was an
unending surprise to Miss Toland.

"She has simply and quietly set that astonishing little mind of hers
upon making herself a lady," Miss Toland said now and then to her
sister-in-law. Mrs. Toland would answer with only an abstracted smile.
If she had any convictions at all in her genial view of life, she
certainly believed a lady to be a thing born, not made. But she was not
concerned about Julia; she hardly realized the girl's existence.

Miss Toland, however, was keenly concerned about Julia. Julia had come
to be the absorbing interest of her life. It was quite natural that
Julia should love her, yet to the older woman it always seemed a
miracle, tremulously dear. That any one so young, so lovely, so ardent
as Julia should depend so utterly upon her was to Anna Toland an
unceasing delight. Julia had been bewildered and heartsick when she
turned to The Alexander, but she had never in her life known such an
aching loneliness as had been Miss Toland's fate for many years. To such
a nature the solitary years in Paris, the solitary return to California,
the tentative and unencouraged approaches to her nieces, all made a dark
memory. Rich as she was, independent and popular as she was, Miss
Toland's life had brought her nothing so sweet as this young thing, to
teach, to dominate, to correct, and to watch and delight in, too. As
Julia's grammar and manner and appearance rapidly improved, Miss Toland
began to exploit her, in a quiet way, and quietly gloried in the girl's
almost stern dignity. When the members of the board of directors were
buzzing about, Julia, with her neatly written report, was a little study
in alert and silent efficiency.

"She's a cute little thing," said Mrs. von Hoffmann, president of The
Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House, after one of these meetings of the
board, "but she never has much to say."

"No, she's a very silent girl," Miss Toland agreed, with that little
warmth at her heart the thought of Julia always brought.

"You imported her, Sanna?"

"Oh, no. She's a Californian."

"Really? And what do we pay her?"

"Forty."

"Forty? And didn't we pay that awful last creature sixty-five?"

"Seventy-five--yes." Miss Toland smiled wisely. "But she had been
specially trained, Tillie."

"Oh, specially trained!" Mrs. von Hoffmann, flinging a mass of rich
sables about her throat, began to work on the fingers of her white
gloves. "This girl's worth two of her," she asserted, "with her