friends did not know it to this day.  Jim, to the doctor’s delight, chose to follow the profession of his foster father, and had stumbled, with not too much application, through medical college.  Now he was to go to New York for hospital work, and then to Berlin for a year’s real grind, and until the Eastern hospital should open classes, was back in his old enormous third-floor bedroom upstairs, enjoying a brief season of idleness and petting, the handsome, unaffected, sunshiny big brother of Mrs. Toland’s fondest dreams.

“And he can hardly keep his eyes off Babbie,” the mother confided to her sister-in-law.

Miss Toland gave her a shrewd glance.

“For heaven’s sake don’t get that notion in your head, Sally!  Babbie may be ready to make a little fool of herself, but if ever I saw a man who isn’t in love, it’s Jim!” said Miss Toland, who was a thin, gray-haired, well-dressed woman of forty, with a curious magnetism quite her own.  Miss Toland had lived in France for the ten years before thirty, and had a Frenchwoman’s reposeful yet alert manner, and a Frenchwoman’s art in dressing.  After many idle years, she had suddenly become deeply interested in settlement work, had built a little settlement house, “The Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House,” in one of the factory districts south of San Francisco, and was in a continual state of agitation and upset because worthy settlement workers were at that time almost an unknown quantity in California.  Just at present she was availing herself of her brother’s hospitality because she had no assistant at all at the “Alexander,” and was afraid to stay in its very unsavoury environment alone.  She loved Barbara dearly, but she was usually perverse with her sister-in-law.

“You may say what you like about notions in my head,” Mrs. Toland answered with a wise little nod.  “But the dear girl is radiant every time she looks at him, and both Dad and I think we notice a new protective quality in Jim—­”

“Did Robert say so?” Miss Toland asked dryly.  To this Mrs. Toland answered with a merry laugh and a little squeeze of her sister-in-law’s arm.

“Oh, you old Sanna!” she chided.  “You won’t believe that there’s a blessed time when Nature just takes the young things by the hand and pushes them right into happiness, whether or no!”

This little talk had taken place just before breakfast, and now Mrs. Toland was reassuring herself of her own position with many a glance at Barbara and at Jim.  Barbara seemed serious almost to ungraciousness—­that might be a sign.  Jim was teasing Sally, who laughed deeply and richly, like a child, and spilled her orange juice on her fresh gown.  Perhaps he was trying to pique Barbara by assuming an indifferent manner—­that might be it—–­

“Jim!” It was Barbara speaking.  Jim did not hear.  “Jim,” said Barbara again, patient and cold.

“I beg your pardon!” Jim said with swift contrition.  His glance flashed to Barbara for a second, flashed back to Sally.  “Now, you throw that—­you throw that,” said he to the latter young woman, in reference to a glass of water with which she was carelessly toying, “and you’ll be sorrier than you ever were in your life!”