“Raise herself!” Jim said, with a casual laugh.  “I don’t suppose she started much lower than other people?”

“Oh, I imagine she did.  Her father was a—­I don’t know—­a sort of drummer, I guess, but her mother is an awful person, and her grandfather was a day labourer!”

“Ha!” Jim said, discomfited.  “Well, see you tomorrow!” he added, departing.  He walked briskly to the corner of the street, and experienced a thump at the heart when a casual backward glance discovered Julia, in a most fetching hat, coming out of the settlement house with a market basket on her arm.  She did not see him, and Jim decided not to see her.  Of course she was a little peach, but that labourer grandfather was too much.

That same evening Julia used the accident to little Maude as an excuse to break a half engagement with Mark.  He was to be given only a few moments’ chat before the Girls’ Club met for a rehearsal, but he showed such bitter disappointment at losing it that Julia, half against her will, promised to spend at least part of her Sunday afternoon with him.

This was on Wednesday, and on Thursday and Saturday Doctor Studdiford came to see his little patient, and both times saw Julia, too.  He asked Julia what books she liked, and, surprised that she knew nothing of Browning, he sent her a great volume of his poetry, a leather-bound exquisite edition that Jim had taken some trouble to find.  With the book came a box of violets, and Julia, opening the package, suddenly remembered that he was a rich man, and stood, flushed and palpitating to a thousand emotions, looking down at the damp, fragrant flowers.

She wore a few violets at the breast of her sober little gown when she met Mark on Sunday for the promised walk.  Julia had been most reluctant to go, but Maude had been moved to her own home, and the child’s father was sitting with her, so that Julia had no excuse to visit her.

“I want to show you something—­something you’ll like!” said Mark eagerly.  “We take the Sixteenth Street car and transfer down Sacramento.”

Julia accepted his guidance good-naturedly, and they crossed the city, which lay in a clear wash of the warm September sunlight.  Mark led Julia finally to the ornate door of a new apartment house in Sacramento Street.

“What is it, Mark?” the girl asked, as they went in.  “Some one we know live here?”

“You wait!” Mark said mysteriously.  He went to a desk in the handsome entrance hall, and talked for a few moments to a clerk who sat there.  Then a quiet-looking, middle-aged woman came out, and Mark and Julia went upstairs with her, in a little elevator.

The woman turned a key in a door, and led them into a charmingly bright front apartment of four good-sized rooms and a shining bathroom.  There was a bedroom with curly-maple furniture, a dining-room with a hanging lamp of art glass on a brass chain, and Mission oak table and chairs, a kitchen delightfully convenient and completely equipped, and a little drawing-room, with a gas log, a bookshelf, a good rug, a little desk, and some rocking chairs and small tables.  The sun shone in through fresh net curtains, and the high windows commanded a bright view of city roofs and a glimpse of the bay.