“Oh, really!” Miss Toland said, in a tone of cold satire.  But her look fell with infinite tenderness and pity upon the drooping little figure opposite.  “Yet there’s nothing of the snob about Jim,” she mused unhappily.

“Oh, no!” Julia breathed earnestly.

“There isn’t, eh?” Miss Toland said.  “I’m not so sure.  I’m not at all sure.  He isn’t working too hard, is he?”

“He isn’t working hard at all,” Julia said.  “Jim doesn’t have a case, to worry over, twice a year.  You see it’s either City and County cases, that he just goes ahead and does, or else it’s rich, rich people who have one of the older doctors, and just call Jim in to assist or consult.  He was a little nervous over a demonstration before the students the other day, but at the very last second,” Julia’s quick smile flitted over her face, “at the very last second the assisting nurse dropped the cold bone—­as they call it—­that Jim was going to transplant.  Doctor Chapman told him he’d bet Jim bribed the girl to do it!”

“H’m!” Miss Toland said absently.  “But his father was just another such moody fellow, queer as Dick’s hatband!” she added, suddenly, after a pause.

“Jim’s father?  I didn’t know you knew him!”

“Knew him?  Indeed I did!  We all lived in Honolulu in those days.  Charming, charming fellow, George Studdiford, but queer.  He was very musical, you know; he’d look daggers at you if you happened to sneeze in the middle of one of his Beethoven sonatas.  Tim’s mother was very sweet, beautiful, too, but spoiled, Julia, spoiled!”

“Too much money!” Julia said, shaking her head.

“Exactly—­there you have it!” Miss Toland assented triumphantly.  “I’ve seen too much of it not to know it.  There’s a sort of dry rot about it; even a fine fellow like Jim can’t escape.  But, my dear”—­her tone became reassuring—­“don’t let it worry you.  He’ll get over it.  Just bide your time!”

“Well, that’s just what I am doing,” Julia said, with a rueful laugh.  “But it’s like being in a bad dream.  There is sorrow that you have to bear, don’t you know, Aunt Sanna, like crippled children, or somebody’s death, or being poor; and then there are these other unnatural trials, that you just Rebel against!  I say to myself that I’ll just be patient and sweet, and go on filling my time with Anna and calls and dinner parties, until Jim comes to his senses and tells me what an angel I am, but it’s awfully hard to do it!  Sometimes the house seems like a vault to me, in the mornings, even the sunshine”—­Julia’s eyes watered, but she went steadily on—­“even the sunshine doesn’t seem right, and I feel as if I were eating ashes and cotton!  I go about looking at other houses, and thinking, ’I wonder what men and women are being wretchedly unhappy behind your plate-glass windows!’ I watch other men and their wives together,” pursued Julia, smiling through tears, “and when women say those casual things they are always saying, about not loving your husband after the first few months, and being disillusioned, and meaning less and less to each other, I feel as if it would break my heart!”