"What is a Spartan?"
"A very unpleasantly proper child who never lets her feelings get the better of her. Do you think your mother would let you come to tea with me to-morrow night?"
Greta's eyes sparkled at the thought, then fell at the remembrance of "Becca."
"I'll try to let Becca make me come, but she—she doesn't like you—she says young men think they are the lords of creation, but they are slaves of self-will. I'll tell you what she says to-morrow morning."
Rebecca was won over, and punctually at five o'clock the next evening, the little maiden stood on the doorstep opposite her own, and enquired in a trembling voice for Mr. Rufus Tracy.
She was shown up to his room, and came into it with a radiant face. It was not a luxuriously furnished apartment, nor yet a very tidy one, but Greta was charmed with the novelty of a bachelor's den. The smell of tobacco and the row of pipes on the mantelpiece puzzled her sorely.
"Why do you smoke?" she asked, presently, as perched on a horse-hair sofa, she watched the stout landlady bring in the tea-tray. "Does it warm your mouth? My mouth never feels cold."
"It keeps me in a good temper," was the laughing reply.
"Would it keep me from feeling cross when the girls tease me at school?"
Her questions ceased when she came to the tea-table. She thought she had never seen such a grand tea. Hot steak and fried potatoes, shrimps and watercress, sardines and cheese, and a currant cake. Was there ever such plentiful fare for two people only?