"Probably not," he admitted, "but I wouldn't waste my jelly if I were
you."

"I sha'n't" she determined sadly, "and that's the thing I miss most of
all--visiting the sick."

"You might devote yourself to the hospitals--there are plenty of them it
seems."

Her resignation, however, was complete, and she showed no impulse to
reach out actively again. "It wouldn't be the same, my dear--I don't
want strange paupers but real friends. Do you know," she added, with a
despair that was almost abject, "I was counting up this morning the
people I might speak to if I met them in the street, and I got them in
easily on the fingers of one hand. That included," she confessed after a
hesitation, "the doctor, the butcher's boy and the woman who comes to
scrub. It would surprise you to find what a very interesting woman she
is."

Trent rose from his chair and, coming round to where she sat, gave her a
boyish hug of sympathy. "You're a regular angel of a mother," he said
and added playfully, while he still held her, "even then I don't see how
you make it five."

She put up her large white hand and smoothed his hair across his
forehead. "That's only because I made an acquaintance in the elevator
yesterday," she replied.

"In the elevator! How?"

"The thing always makes me nervous, you know--I can't abide it, and I'd
much rather any day go up and down the seven flights--but she met me as
I started to walk and persuaded me to come inside. Then she held my hand
until I got quite to the bottom."

"Indeed," said Trent suspiciously; "who was she?"

"Her name is Christina Coles, and she came from Clarke County. I knew
her grandfather."

"Thank Heaven!" breathed Trent, and his voice betrayed his happy
reassurance.

"She's really very pretty--all the Coles were handsome--her great-aunt
was once a famous beauty. Do you remember my speaking of her--Miss Betty
Coles?" He shook his head, and she proceeded with her reminiscence.

"Well, she was said to have received fifty proposals before her
twenty-fifth birthday, but she never married. On her last visit to me,
when she was a very old lady, I asked her why--and her answer was: 'Pure
fastidiousness.'" She had picked up her purple shawl, and the long ivory
knitting needles began to click.

"But I'm more interested in the young lady of the elevator--What is she
like?"

"Not the beauty that Betty was, but still very pretty, with the same
blue eyes and brown hair, which she wears part