“Well, some of us simply will have to help them,” suggested Mrs. Toland, with a swift, innocent glance at Miss Sanna.

“His father will have to help,” Miss Toland countered firmly.

They presently adjourned to the dining-room, all still talking—­ even Julia—­of Sally.  Sally would have to take the Barnes cottage, at fifteen dollars a month, and do her own cooking, and her own sewing—­

“They can dine here on Sundays,” said Sally’s mother, sniffing and wiping her eyes.

“And wouldn’t it be awful if they had a baby!” Jane flung out casually.

Every one felt the indelicacy of this, except Julia, who relieved all Jane’s hearers by saying warmly: 

“Oh, don’t say awful!  Why, you’d all go wild over a dear little baby!”

Doctor Studdiford gave her a curious look at this, and though Julia did not see it, Barbara did.  After dinner the doctor and Barbara played whist with the older ladies, and Julia sat looking over their shoulders for a few minutes, and then went upstairs with Constance and Jane for a long, delightful gossip.  The girls must show her various pictures of Keith and Sally, books full of kodak prints, and everywhere Julia saw Jim, too:  Jim from the days of little boyhood on to to-day, Jim as camp cook, Jim as tennis champion, Jim riding, yachting, fishing; a younger Jim, in the East at college, a small, stocky, unrecognizable Jim, in short trousers and straw hat.  And everywhere, with him, Barbara.

“That’s when they gave a play—­I was only five,” Constance said.  “See, this is Jim as Jack Horner, and Babbie as Mother Goose.  And look! here’s Jim on a pony—­that’s at his grandfather’s place in Honolulu, He stayed there a month every year, when he was a little boy, and Mother and Barbara visited there once.  Here we all are, swimming, at Tahoe.  And here’s Bab in the dress she wore at her coming-out tea—­isn’t it dear?  And look! here she is in an old dress of Jim’s mother, and see the old pearls; aren’t they lovely?  Jim gave them to her when she was twenty.”

“Jim was crazy about her then,” said Jane.

“I don’t think he was,” Constance said perversely.

“Oh, Con, you know he was!” Jane protested.  “He was, too,” she added, to Julia.

“I don’t think he was,” persisted Constance lightly.

Barbara came in a second later, and again the talk went back to Sally.

“Mother and Aunt Sanna said good-night,” reported Barbara, “and Aunt Sanna said to leave the door between your rooms open, and—­ oh, yes, Doctor Studdiford has been teasing Aunt Sanna to stay for a few days, Miss Page; he says you look as pale as a little ghost!”

“I liked so much to have you call me Julia,” was Julia’s extremely tactful answer to this.  Barbara, perhaps glad to find her message so casually dismissed, smiled her prettiest.

“Julia—­then!” and Barbara sat down on a bed, and began to roll up her belt.  “Aunt Sanna says she gives Sally and Keith about three months—­” she began.