"He said the girls half-killed themselves there studying art."
"Did he?" demanded Mrs. Burton with a note of wrath in her voice.
"Mm. He told mother so that day."
"He had no business to say such a thing before you. Was that what discouraged you?"
"Oh, I don't know. I got discouraged. Of course, I should like to please mother. How much do you suppose it would cost a person to live in New York? I don't mean take a room and board yourself; I shouldn't like to do that; but everything included."
"I don't know, indeed, Nelie. Jim always kept the accounts when we were there, and we stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel."
"Do you suppose it would be twice as much as it is here? Five dollars a week?"
"Yes, I'm afraid it would," Mrs. Burton admitted.
"I've got sixty-five dollars from my school. I suppose it would keep me three months in New York, if I was careful. But I'm not going to throw it away on any such wild scheme as that. I know that much."
They talked away from the question, and then talked back to it several times, after they had both seemed to abandon it. At last Mrs. Burton said, "Why don't you let me write to Mr. Ludlow, Nelie, and ask him all about it?"