give any opinion about your going on that was worth having."