of pictures, and learnt a lot about them—at the Pitti and the Brera,—the Brera is wonderful—wonderful places,—but it isn't like real study,” she was saying presently.... “We bought bales of photographs,” she said.
I thought the bales a little out of keeping.
But fair-haired and quite simply and yet graciously and fancifully dressed, talking of art and beautiful things and a beautiful land, and with so much manifest regret for learning denied, she seemed a different kind of being altogether from my smart, hard, high-coloured, black-haired and resolutely hatted cousin; she seemed translucent beside Gertrude. Even the little twist and droop of her slender body was a grace to me.
I liked her from the moment I saw her, and set myself to interest and please her as well as I knew how.
We recalled a case of ragging that had rustled the shrubs of Newnham, and then Chris Robinson's visit—he had given a talk to Bennett Hall also—and our impression of him.
“He disappointed me, too,” said Margaret.
I was moved to tell Margaret something of my own views in the matter of social progress, and she listened—oh! with a kind of urged attention, and her brow a little more knitted, very earnestly. The little curate desisted from the appendices and refuse heaps and general debris of his story, and made himself look very alert and intelligent.
“We did a lot of that when I was up in the eighties,” he said. “I'm glad Imperialism hasn't swamped you fellows altogether.”
Gertrude, looking bright and confident, came to join our talk from the shrubbery; the initial, a little flushed and evidently in a state of refreshed relationship, came with her, and a cheerful lady in pink and more particularly distinguished by a pink bonnet joined our little group. Gertrude had been sipping admiration and was not disposed