Virgilia ate her breakfast soberly enough; she checked all tendency toward expansiveness with her own people, who were sadly earth-bound and utilitarian. But immediately after breakfast she put on her things and stepped round the corner to have a confab with her aunt. She found Eudoxia upstairs, clad in a voluminous dressing-gown and struggling with her over-plump arms against the rebelliousness of her all but inaccessible back hair. Virgilia was very vivid and sprightly in her report on the evening's conference, and Eudoxia, studying her with some closeness, was barely able to apply the check when she found herself asking: "Has he--has he----?" Virgilia dropped her eyes. No, he hadn't. But the acceptance of these magnificent proposals might easily make another proposal possible, and again Eudoxia Pence asked herself: "Do I want it, or don't I? Certainly only the bank's acceptance of Daff's scheme will make possible Virgilia's acceptance of Daff himself." That evening Dill called again on Virgilia, bringing the Hill-McNulty plan. "So _this_ is the sort of thing they want?" she cried. "They insist on it, after all, do they?" She cast her eye over the paper and hardly knew whether to laugh or to weep. "'The First Fire-Engine House,'" she read. '"Old Fort Kinzie'; 'The Grape-Vine Ferry'; 'The Early Water-Works'--oh, this is terrible!" she exclaimed. "Read on," said Dill plaintively. "'The Wigwam'----" "What in heaven's name is that?" "A place where they used to hold conventions, I believe. 'The Succotash Tavern'----" "What does that mean?" "I've heard it spoken of, I think," said Virgilia faintly. "It was built of cottonwood logs and stood at the fork in the river. 'The Hard-Shell Baptist Church,'----" she read on. "Do you know anything about that?" "I think I've seen it in old photographs. It stood on one side of Court-House Square." "Did it have a steeple?" asked Dill droopingly. "I believe it did--quite a tall one." "Of course it did!" he groaned. "And so it goes. One building hugs the ground and the next cleaves the sky. Yet they've all got to be used for the decorative filling of a lot of spaces precisely alike." "What does Giles think of this?" asked Virgilia. "He's crazy." "And Adams, at the Academy?" "He's gone out to buy a rope." "And Little O'Grady?" "He fell over in a dead faint. He's lying in it yet. But before he lost consciousness he made one suggestion----" "What was it?" Dill paused. "Have you ever heard of a painter named Proch--Prochnow?" he presently asked, with some disrelish. "A newcomer, I believe." "I don't think I have." "He has lately taken a studio in the Warren. O'Grady has seen his work and speaks well of it." "What particular kind of work?" "Decorative. Portraits too, I understand. He has been doing one of that little Miss McNulty."