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 June, not without a little pride, said that her hair when let down reached below her waist.

"Capital!" said Mr. Keller, with a laugh. "The very thing I'm looking for just now. You'll make a stunning Andromeda."

June had not heard of Andromeda. She had read some Dickens, and a little George Eliot, and she could remember bits of Shakespeare learned at school, but her tastes were not literary. She pretended to know all about Andromeda, yet the next words of Mr. Keller were a proof that he was not deceived. June did not know, however, that he had pierced clean through her ignorance.

"She's the altogether. A classical subject."

"I like classical subjects myself." Abruptly June's mind went back to Miss Preece, the revered head mistress of the Blackhampton High School where it had been her privilege to spend one term. Her voice rose a whole octave, in its involuntary desire to approximate as closely as possible to that of a real lady.

"So do I." Mr. Keller's humorous purr was that of a man well pleased. "That's capital."

"You can't beat classical subjects, can you?" said June, making a wild attempt to achieve the conversational.

Again Mr. Keller looked across at her out of those near-set eyes of which by now she was rather afraid. "No, you can't," he said. "So large and so simple, and yet they strike so deep. They are life itself. A sort of summing up, don't you know, of all that has been, all that can be, all that will be."

June responded with more composure than she had yet shewn that she supposed it was so. It was nice to