By Elizabeth Pepys.
1 hava been accused of late of being absent-minded. "You watch! me when you are talking," said one, "with apparent anxiety to get. my reaction, but then your thoughts, go far away. You seem concerned about some distant problem and if; thera is a looking glass on the landscape you scan if as if you were a crystal gazer."'
"Oh" said I, "that must be charm "But no," objected my frank friend, "quite the contrary."
"Pin just learning to be charming," said I, "I take daily doses and practice most of the time. When I watch you it is to see whether you recognize charm when you see it, and when I look in the glass it's not to be vain, but to notice whether my little finger is drooping i in the way the Expert in Fascinations says it ought to."
"Couldn't you let me know when you're done with work for the day?' asked she, "I'd rather call when I wasn't interrupting, and you could be yourself."
"But that's what I am. at least what I'm trying to be." I defended myself, "that? what several of the articles say, 'Be natural,' member your most attractive moments and reproduce them often,' 'Don't copy anybody,' and so I'm trying to be triple distilled essence of myself."
"You may be what you think you are, but your friends would never know you,'' she insisted, "I'd sue that specialist for wilful de-tarnation of personality, if I were "You don't really think se," I sighed, ''and here I've been wearing myself out to win a little approbation from you. Do you re member once telling me not to be so disgustingly cheerful, and here I've tried for half an hour to look sad and pensive enough to cult you and this is all I get."
"It's less than you deserve, I'll admit," suid she, "but surely I never asked you to go about with your middle finger glued to the centre of your palm and the others] hanging limp."
"No," I had to admit, '"'the sculptor who lectured here last winter when we were taking aesthetic dancing caught me prac-rising that gesture and murmured, 'The line of beauty,' so I've more or less adopted that gesture since."
"Elizabeth, Elizabeth," mourned book friend, "Yon don't really hold men responsible for such idle words do you?
Every artist has to ejaculate some such expression at intervals or the union would black list him. Take a census among your sensible friends and see what think of it. If you must register artistic cravings wait till you are with your Soho Greenwich j Village crowd. It doesn't appeal to the respectable middle classes."
"But haven'& you noticed that I've been enhancing my charm by wearing blue all the time and bringing out the shade of my eyes?"
"T had," she assented, without enthusiasm, "and I think I know some one who would buy some of your costumes so that you could surprise us with a green or a pink effect now and then."
"But my winning smile?"
"Yes, Pollyanna."
"And my patience?"
"Too obviously assumed to be convincing. Be careful or you'll slip over into the martyr class, and not even ® professional charm-pro-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.