“I’d like a boy to start off with,” ’Lizabeth said.  “He could take his sisters to parties—­”

“Yes, but they never do; they take other girls to parties!” the fifteen-year-old Mary said suddenly, and the older girls laughed together at her sapience.

“Peter has a girl,” Kennedy said.  “But naturally he won’t desert the bunch.  Next year, when some bills we simply couldn’t help—­”

“Doctor and nurse when George and Mary had typhoid,” ’Lizabeth explained.

“—­are paid off,” Kennedy continued.  “Then, if he still likes her, he might.  But he never stays in love very long,” she ended hopefully.

The four girls talked late into the night, and after a picnic the next day, a Sunday, Julia felt as if she loved them all, and she and Kennedy began shyly to call each other by their given names.  Peter and George did not go on the picnic, having plans of their own for the day, but the others spent a dreamy day on Baker’s Beach, and the two older boys, joining the group at dinner, ended the holiday happily.  Julia carried away definite impressions to be brooded over in her quiet times.  The Scotts were “ladies,” of course.  Somehow, although they were very poor, they all worked very hard, and all dressed very shabbily, they were “ladies,” and knew only nice people.  The sisters were really stronger and braver than the brothers, and loved their brothers more than they were loved.  Julia wondered why.  Also she came a little reluctantly to the conclusion, as girls at twenty, whether they be Julias or Barbaras, usually do, that if there were a great many nice young men in the world, there were a great many marriageable girls, too.  No girl could expect a very wide choice of adorers, there were too many other girls.  And affairs of the heart, and offers of marriage, occurred much more often in books than in life.

Two or three times a week Miss Toland liked to rise early and go to the beautiful eight o’clock mass at St. Anne’s, the big institution for unfortunate girls that was not far from The Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House.  There was no church in the immediate vicinity, and in asking for permission to come to the convent chapel, Miss Toland had felt herself doing no extraordinary thing, had felt almost within her rights.

But the good nuns in charge of St. Anne’s had whetted her appetite for the experience by interposing unexpected objections.  Their charges, they explained, about two hundred in number, were very impressionable, very easily excited.  A stranger in the chapel meant a sensation.  Of course, the lay workers of the institution and the old people from the Home across the way sometimes came in, but they were so soberly dressed.  Perhaps if Miss Toland and Miss Page would dress in dark things, and assure Good Mother that they would not speak to the girls—­

“Oh, certainly!” Miss Toland had agreed eagerly.  Julia, awed by the airy, sombre interior of the great building, the closed doors, the far-away echoes of footsteps and subdued voices, was a little pale.