he other things to which she had been accustomed. She made
delicious coffee in a tin coffee-pot, and brewed the best tea she had
ever drunk in brown earthenware, which Ethel Maud Mary considered the
best thing going for tea. She used to join Beth in a cup up in the
attic, but she never came empty-handed. Dull wet days, likely to be
depressing, were the ones on which her yellow head appeared oftenest
at the top of the attic stairs.

"Miss Maclure, may I come in?" she would say, after knocking.

And Beth would answer, rising from her work with a smile of welcome,
"Yes, by all means. I'm delighted to see you. You take the big chair
and I'll make the tea. I'm dying for a cup."

Then Ethel Maud Mary would uncover something she held in her hand,
which would prove to be cakes, or hot buttered toast and watercresses,
or a bag of shrimps and some thin bread and butter; and Beth,
sparkling at the kindness, would exclaim, "I never was so spoilt in my
life!" to which Ethel Maud Mary would rejoin, "There'll not be much to
boast about between two of us."

Beth was busy with another book by this time, but found the work more
of a task and less of a pleasure than it used to be. Ethel Maud Mary
still took it for granted that she was a journalist, and showed no
interest in her work beyond hoping that she got her pay regularly, and
would soon be making more. Beth wondered sometimes when the little
book which had been accepted in the summer would appear, and what she
would get for it, if anything, and she thought of inquiring, but she
put it off. Her new work took all her time and strength, and wearied
her, so that nothing else seem to signify.

Besides Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen, the only person she had to talk
to was Arthur Milbank Brock, the young American, her neighbour in the
next attic. She met him coming upstairs with his hat in his hand soon
after her instalment, and was even more attracted by his face than she
had been when she first saw him in the street.

"You've settled in by this time, I hope," he said.

"Yes, and very comfortably too, thanks to you," Beth answered.

"Ah, Ethel Maud Mary's a good sort," he replied, "golden hair, blue
eyes, and all. She has the looks of a lady's novel and the heart of a
holy mother. Her grammar and spelling are defective, but her sense is
sound. I wouldn't give much for her opinion of a work of art, but I'd
take her advice in a difficulty if it came anywhere within range of
her expe