"That's so," said her friend.
"If ever I have a daughter," said Betty, "she shall set to work at something definite the very instant she leaves school--if it's only Hebrew or algebra. Not just Parish duties that she didn't begin, and doesn't want to go on with. But something that's her own work."
"You're beginning to see straight. I surmised you would by and by. But don't you go to the other end of the see-saw, Miss Daisy-Face!"
"What do you mean?" asked Betty. It was the morning interval when students eat patisserie out of folded papers. The two were on the window ledge of the Atelier, looking down on the convent garden where already the buds were breaking to green leaf.
"Why, there's room for the devil even if your flat ain't swept and garnished. He folds up mighty small, and gets into less space than a poppy-seed."
"What do you mean?" asked Betty again.
"I mean that Vernon chap," said Miss Voscoe down-rightly. "I told you to change partners every now and then. But with you it's that Vernon this week and last week and the week after next."
"I've known him longer than I have the others, and I like him," said Betty.
"Oh, he's all right; fine and dandy!" replied Miss Voscoe. "He's a big man, too, in his own line. Not the kind you expect to see knocking about at a students' crémerie. Does he give you lessons?"
"He did at home," said Betty.
"Take care he doesn't teach you what's the easiest thing in creation to learn about a man."
"What's that?" Betty did not like to have to ask the question.
"Why, how not to be able to do without him, of course," said Miss Voscoe.
"You're quite mistaken," said Betty eagerly: "one of the reasons I don't mind going about with him so much is that he's engaged to be married."
"Acquainted with the lady?"
"Yes," said Betty, sheltering behind the convention that an introduction at a tea-party constitutes acquaintanceship. She was glad Miss Voscoe had not asked her if she knew Lady St. Craye.
"Oh, well"--Miss Voscoe jumped up and shook the flakes of pastry off her pinafore--"if she doesn't mind, I guess I've got no call to. But why don't you give that saint in the go-to-hell collar a turn?"
"Meaning?"