Julia came soon to see that her actual presence did them small good, and did herself real harm, and so, somewhat thankfully, began to confine her attentions more and more to mere financial assistance.  She presently arranged for the best of medical care for her mother, even for a hospital stay, but her attitude grew more and more that of the noncommittal outsider, who helps without argument and disapproves without comment.  Evelyn had made a great success of her dressmaking, but such aid as she could give must be given her sister, for Marguerite’s early and ill-considered marriage had come to the usual point when, with an unreliable husband, constantly arriving and badly managed babies, and bitter poverty and want, she found herself much in the position of her mother, twenty years before.  May was still living in Oakland, widowed.  Her two sons were at home and working, and with a small income from rented rooms as well, the three and her youngest daughter, Regina, somehow managed to maintain the dreary cottage in which most of the children were born.

“They all give me a great big pain!” Evelyn said one day frankly, when Julia was at Madame Carroll’s for a fitting, and the cousins--one standing in her French hat and exquisite underlinen, and the other kneeling, her gown severely black, big scissors in hand, and a pincushion dangling at her breast—­were discussing the family.  “Gran’ma isn’t so bad, because she’s old, but Aunt Emeline and Mama have a right to get next to themselves!  Mama had a fit because I wouldn’t take a flat over here, and have her and Regina with me; well, I could do it perfectly well; it isn’t the money!” Evelyn stood up, took seven pins separately and rapidly from her mouth, and inserted them in the flimsy lining that dangled about Julia’s arm.  “You want this tight, but not too tight, don’t you, Julie?” said she.  “That can come in a little, still.  No,” she resumed aggrievedly, “but I board at a nice place on Fulton street; the Lancasters, the people that keep it, are just lovely.  Mrs. Lancaster is so motherly and the girls are so jolly; my wash costs me a dollar a week; I belong to the library; I’ve got a lovely room; I go to the theatre when I want to; I buy the clothes I like, and why should I worry?  I know the way Mama keeps house, and I’ve had enough of it!”

“It’s awfully hard,” Julia mused, “Marguerite’s just doing the same thing over again.  It’s just discouraging!”

“Well, you got out of it, and I got out of it,” Evelyn said briskly, “and they call it our luck!  Luck?  There ain’t any such thing,” she went on indignantly.  “I’m going to New York for Madame next year—­me, to New York, if you please, and stay at a good hotel, and put more than twenty thousand dollars into materials and imported wraps and scarfs and so on—­is there any luck to that?  There’s ten years’ slavery, that’s what there is!  How much do you suppose you’d have married Jim Studdiford if you hadn’t kept yourself a little above the crowd, and worked away at the settlement house for years and years?” she demanded.  “I can put a little hook in here, Ju, where the lace comes, to keep that in place for you!” she added, more quietly.