Julia, standing gravely in the doorway, considered.

“The girls won’t be gone for another hour, Miss Toland!”

“The—–­Oh, the girls, to be sure.  Of course.  Who else is there, Julia?”

“Miss Parker and Miss Chetwynde.  And Mrs. Forbes Foster was here for a little while.”

Miss Toland, drawing on silk stockings, would make a grimace.

“What did you tell them?”

“Sick headache.”

“Oh, yes, quite right!  Well, get through out there, and we’ll go somewhere.”

The assistant, about to depart, would hesitate: 

“I have nothing to wear but my tailor-made and a white waist, Miss Toland.”

“And quite good enough!  No one will notice us.”

Perhaps truly no one noticed the eagerly talking, middle-aged woman and her pretty and serious little companion, as they sat in a quiet corner of the big grill-room, eating their dinner, but Julia noticed everything, and even while she answered Miss Toland politely, her eyes were moving constantly to and fro.  She watched the cellarer, in his leather apron, the well-dressed, chattering men and women who came and went; she drank in the warm, perfumed air as if it were the elixir of life.  The music enchanted her, the big room with its lofty ceiling, its clustered lights and flowers, swam in a glorious blur before her.

Miss Toland would bow now and then, and tell Julia about the people to whom she bowed.  Once they saw Doctor Studdiford laughing and talking at a distant table with a group of young men, and once it was Barbara, lovely in a blue evening gown, who came across the room to speak to her aunt.

“And hello, Julia!” said Barbara pleasantly, on this occasion, resting her armful of blue brocade and eiderdown upon a chair back.  “It’s awfully nice to see you two enjoying yourselves!”

“What are you doing, dear?” her aunt asked.

“Mrs. Maitland’s party—­and we’re going to the Orpheum.  I don’t care much for vaudeville, though” And idly eying Julia, she added, “Do you, Julia?”

Julia’s heart leaped, her mouth felt dry.

“I like plays,” she stammered, trying to smile, and clearing her throat.

“Well, so do I.”  Barbara shrugged, gathered up her coat again, and drifted away.  Julia heard nothing else that night but the kindly, insolent little voice that seemed to make a friend and equal of her, and when she was alone in bed in the dark, she went over and over the little scene again, and thrilled again at Barbara’s graciousness.

Perhaps six times a year Miss Toland went to Sausalito for a few days, and then, during her first year as a settlement worker, Julia went to her grandmother’s house.  Evelyn was now working with Ryan, the Tolands’ fashionable dressmaker, and doing extremely well.  Marguerite was engaged to be married, and as foolishly happy as if her eyes had been fixed upon ideal unions since the days of her childhood.