This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan.
A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAYby Sara Jeannette Duncan
Miss Kimpsey dropped into an arm-chair in Mrs. LeslieBell's drawing-room and crossed her small dusty feetbefore her while she waited for Mrs. Leslie Bell. Sittingthere, thinking a little of how tired she was and a greatdeal of what she had come to say, Miss Kimpsey enjoyeda sense of consideration that came through the ceilingwith the muffled sound of rapid footsteps in the chamberabove. Mrs. Bell would be "down in a minute," the maidhad said. Miss Kimpsey was inclined to forgive a greaterdelay, with this evidence of hasteful preparation goingon overhead. The longer she had to ponder her missionthe better, and she sat up nervously straight ponderingit, tracing with her parasol a sage-green block in theelderly aestheticated pattern of the carpet.
Miss Kimpsey was thirty-five, with a pale, oblonglittle face, that looked younger under its softening"bang" of fair curls across the forehead. She was abuff-and-gray-colored creature, with a narrow square chinand narrow square shoulders, and a flatness and straightnessabout her everywhere that gave her rather the effect ofa wedge, to which the big black straw hat she wore tilteda little on one side somehow conduced. Miss Kimpsey mighthave figured anywhere as a representative of the NewEngland feminine surplus—there was a distinct suggestionof character under her unimportant little features—andher profession was proclaimed in her person, apart fromthe smudge of chalk on the sleeve of her jacket. She hadbeen born and brought up and left over in Illinois,however, in the town of Sparta, Illinois. She had developedher conscience there, and no doubt, if one knew it well,it would show peculiarities of local expansion directlyconnected with hot corn-bread for breakfast, as opposedto the accredited diet of legumes upon which consciencesarrive at such successful maturity in the East. It was,at all events, a conscience in excellent controllingorder. It directed Miss Kimpsey, for example, to teachthree times a week in the boys' night-school through thewinter, no matter how sharply the wind blew off LakeMichigan, in addition to her daily duties at the HighSchool, where for ten years she had imparted instructionin the "English branches," translating Chaucer into themodern dialect of Sparta, Illinois, for the benefit ofMiss Elfrida Bell, among others. It had sent her on thisoccasion to see Mrs. Leslie Bell, and Miss Kimpsey couldremember circumstances under which she had obeyed herconscience with more alacrity.
"It isn't," said Miss Kimpsey, with internal discouragement,"as if I knew her well."
Miss Kimpsey did not know Mrs. Bell at all well. Mrs.Bell was president of the Browning Club, and Miss Kimpseywas a member, they met, too, in the social jumble offancy fairs in aid of the new church organ; they had abowing acquaintance—that is, Mrs. Bell, had. MissKimpsey's part of it was responsive, and she always gavea thought to her boots and her gloves when she met Mrs.Bell. It was not that the Spartan social circle whichMrs. Bell adorned had any vulgar prejudice against thefact that Miss Kimpsey earned her own living—more thanone of its ornaments had done the same thing—and MissKimpsey's relations were all "in grain" and obviouslyrespectable. It was simply that none, of the Kimpseys,prosperous or poor, had ever been in society in Sparta,for reasons which Sparta itself would probably be unableto define; and this one was not likely to be thrust amongthe elect because she taught school and enjoyed life upona scale of ethics.
Mrs. Bell's drawing-room was a slight