n my allowance was due, and bequeathed me nothing but
his consolidated liabilities.

'Of course you will teach,' said Elsie Petheridge, when I explained my
affairs to her. 'There is a good demand just now for high-school
teachers.'

I looked at her, aghast. '_Teach!_ Elsie,' I cried. (I had come up to
town to settle her in at her unfurnished lodgings.) 'Did you say
_teach_? That's just like you dear good schoolmistresses! You go to
Cambridge, and get examined till the heart and life have been examined
out of you; then you say to yourselves at the end of it all, "Let me
see; what am I good for now? I'm just about fit to go away and examine
other people!" That's what our Principal would call "a vicious
circle"--if one could ever admit there was anything vicious at all about
_you_, dear. No, Elsie, I do _not_ propose to teach. Nature did not cut
me out for a high-school teacher. I couldn't swallow a poker if I tried
for weeks. Pokers don't agree with me. Between ourselves, I am a bit of
a rebel.'

'You are, Brownie,' she answered, pausing in her papering, with her
sleeves rolled up--they called me 'Brownie,' partly because of my dark
complexion, but partly because they could never understand me. 'We all
knew that long ago.'

I laid down the paste-brush and mused.

'Do you remember, Elsie,' I said, staring hard at the paper-board,' when
I first went to Girton, how all you girls wore your hair quite straight,
in neat smooth coils, plaited up at the back about the size of a
pancake; and how of a sudden I burst in upon you, like a tropical
hurricane, and demoralised you; and how, after three days of me, some of
the dear innocents began with awe to cut themselves artless fringes,
while others went out in fear and trembling and surreptitiously
purchased a pair of curling-tongs? I was a bomb-shell in your midst in
those days; why, you yourself were almost afraid at first to speak to
me.'

'You see, you had a bicycle,' Elsie put in, smoothing the half-papered
wall; 'and in those days, of course, ladies didn't bicycle. You must
admit, Brownie, dear, it _was_ a startling innovation. You terrified us
so. And yet, after all, there isn't much harm in you.'

'I hope not,' I said devoutly. 'I was before my time, that was all; at
present, even a curate's wife may blamelessly bicycle.'

'But if you don't teach,' Elsie went on, gazing at me with those
wondering big blue eyes of hers, 'whatever will you do, Brownie?' Her
horizon w