After a time she discovered that Mrs. Brindley's first name was Cyrilla, but Mrs. Brindley and Miss Stevens they remained to each other for a long time--until circumstances changed their accidental intimacy into enduring friendship. Not to anticipate, in the course of that same conversation Mildred said: "If there is anything about me--about my life--that you wish me to explain, I shall be glad to do so." "I know all I wish to know," replied Cyrilla Brindley. "Your face and your manner and your way of speaking tell me all the essentials." "Then you must not think it strange when I say I wish no one to know anything about me." "It will be impossible for you entirely to avoid meeting people," said Cyrilla. "You must have some simple explanation about yourself, or you will attract attention and defeat your object." "Lead people to believe that I'm an orphan--perhaps of some obscure family--who is trying to get up in the world. That is practically the truth." Mrs. Brindley laughed. "Quite enough for New York," said she. "It is not interested in facts. All the New-Yorker asks of you is, 'Can you pay your bills and help me pay mine?'" Competent men are rare; but, thanks to the advantage of the male sex in having to make the struggle for a living, they are not so rare as competent women. Mrs. Brindley was the first competent woman Mildred had ever known. She had spent but a few hours with her before she began to appreciate what a bad atmosphere she had always breathed--bad for a woman who has her way to make in the world, or indeed for any woman not willing to be content as mere more or less shiftless, more or less hypocritical and pretentious, dependent and parasite. Mrs. Brindley--well bred and well educated--knew all the little matters which Mildred had been taught to regard as the whole of a lady's education. But Mildred saw that these trifles were but a trifling incident in Mrs. Brindley's knowledge. She knew real things, this woman who was a thorough-going housekeeper and who trebled her income by giving music lessons a few hours a day to such pupils as she thought worth the teaching. When she spoke, she always said something one of the first things noticed by Mildred, who, being too lazy to think except as her naturally good mind insisted on exercising itself, usually talked simply to kill time and without any idea of getting anywhere. But while Cyrilla--without in the least intending it--roused her to a painful sense of her own limitations, she did not discourage her. Mildred also began to feel that in this new atmosphere of ideas, of work, of accomplishment, she would rapidly develop into a different sort of person. It was extremely fortunate for her, thought she, that she was living with such a person as Cyrilla Brindley. In the old atmosphere, or with any taint of it, she would have been unable to become a serious person. She would simply have dawdled along,