A Daughter of To-Day | Page 4

marry like other
people."
"Well, if she goes on improving in looks at the rate she has, you'll find
it difficult to prevent, I should think, Mrs. Bell." Miss Kimpsey began
to wonder at her own temerity in staying so long. "Should you be
opposed to it?"
"Oh, I shouldn't be opposed to it exactly. I won't say I don't expect it. I
think she might do better, myself; but I dare say matrimony will
swallow her up as it does everybody--almost everybody--else." A finer
ear than Miss Kimpsey's might have heard in this that to overcome Mrs.
Bell's objections matrimony must take a very attractive form indeed,
and that she had no doubt it would. Elfrida's instructress did not hear it;
she might have been less overcome with the quality of these latter-day
sentiments if she had. Little Miss Kimpsey, whom matrimony had not
swallowed up, had risen to go. "Oh, I'm sure the most gifted couldn't do
better!" she said, hardily, in departing, with a blush that turned her

from buff-and-gray to brick color.
Mrs. Bell picked up the Revue after she had gone, and read three lines
of a paper on the climate and the soil of Poland. Then she laid it down
again at the same angle with the corner of the table which it had
described before.
"Rousseau!" she said aloud to herself. "C'est un peu fort mais--" and
paused, probably for maturer reflection upon the end of her sentence.
CHAPTER II.
"Leslie." said Mrs. Bell, making the unnecessary feminine twist to get a
view of her back hair from the mirror with a hand-glass, "aren't you
delighted? Try to be candid with yourself now, and own that she's
tremendously improved."
It would not have occurred to anybody but Mrs. Bell to ask Mr. Leslie
Bell to be candid with himself. Candor was written in large letters all
over Mr. Leslie Bell's plain, broad countenance. So was a certain
obstinacy, not of will, but of adherence to prescribed principles, which
might very well have been the result of living for twenty years with
Mrs. Leslie Bell. Otherwise he was a thick-set man with an intelligent
bald head, a fresh-colored complexion, and a well-trimmed gray beard.
Mr. Leslie Bell looked at life with logic, or thought he did, and took it
with ease, in a plain way. He was known to be a good man of business,
with a leaning toward generosity, and much independence of opinion. It
was not a custom among election candidates to ask Leslie Bell for his
vote. It was pretty well understood that nothing would influence it
except his "views," and that none of the ordinary considerations in use
with refractory electors would influence his views. He was a man of
large, undemonstrative affections, and it was a matter of private regret
with him that there should have been only one child, and that a
daughter, to bestow them upon. His simplicity of nature was utterly
beyond the understanding of his wife, who had been building one
elaborate theory after another about him ever since they had been
married, conducting herself in mysterious accordance, but had arrived

accurately only at the fact that he preferred two lumps of sugar in his
tea.
Mr. Bell did not allow his attention to be taken from the intricacies of
his toilet by his wife's question until she repeated it.
"Aren't you charmed with Elfrida, Leslie? Hasn't Philadelphia
improved her beyond your wildest dreams?"
Mr. Bell reflected. "You know I don't think Elfrida has ever been as
pretty as she was when she was five years old, Maggie."
"Do say Margaret," interposed Mrs. Bell plaintively. She had been
suffering from this for twenty years.
"It's of no use, my dear; I never remember unless there's company
present. I was going to say Elfrida had certainly grown. She's got to her
full size now, I should think, and she dwarfs you, moth--Margaret."
Mrs. Bell looked at him with tragic eyes. "Do you see no more in her
than that?" she exclaimed.
"She looks well, I admit she looks well. She seems to have got a kind
of style in Philadelphia."
"Style!"
"I don't mean fashionable style--a style of her own; and according to
the professors, neither the time nor the money has been wasted. But
she's been a long year away, Maggie. It's been considerably dull
without her for you and me. I hope she won't take it into her head to
want to leave home again."
"If it should be necessary to her plan of life--"
"It won't be necessary. She's nineteen now, and I'd like to see her settle
down here in Sparta, and the sooner the better. Her painting will be an
interest for her all her life, and if ever she should be badly