assify?"

"Mostly beetles."

"Oh, how horrid! Do you ever see any?"

"Thousands."

"I should find one enough. If it is a fair question, what does your
professor pay you?"

"Thirty shillings a week. In his own way he is as poor as I am."

"And do you mean to tell me that you can live in those nice rooms you
took me to, and dress decently on that sum?"

"I do, as a matter of fact; but I have a small pension, and I earn a
little by writing titbits of scientific gossip for 'The Firefly.' Herr
von Eulenberg helps. He translates interesting paragraphs from the
foreign technical papers, and I jot them down, and by that means I
pick up sufficient to buy an extra hat or wrap, and go to a theater or
a concert. But I have to be careful, as my employer is absent each
summer for two months. He goes abroad to hunt new specimens, and of
course I am not paid then."

"Is he away now?"

"Yes."

"And how do you pass your time?"

"I write a good deal. Some day I hope to get a story accepted by one
of the magazines; but it is so hard for a beginner to find an
opening."

"Yet when I offered to give you a start in the chorus of the best
theater in London,--a thing, mind you, that thousands of girls are
aching for,--you refused."

"I'm sorry, Millie dear; but I am not cut out for the stage. It does
not appeal to me."

"Heigho! Tastes differ. Stick to your beetles, then, and marry your
professor."

Helen laughed, with a fresh joyousness that was good to hear. "Herr
von Eulenberg is blessed with an exceedingly stout wife and five very
healthy children already," she cried.

"Then that settles it. You're mad, quite mad! Let us talk of something
else. Do you ever have a holiday? Where are you going this year? I'm
off to Champery when the theater closes."

"Champery,--in Switzerland, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Ah, that is the dream of my life,--to see the everlasting snows; to
climb those grand, solemn mountains; to cross the great passes that
one reads of in the travel books. Now at last you have made me
envious. Are you going alone? But of course that is a foolish
question. You intend to join others from the theater, no doubt?"

"Well--er--something of the sort. I fear my enthusiasm will not carry
me far on the lines that would appeal to you. I suppose you consider a
short skirt, strong boots, a Tyrolese hat, and an alpenstock to be a
sufficient rig-out, whereas my mountaineering costumes will fill five
large trunks and thr