remembered what people did for her when she was a baby. She doesn't know
everything, but she intends to; that is plain enough. At present she is
washing one of baby's frocks with my _savon de rose_, because she
declares that the soap they gave her in the kitchen contains enough lye
to corrode the fibers of the fabric."

"Then you think she may suit you?" said Lodloe.

"Oh, she will suit; she intends to suit; and I have nothing to say
except that I feel very much as I suppose you would feel if you had a
college president to brush your coat."

"My spirits rise," said Lodloe; "I begin to believe that I have not made
so much of a blunder after all. When you can get it, there is nothing
like blooded service."

"But you do not want too much blood," said Mrs. Cristie. "I wish she had
not studied at Bryn Mawr, for I think she pities me for having graduated
at Vassar. But still she says I must call her Ida, and that gives me
courage."

There then followed a contention in which Lodloe was worsted about his
expenses in the nurse-maid affair, and, this matter being settled, the
young man declared that having shown what an extremely undesirable
person he was to work for others, he must go and attend to his own work.

"What sort of work do you do?" asked Mrs. Cristie.

"I write," he answered--"novels, stories, fiction in general."

"I know that," said she, "having read your Vassar article; but I do not
think I have met with any of your avowed stories."

"Madam," said Walter Lodloe, "there are so many people in this world,
and so few of them have read my stories, it is no wonder that you belong
to the larger class. But, satirize my Vassar article as you please, I
shall never cease to be grateful to it for my tower room in the Squirrel
Inn."

IX

THE PRESERVATION OF LITERATURE

Walter Lodloe set out to go to his work, and on his way to the little
garden at the foot of the staircase which led to his room in the tower
he saw the Greek scholar sitting on a bench outside his summer-house
smoking a large cigar.

"Good morning, sir," said Mr. Tippengray; "do you smoke?"

The tone of these words implied not only a question but an invitation,
in case the young man did smoke, to sit down on that bench and do it.
Lodloe understood the force of the remark, and, drawing out a cigar,
took a seat by Mr. Tippengray.

"Before I go to my work," said the latter, "it is my habit to sit here
and enjoy the scenery and a few puff