"How did you find me so soon?" inquired Felicia.
"Why, don't you know? These are the only clean windows in the block."
"I believe they are," replied Felicia with a laugh that did the Bishop good to hear.
"But why have you dared to come to Chicago without telling me, and how have you entered my diocese without my knowledge?" asked the Bishop. And Felicia looked so like that beautiful, clean, educated, refined world he once knew, that he might be pardoned for seeing in her something of the old Paradise. Although, to speak truth for him, he had no desire to go back to it.
"Well, dear Bishop," said Felicia, who had always called him so, "I knew how overwhelmed you were with your work. I did not want to burden you with my plans. And besides, I am going to offer you my services. Indeed, I was just on my way to see you and ask your advice. I am settled here for the present with Mrs. Bascom, a saleswoman who rents our three rooms, and with one of Rachel's music pupils who is being helped to a course in violin by Virginia Page. She is from the people," continued Felicia, using the words "from the people" so gravely and unconsciously that her hearer smiled, "and I am keeping house for her and at the same time beginning an experiment in pure food for the masses. I am an expert and I have a plan I want you to admire and develop. Will you, dear Bishop?"
"Indeed I will," he replied. The sight of Felicia and her remarkable vitality, enthusiasm and evident purpose almost bewildered him.
"Martha can help at the Settlement with her violin and I will help with my messes. You see, I thought I would get settled first and work out something, and then come with some real thing to offer. I'm able to earn my own living now."
"You are?" the Bishop said a little incredulously. "How? Making those things?"
"Those things!" said Felicia with a show of indignation. "I would have you know, sir, that 'those things' are the best-cooked, purest food products in this whole city."
"I don't doubt it," he replied hastily, while his eyes twinkled, "Still, 'the proof of the pudding'—you know the rest."