Joan’s eyes had changed the expression they had contained during the recent interview.  They were soft now, with a softness that was half compassionate, half contemptuous.  It is the compensation which life gives to those whom it has handled roughly in order that they shall be able to regard with a certain contempt the small troubles of the sheltered.  Joan remembered Aline of old, and knew her for a perennial victim of small troubles.  Even in their schooldays she had always needed to be looked after and comforted.  Her sweet temper had seemed to invite the minor slings and arrows of fortune.  Aline was a girl who inspired protectiveness in a certain type of her fellow human beings.  It was this quality in her that kept George Emerson awake at nights; and it appealed to Joan now.

Joan, for whom life was a constant struggle to keep the wolf within a reasonable distance from the door, and who counted that day happy on which she saw her way clear to paying her weekly rent and possibly having a trifle over for some coveted hat or pair of shoes, could not help feeling, as she looked at Aline, that her own troubles were as nothing, and that the immediate need of the moment was to pet and comfort her friend.  Her knowledge of Aline told her the probable tragedy was that she had lost a brooch or had been spoken to crossly by somebody; but it also told her that such tragedies bulked very large on Aline’s horizon.

Trouble, after all, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder; and Aline was far less able to endure with fortitude the loss of a brooch than she herself to bear the loss of a position the emoluments of which meant the difference between having just enough to eat and starving.

“You’re worried about something,” she said.  “Sit down and tell me all about it.”

Aline sat down and looked about her at the shabby room.  By that curious process of the human mind which makes the spectacle of another’s misfortune a palliative for one’s own, she was feeling oddly comforted already.  Her thoughts were not definite and she could not analyze them; but what they amounted to was that, though it was an unpleasant thing to be bullied by a dyspeptic father, the world manifestly held worse tribulations, which her father’s other outstanding quality, besides dyspepsia—­wealth, to wit—­enabled her to avoid.

It was at this point that the dim beginnings of philosophy began to invade her mind.  The thing resolved itself almost into an equation.  If father had not had indigestion he would not have bullied her.  But, if father had not made a fortune he would not have had indigestion.  Therefore, if father had not made a fortune he would not have bullied her.  Practically, in fact, if father did not bully her he would not be rich.  And if he were not rich—­

She took in the faded carpet, the stained wall paper and the soiled curtains with a comprehensive glance.  It certainly cut both ways.  She began to be a little ashamed of her misery.