"Oh, oh, you shouldn't! But how nice of you, all the same! I love compliments," confessed pretty Hope, blushing in bewitching fashion between gratification and embarrassment. She looked at Avice in her turn, and decided that she was not at all pretty. But, oh, what clothes! What a dream of a hat! What distracting ruffles and laces peeping from between the sables! What twinkling lights of diamond brooches! She paused for a moment to do obeisance before a vision of herself clad in similar garments, then continued, with a smile, "I am so glad to meet you! It feels lonely to be absolutely without friends in this great London, and so far we know no one at all." "You are the musical one, aren't you?" Avice asked curiously. "You are all geniuses, father says, and determined to make a name in the world. Have you begun work? What have you done so far?" Hope smiled with pardonable satisfaction. "Well, really, I think we have made a good start. Theo has interviewed one of the most influential editors in Fleet Street, and has been asked to send MSS to his paper. Madge has sent in her two show-pictures to the Slade School, and is to begin regular work there at the half-term. Meantime she is studying the different exhibitions and collections, and, as she says, picking up `quite valuable hints' from old masters. She is so amusing! She comes home every evening with absurd accounts of her adventures. Most people would find it rather dull spending a whole day at the National Gallery, for instance, but Madge has the faculty of finding amusement wherever she goes, and, even apart from the pictures, has a dozen little histories and romances to recount." "Y-es," assented Avice flatly. She herself had little sense of humour, and was by no means prepossessed by the plain, elf-like figure of her youngest cousin Hope, on the contrary, was graceful and charming, and had been already mentally adopted as the friend of the future. "What are _you_ doing?" she asked, with an interest which could not fail to be flattering, and Hope moved her chair a trifle closer with an impulse of girlish confidence. "Oh, I am getting on so well! I have had my first lesson in harmony, and my master is so kind and encouraging. He seems to think that I know a great deal already, and his work is so interesting. In the mornings I study and practise, and in the afternoons I try to hear as much music as I can. I go to cheap seats at concerts and recitals, or to service at the Abbey or Saint Paul's. And fancy! I have had a commission to write a song for a professional--a real professional--a lady who sings at concerts all over the country. You may know her name--Miss Minnie Caldecott."