Looking back, through a mist of angry tears, Rose-Marie felt her first moment of homesickness for the friendly little town with its wide, tree-shaded streets, its lawn parties, and its neighbours; cities, she had discovered, discourage the art of neighbouring!  She felt a pang of emptiness—­she wanted her aunts with their soft, interested eyes, and their tender hands.

At first the city had thrilled her.  But now that she had been in the Settlement House a month, the thrill was beginning to die away.  The great buildings were still unbelievably high, the crowds of people were still a strange and mysterious throng, the streets were as colourful as ever—­but life, nevertheless, was beginning to settle into ordinary channels.

She had thought, at the beginning of her stay there, that the Settlement House was a hotbed of romance.  Every ring of the doorbell had tingled through her; every step in the hall had made her heart leap, with a strange quickening movement, into her throat—­every shabby man had been to her a possible tragedy, every threadbare woman had been a case for charity.  She had fluttered from reception-hall to reading-room, and back again—­she had been alert, breathless, eager.

But, with the assignment of regular duties, some of the adventure had been drained from life.  For her these consisted of teaching a club of girls to sew, of instructing a group of mothers in the art of making cakes and pies and salads, and of hearing a half hundred little children repeat their A B Cs.  Only the difference in setting, only the twang of foreign tongues, only the strange precociousness of the children, made life at all different from the life at home.  She told herself, fiercely, that she might be a teacher in a district school—­a country school—­for all the good she was accomplishing.

She had offered, so many times, to do visiting in the tenements—­to call upon families of the folk who would not come to the Settlement House.  But the Superintendent had met her, always, with a denial that was wearily firm.

“I have a staff of women—­older women from outside—­who do the visiting,” she had said.  “I’m afraid” she was eyeing Rose-Marie in the blue coat and the blue tam-o’-shanter, “I’m afraid that you’d scarcely be—­convincing.  And,” she had added, “Dr. Blanchard takes care of all the detail in that department of our work!”

Dr. Blanchard ...  Rose-Marie felt the tears coming afresh at the thought of him!  She remembered how she had written home enthusiastic, schoolgirlish letters about the handsome man who sat across the dining table from her.  It had seemed exciting, romantic, that only the three of them really should live in the great brownstone house—­the Young Doctor, the Superintendent—­who made a perfect chaperon—­and herself.  It had seemed, somehow, almost providential that they should be thrown together.  Yes, Rose-Marie remembered how she had been attracted to Dr. Blanchard at the very first—­how she had found nothing wanting in his wiry strength, his broad shoulders, his dark, direct eyes.