But with her first glance at the newcomer – a glance of keenest curiosity – some of hastily discarded complacence was reinstalled. How could Nilsson be so delighted with this silly, common little over-dressed person who came marching blithely into the room? Why, she spoke with a villainous South Side accent, and had a runaway chin!

“Miss Euphemia Pringle – Signora Rasponi!” sang out Nilsson. And as he took the kettle off the gas-ring for tea, he kept a sidelong eye on the meeting between the two young women.

When she had put her own firm, square little hand into Joanna’s, Phemie tilted back her face, and looked with eyes that brimmed with laughter from Joanna to her host.

“You never told me you were having a lady friend to tea!” she rallied him. “It’s a real shock to find I’m not the One and Only!”

Though Joanna at this thought her more than ever common, she could not help watching Nilsson’s visitor with that fascinated envy we feel when suddenly confronted with an embodiment of all the qualities in which we ourselves are lacking.

Phemie laid down a silk-fringed hand-bag decorated with beads, settled herself in a chair that was rather too high for her short legs, and started fanning her bright cheeks with a sheet of drawing-paper. Her smallest movement was full of festivity.

“Yon’s an awful-like stair of yours for a poor thing like me with a weak heart!” She spoke to Nilsson, but her smile was for Joanna. She sought the other girl’s sympathy, not for her inane remark, but for all the gaiety there was in life; so that Joanna had to smile back in admission.

And although during tea Phemie said nothing more ambitious than this, yet Joanna quite lost the first impression of silliness. Phemie’s eyes were too clear of self-absorption for silliness, and her silences were too intent. When any one else spoke she was poised in almost embarrassing attention.

Nilsson asked her if she would sing for them.

“I want you to try my new Steinway,” he said. And he told how he had bought the piano at an auction sale in Renfield Street for five pounds.

“Is that a fact?” exclaimed Phemie, with a colloquial exaggeration that showed how impressed she was. “Yon was a fair bargain!”

She had risen quite readily on being asked to sing, and she took off her hat as she spoke, stabbing the pins into it carelessly and throwing it on a chair before she crossed to the piano.

It stood in the far corner of the studio – an out-of-date table-grand, really cumbersome, with its thick body and carved, straddling legs; and seated before it, Phemie looked very little and dainty. Now that her over-trimmed hat was off, she showed a delicate head with hair parted smoothly and coiled behind. The light, which came through a yellow blind beyond the piano, seemed to take pleasure in enveloping her.