"Oh, aren't you a governess? How funny!"
"It would be very much funnier if I was," said Sylvia.
"My name is Eva Savage. What's yours?"
Sylvia hesitated a moment and then plunged.
"Sylvia Snow."
Immediately afterward, with an access of timidity, she supplemented this by explaining that on the stage she called herself Sylvia Scarlett.
"On the stage," repeated the little governess. "Are you on the stage? You are lucky."
Sylvia looked at her in surprise, and realized how much younger she was than a first glance at her led one to suppose.
"I came out to Russia when I was nineteen," Miss Savage went on. "And of course that's better than staying in England to teach, though I hate teaching."
Sylvia asked how old she was now, and when she heard that she was only twenty-four she decided that illness must be the cause of that shriveled rosy skin that made her look like an old maid of fifty.