aguely.

"Jim's in one of his awful moods, I suppose?" his adopted aunt asked,
after a pause.

"Oh, in a dreadful one!" Julia confessed.

"How long--days?"

"Weeks, Aunt Sanna!"

"Weeks? For the Lord's sake, that's awful!" Miss Toland frowned and
rubbed the bridge of her nose. "What gets into the boy?" she said
impatiently. "You don't know what it's about, I suppose?"

Julia hesitated. "I think it's that he gets to thinking of my old life,
when I was a little nobody, south of Market Street," she hazarded with
as much truth as she could.

"Oh, _really_!" Miss Toland said, in a tone of cold satire. But her look
fell with infinite tenderness and pity upon the drooping little figure
opposite. "Yet there's nothing of the snob about Jim," she mused
unhappily.

"Oh, _no_!" Julia breathed earnestly.

"There isn't, eh?" Miss Toland said. "I'm not so sure. I'm not at all
sure. He isn't working too hard, is he?"

"He isn't working hard at all," Julia said. "Jim doesn't have a case, to
worry over, twice a year. You see it's either City and County cases,
that he just goes ahead and _does_, or else it's rich, rich people who
have one of the older doctors, and just call Jim in to assist or
consult. He was a little nervous over a demonstration before the
students the other day, but at the very last second," Julia's quick
smile flitted over her face, "at the very last second the assisting
nurse dropped the cold bone--as they call it--that Jim was going to
transplant. Doctor Chapman told him he'd bet Jim bribed the girl to do
it!"

"H'm!" Miss Toland said absently. "But his father was just another such
moody fellow, queer as Dick's hatband!" she added, suddenly, after a
pause.

"Jim's father? I didn't know you knew him!"

"Knew him? Indeed I did! We all lived in Honolulu in those days.
Charming, charming fellow, George Studdiford, but queer. He was very
musical, you know; he'd look daggers at you if you happened to sneeze in
the middle of one of his Beethoven sonatas. Tim's mother was very sweet,
beautiful, too, but spoiled, Julia, spoiled!"

"Too much money!" Julia said, shaking her head.

"Exactly--there you have it!" Miss Toland assented triumphantly. "I've
seen too much of it not to know it. There's a sort of dry rot about it;
even a fine fellow like Jim can't escape. But, my dear"--her tone became
reassuring--"don't let it worry you. He'll get over it. Just bide your
time!"

"Well, that's just what I _am_ doin