"I trust you received the little brochure I mailed you last week," was her initial remark, accompanied by a searching glance at Elizabeth's agitated face. "I refer to 'Anthropological investigations on one thousand children, white and coloured.' I looked it over most carefully and marked the passages I deemed particularly helpful and suggestive."
"Thank you, Mrs. Van Duser," faltered Elizabeth, "I did get the book, and I—was intending to write to you to-day to thank you for it."
"Have you read it?" inquired Mrs. Van Duser pointedly.
"I—looked it over, and—it appeared very——"
Mrs. Van Duser's steadfast gaze appeared to demand the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Elizabeth's eyes fell before it. "It was very good of you to—to think of me," she said.
"I think of you not infrequently," was the lady's gracious rejoinder, "and more particularly of your children, who are, of course, distantly related to myself. I cannot urge too strongly, or too often, the need of a scientific study of infancy and childhood as causally related to the proper functional development of your offspring."
"I am sure it is most kind of you," murmured Elizabeth, striving to kindle an appreciative glow. "But—I have so little time."
"You have all the time there is, my dear Elizabeth," chanted Mrs. Van Duser, in her justly celebrated platform tone; "and you should strive above all things to distinguish what is significant and essential from what is trivial and accidental." Her voice sank to a heart-searching contralto, as she added, "I have observed that you have time to sew trimming on your child's frock. What is trimming as compared with the demands of the springing intellect?"
Elizabeth blushed guiltily and murmured something unintelligible.