Julia, out in the street again and enjoying, as she always did enjoy, the sense of being a busy householder, facing the tide of home-goers, would perhaps have an errand in the damp depth of the big milk depot, would get chops or sausages at some small shop, or stop a fruit cart, driving by in the dimness, for apples or oranges.

Then home to the brightly lighted little kitchen, the tireless little gas stove.  Julia, cheerfully attempting to do ten things at once, would look up to see Miss Toland, comfortably wrappered and corsetless, in the doorway.

“Don’t forget your window shades, Julie.”

“I know, but I wanted to get this oven started—­if these sweets are to bake.”

“Give me something to do!” And the older woman, seated, was pleased to cut bread and fill salt shakers at the request of her busy assistant.  “To-night’s the older girls, is it?” she would yawn.  “Is Miss Pierce coming?  Good!  Well, tell me if you need me, and I’ll dress and come out.”

“Oh, we’re not doing much to-night,” Julia invariably assured her.  Miss Toland never questioned the verdict that freed her for an evening of restful reading.  Julia it was who lighted the hall and opened the street door, and welcomed the arriving club girls.  Sometimes these young women brought their sewing—­invariably fancywork.  Sometimes there was a concert to rehearse, or they danced with each other, or stood singing about Julia at the piano while she banged away at the crude accompaniments of songs.  Miss Pierce or Miss Watts, older women, usually came in for a little while to see what was going on, but again it was Julia alone who must bid the girls good-night and lock and darken the hall.

Once a month there was a dance for the older girls, to which their “friends,” a word which meant to each girl her foremost male admirer, were asked, and at which cake and ice-cream were served.  Julia always wore her uniform to these dances, but she also danced, when asked, and never attempted to deny that she enjoyed herself.  But that there was an immense gulf already widening between her and these other girls, one of whom she might have been, she soon began to perceive.  They were noisy, ignorant, coarse young creatures, like children unable to see beyond the pleasure or the discomfort of the day, unable to help themselves out of the sordid rut in which they had been born.  Julia watched them soberly, silently, as the years went by.  One by one they told her of their wedding plans, and introduced the boyish, ill-shaven, grinning lads who were to be husbands and fathers soon.  One by one Julia watched the pitifully gay little weddings, in rooms poisonous with foul air and crowded with noisy kinspeople.  One by one she welcomed old members of the Girls’ Club as new members of the Mothers’ Club.  The young mother’s figure would be curiously shapeless now, her girlish beauty swept away as by a sponge, her nervous pride in the beribboned baby weakened by her own physical weakness and clouded by the fear that already a second child’s claim was disputing that of the first.  And already her young voice would borrow some of the hopeless whining tones of the older women’s.