yesterday afternoon but found I had just missed you; you were out.”

“Yes,” she replied, “I was out, but I never heard that you had been. It was courageous of you to attempt those stairs a second time. Will you come in?”

He entered, and then looked round in surprise. The room was just the same as on the former occasion unoccupied save by themselves and with no visible preparation for anyone else. Jill detected the look and resented it.

“You are wondering where my pupils are,” she said quickly, “I am expecting—no,” with a proud upraising of her small chin, “I am not expecting—How could I expect anyone to mount those stairs?—I am hoping that some may turn up eventually.”

“And yet,” he said in a distinctly offended tone, “you refuse the first who presents himself. But perhaps you mistrusted my claim to respectability?”

Jill blushed uncomfortably. She had forgotten for the moment that she had refused him as a pupil on the ground of having no vacancy.

“It—it isn’t that,” she tried to explain. “I can quite believe that you are very respectable but—Oh! can’t you understand?—I wanted to teach children?”

Apparently he did not consider that sufficient reason to preclude her from teaching him also; he did not seem to think that there might be other reasons which had led up to this—to him—very trivial one.

“I don’t know any more than a child would,” he replied, “and I should pay three times the fee—double for being an adult, treble for being a male adult which some ladies seem to consider an additional inconvenience.”

“Excuse me,” put in Jill severely, “if I undertook to teach you my charge would be the same for you as for any other pupil, but I am afraid I must decline.”

“Very well,” he answered huffily, “the decision of course rests with you, but I won’t attempt to disguise the fact that I am very disappointed.”

He walked towards the door, but stopped, and came back a little way.

“If it is anything to do with—that is I mean to say—I will pay in advance,” he blurted out.

The girl bit her lip.

“It has nothing to do with that,” she cried sharply. “Oh, dear me, how very dense you are! Don’t you see that it wouldn’t do for me to teach you?”

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