Julia had no answering smile ready.  Instead her face was very grave as she said musingly: 

“I hardly know why I wanted you to meet my mother and grandmother, Jim.  I don’t know quite what I expected when you did meet them, but—­but you mustn’t make light of the fact that they are different from your people, and different from me, too.  For three or four days and nights now I’ve been thinking about—­us.  I’ve been wondering whether this engagement would be a—­a happy thing for you, Jim.  I’ve wondered—­”

“But, sweetheart!” he interrupted eagerly, “I love you!  You’re the only woman I ever wanted to marry!  I love you just because you are different, you are so much wiser and deeper and truer than any other girl I ever knew, and if your people and your life have made you that, why I love them, too!  And you do love me, Julie?”

Julia raised heavy eyes, and he could see that tears were pressing close behind them.  She did not speak, but her look suddenly enveloped him like a cloud.  Jim felt a sudden prick of tears behind his own eyes.

“Sweetness,” he said gravely, “I know you love me!  And Julia, my whole soul is simply on fire for you.  Don’t—­don’t let any mere trifle come between us now.  Let me tell my mother and father to-morrow!”

A clear light was shining in Julia’s eyes.  Now, as she automatically arranged the tea things before her, and poured him his first cup of tea, she said: 

“Jim, I told you that I haven’t thought much about marriage for myself.  I suppose it’s funny that I shouldn’t, for they say most girls do!  But perhaps it was because the biographies and histories I began to read when I came to the settlement house were all about men:  how Lincoln rose, how Napoleon rose, how this rich man sold newspapers when he was a little boy, and that other one spent his first money in taking his mother out of the poorhouse.  And of course marriage doesn’t enter so much into the lives of men.  It came to me years ago that what wise men are trying to din into young people everywhere is just this:  that if you make yourself ready for anything, that thing will come to you.  Just do your end, and somewhere out in the queer, big, incomprehensible machinery of the world your place will mysteriously begin to get ready for you--Am I talking sense, Jim?”

“Absolutely.  Go on!” said Jim.

“Well, and so I thought that if I took years and years I might—­ well, you won’t see why, but I wanted to be a lady!” confessed Julia, her lips smiling, but with serious eyes.  “And, Jim, everything comes so much more easily than one thinks.  Your aunt knew I wasn’t, but I happened to be what she needed, and I kept quiet, and listened and learned!”

“And suppose you hadn’t happened upon the settlement house?” asked Jim, his ardent eyes never moving from her face.

“Why, I would have done it somehow, some other way.  I meant to take a position in some family, and perhaps be a trained nurse when I was older, or study to be a librarian and take the City Hall examinations, or work up to a post-office position!  I had lots of plans, only of course I was only a selfish little girl then, and I thought I would disappear, and never let my own people hear from me again!”