“Now for the books, Julia,” said she, beaming approval.  The two went off together, chattering like friends and equals.

“What does Aunt Sanna see in her?” marvelled Barbara, watching.

“Your aunt is peculiar,” Mrs. Toland said, with vague disapproval, compressing her lips.

“Well, the way she runs The Alexander is curious, to say the least,” Barbara commented vigorously.  “I couldn’t stay out there one week, myself, and have Aunt Sanna carrying on the way she does, planning a thing, and forgetting it in two seconds, and yelling at the children one day, and treating them to ice-cream the next!  Why, the last time I went out there Aunt Sanna was in bed, at eleven o’clock, because she felt like reading, and she’d called off the housekeeping class for no reason at all except that she didn’t feel like it!”

“Yes, I know, I know,” Mrs. Toland said, picking her way daintily across Market Street.  “But she has her own money, and I suppose she’ll go her own gait!” But she looked a little uneasy, and was silent for some moments, busy with her own thoughts.

Long before this Julia’s whereabouts had been discovered by her own family, and by at least one of her friends, Mark Rosenthal.  Mark walked in upon her one Sunday afternoon, when she had been about a month at The Alexander.  Miss Toland had gone for a few hours to Sausalito, and Julia was alone, and had some leisure.  She put on her hat, and she and Mark walked through the noisy Sunday streets; everybody was out in the sunshine, and saloons everywhere were doing a steady business.

“Evelyn told me where you were,” Mark explained.  Julia made a little grimace of disapproval, and the man, watching her, winced.

“Are you so sorry to have me know?” he asked, a sword in his heart.

“Oh, it’s not that, Mark!  But”—­Julia stammered—­“but I only went home to see grandma Thursday, and it struck me that Evelyn hadn’t lost much time!”

“Wouldn’t you ever have written me?” Mark asked, his dark eyes caressing her.

“Oh, of course I would.  Only I wanted to get a start first.  Why do you laugh?” Julia broke off to ask offendedly.

“Just because I love you so, darling.  Just because I’ve been hungry for you all these weeks—­and it’s just ecstasy to be here!” Mark’s eyes were moist now, though he was still smiling.  “You don’t know it, but I just live to see you, Julie.  I can’t think of anything else.  This—­this new job isn’t going to make any difference about our marrying, is it, darling?”

Julia surveyed a stretch of dirty street lined with dirty yet somewhat pretentious houses.  Women sat on drifts of newspapers on the steps, white-stockinged children quarrelled in the hot, dingy dooryards.

“I wish you didn’t care that way, Mark,” she said, uncomfortably.

“Why, dearest?” he said eagerly.  “Because I care more for you than you do for me?  I know that, Julie.”  He watched the cool little cheek nearest him.  “But wait until we’re married, Julie, you’ll love me then; I’ll make you!”