“Please don’t bother about it, Mother.  Please.  I’d rather not.”

“Well,” Mrs. Toland conceded, with dissatisfaction.  An uncomfortable silence reigned, until Miss Toland began suddenly to talk of Julia.

“She’s a very unusual girl,” said she.  “She’s utterly and entirely satisfactory to me.”

“I think you’re very fortunate, Sanna,” Mrs. Toland commented absently.  She speculated a little as to Julia; there really must be something unusual about the girl; Sanna was notoriously difficult to live with.

“She’s not stiff—­she’s amenable to reason,” Miss Toland said, smiling vaguely.  “We—­we have really good times together.”

“I hope she’s improved in appearance,” Mrs. Toland remarked severely.  “You remember how dreadfully she looked, Barbara?”

Barbara smiled, half lifted dubious brows, and shrugged slightly.

“She’s enormously improved,” Miss Toland said sharply.  “She wears an extremely becoming uniform now.”

“She’s evidently got your number, Auntie,” Barbara said, watching three young men who were entering the room.  “She evidently knows that you’re nutty about appearances!”

“I am not nutty about appearances at all,” her aunt responded, as she attacked an elaborate ice.  “I like things done decently, and I like to see Julia in her nice, trim dresses.  That Eastern woman I tried, Miss Knox, wouldn’t hear of wearing a uniform—­not she!  Julia has more sense.”

“I expect that Julia hasn’t an idea in her head that you haven’t put there,” Barbara said dryly.

“Don’t you believe it!” her aunt said with fire.  She seemed ready for further speech, but interrupted herself, and was contented with a mere repetition of her first words, “Don’t you believe it.”

“Your geese are all swans, Sanna,” Mrs. Toland said, with a tolerant smile.

“Very likely,” Miss Toland said briefly, drinking off her black coffee at a draught.  “Now,” she went on briskly, “where are you good people going?  Julia’s to meet me here in the Turkish Room at two; we have to pick out a hundred books, to start our library.”

“It’s after that now,” Barbara said.  “She’s probably waiting.  Let’s go out that way, Mother, and walk over to Sutter?”

They sauntered along the wide passage to the Turkish Room, and just before they reached it a young woman came toward them, a slender, erect person, under whose neatly buttoned long coat showed the crisp hem of a blue linen dress.  Julia bowed briefly to the mother and daughter, but her eyes were only for Miss Toland.  She was nervous and constrained; bright colour had come into her cheeks; she could not speak.  But Barbara merely thought that the cheap little common actress had miraculously improved in appearance and manner, and noted the blue, blue eyes, and the glittering sweep of hair under Julia’s neat hat, and Miss Toland felt herself curiously touched by the appealing look that Julia gave her.