In a few moments Fanchon came in, a middle-aged woman who had accompanied her from home, and who was to return as soon as her charge was properly settled.

The two conversed in French, as Ethelinda, with her hands clasped behind her head, tipped back in a rocking chair and lazily watched proceedings.

She was utterly regardless of Mary's presence.
"I might as well be the door-knob for all the notice she takes of me," thought Mary resentfully, "Well, she may prove to be as much as a tin whistle, but she certainly isn't the prize I had hoped to find." She cast another furtive glance at her over her lead-stringing, slowly making up her estimate of her.
"She's what Joyce would call a drab blonde--washed out complexion and sallow hair.

She looks drab all the way through to me, but she may be the kind that improves on acquaintance.

She certainly has a good figure, and looks as stylish as one of those fashion ladies in _Vogue_." From time to time Mary proffered bits of information as occasion offered, as to which of the drawers were empty and how to pull the wardrobe door a certain way when it stuck, but her friendly advances were so coldly received, that presently she slipped out of the room and went over to the East wing to see what Elise Walton was doing.
Elise had already made friends with her room-mate, a little dumpling of a girl by the name of Agnes Olive Miggs, and was calling her A.O.