a
long table, straightened up to survey her demure little assistant.
"Well, now I'll tell you what we'll do to celebrate," she said, after a
thoughtful interval. "I understand that the Sisters over on Lake Merritt
have a very _remarkable_ sewing school. Now, we ought to see that, Julia,
don't you think so?"

"We might get some ideas," Julia agreed.

"Precisely. So you put the card--'No Classes Today'--on the door, and
we'll go. And put your milk bottle out, because we may be late. I hate
to do it, but I really think we should know what they're doing over
there."

"I do, too," Julia said. This form preceded most of their excursions. A
few moments later they were out in the open air, with the long sunny day
before them.

The months sped on their way again, and Julia had been in the settlement
two years--three years. She was eighteen, and the world did not stand
still. She was nineteen--twenty. She changed by slow degrees from the
frightened little rabbit that had fled to Miss Toland for refuge to an
observant, dignified young woman who was quietly sure of herself and her
work. The rumpled ashen glory that had been her hair was transformed
into the soft thick braids that now marked Miss Page's head apart from
those of the other girls of her day. The round arms were guiltless of
bracelets; Julia wore her severe blue uniform, untouched by any
ornament; her stockings and shoes were as plain as money could buy.

Her beauty, somewhat in eclipse for a time, presently shone out again.
But there were few to see it. Miss Watts, the simple, sweet, middle-aged
teacher of the kindergarten, admired it wistfully, and Miss Toland
watched it with secret pride. But the society girls and young matrons
who flitted in once or twice a week to teach their classes never saw it
at all, or, seeing it, merely told each other that little Miss Page
would be awfully pretty in decent things, and the women and girls and
children who formed the classes at The Alexander never saw her at all.
The women were too much absorbed in their own affairs, children are
proverbially blind to beauty, and the girls who came to the monthly
dances, the evening sewing classes and reading clubs, thought their
sober little guardian rather plain, as indeed she was, when judged by
their standard of dress, their ruffled lace collars and high-heeled
shoes, their curls and combs and coloured glass jewellery.

Julia's amazing detachment from the ordinary ideals of girlhood