"
"Oh yes, I remember that. He was an admirable worker. But he must have
become quite a foreigner if it's so many years since he has been at
home."
She seemed to regard this proposition at first as complicated; but she
did what she could for me. "Oh he's not changeable. If he were
changeable--"
Then, however, she paused. I daresay she had been going to observe that
if he were changeable he would long ago have given her up. After an
instant she went on: "He wouldn't have stuck so to his profession. You
can't make much by it."
I sought to attenuate her rather odd maidenly grimness. "It depends on
what you call much."
"It doesn't make you rich."
"Oh of course you've got to practise it--and to practise it long."
"Yes--so Mr. Porterfield says."
Something in the way she uttered these words made me laugh--they were so
calm an implication that the gentleman in question didn't live up to his
principles. But I checked myself, asking her if she expected to remain
in Europe long--to what one might call settle.
"Well, it will be a good while if it takes me as long to come back as it
has taken me to go out."
"And I think your mother said last night that it was your first visit."
Miss Mavis, in her deliberate way, met my eyes. "Didn't mother talk!"
"It was all very interesting.
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