"What he looks like," replied Miss Dexter shortly.
"And the girls I'm going to teach?"'
"I don't know them, and don't want to."
"But you will, if you're going to stay in the house. And you must have heard about them."
"Well, I believe they're rather fun," admitted Miss Dexter grudgingly. "And they're reported to be clever. Still, they've been boxed up at home all their lives, and can't know much. I expect you'll have your work cut out."
"They'll have their work cut out," returned Miss Phipp grimly, "and they'll have to do it too. I do hate having to go out as a governess, Margaret."
Miss Dexter glanced at her friend, who was so plain as to be almost unfeminine, and looked jaded and unwell besides; she had her eyes fixed on the suburban landscape now flying past at sixty miles an hour, and something in her aspect caused Miss Dexter's heart to contract. "Poor old Janet," she said, "I don't suppose it will be as bad as you expect. I'm a brute to be trying to put you against them. You won't see much of Mr. Clinton, and he probably won't bother you when you do. As for Mrs. Clinton, if you want the truth, she once gave me a snub, and I feel catty about her; so you needn't take any notice of what I say. The children are real characters, with any amount of brains, and you'll have a great opportunity with them if you can keep them in order."
Miss Phipp brightened up. "Ah, that's better hearing," she said. "As for keeping them in order, after a class of thirty High School girls, that's child's play."
"Well, I don't want to paint too bright a picture," said Miss Dexter, "and from what I've heard of them I don't think that it will be quite that."
In the meantime Virginia and Humphrey were getting on very well in their more luxurious compartment. Humphrey had expressed his pleasure at the opening up of the home of his fathers to his brother's expectant bride, and in such a fashion that Virginia had warmed to him and told him exactly how things stood.