“So you like it?” said Miss Toland.  “It’s small, but it’s the most complete thing of the kind in the State.  I’ve been scrambling along here as best I might for three months, but as soon as I get a resident head worker, we’ll get everything straightened out.”  She gave her nose a sudden rub with her hand, frowned in a worried fashion.

“Girls—­regularly appointed girls ought to take care of all this!” she went on, indicating the kitchen with a wave of her hand.  “But no!  You can’t get them to systematize!  Now I tell you,” she added sternly, “I am going to lay down the law in this house!  They do it in other settlement houses, and it shall be done here!  Every yard of gingham, every thimble and spool of thread, is going to be accounted for!  Do you suppose that at the Telegraph Hill House they allow the children to run about grabbing here and grabbing there—­poh!  They’d laugh at you!”

“Of course,” said Julia vaguely.

“Classes of the smaller girls should keep this kitchen and bathroom like a pin,” said Miss Toland sharply.  “And, as soon as we get a regular manager in here—­Now that’s what I tell my sister Sally, that is Mrs. Toland,” she broke off to say.  “Here’s Barbara, home from a finishing school and six months abroad.  Why couldn’t she step in here?  But no!  Barbara’ll come in now and then if it’s a special occasion—­”

“But she has such wonderful good times at home; she has everything in the world now,” Julia said wistfully.  Miss Toland gave her a shrewd glance; it was as if she saw Julia for the first time.

“Barbara?” Barbara’s aunt poured herself another cup of tea, and fell into thought for a few moments.  Then she set down her cup, straightened herself suddenly, and burst forth:  “Barbara!  That’s one of the most absurd things in the world, you know—­the supposition that a girl like Barbara is perfectly happy!  Perfectly wretched and discontented, if you ask me!”

“Oh, no!” Julia protested.

“Oh, yes!  Barbara’s idle, she’s useless, she doesn’t know what to do with herself.  No girl of her age does.  I know, for my mother brought me up in the same way.  She got a lot of half-baked notions in school; she had a year of college in which to get a lot more; she came home afraid to go back to college for fear of missing something at home, afraid of staying home for fear of missing something at college; compromised on six months in Europe.  Now, here she is, the finished product.  We’ve been spending twelve years getting Barbara ready for something, and, as a result, she’s ready for nothing!  What does she know of the world?  Absolutely nothing!  She’s never for one instant come in contact with anything real—­she can’t.  She’s been so educated that she wouldn’t know anything real if she saw it!  Mind you,” said Miss Toland, fixing the somewhat bewildered Julia with a stern eye, “mind you, I admit it’s hard for people of income to bring a girl up sensibly.  ‘But,’ I’ve said to my sister-in-law, ’hand me over one of the younger girls—­I’ll promise you that she’ll grow up something more than a poor little fashionably dressed doll, looking sidewise out of her eyes at every man she meets, to see whether he’ll marry her or not!’ Of course there’s only one answer to that.  I’ve never married, and I don’t know anything about it!”