ty."

Carmen did not much fancy this apology for her, but she rejoined: "Yes,
indeed. I'm going to cultivate it."

"How is this privileged person?" Mrs. Blunt asked.

"You shall see," said Edith. "I am glad you came, for I wanted very much
to consult you. I was going to send for you."

"Well, here I am. But I didn't come about the baby. I wanted to consult
you. We miss you, dear, every day." And then Mrs. Blunt began to speak
about some social and charitable arrangements, but stopped suddenly.
"I'll see the baby first. Good-morning, Mrs. Henderson." And she left
the room.

Carmen felt as much left out socially as about the baby, and she also
rose to go.

"Don't go," said Edith. "What kind of a summer have you had?"

"Oh, very good. Some shipwrecks."

"And Mr. Henderson? Is he well?"

"Perfectly. He is away now. Husbands, you know, haven't so much talent
for domesticity as we have."

"That depends," Edith replied, simply, but with that spirit and air of
breeding before which Carmen always inwardly felt defeat--"that depends
very much upon ourselves."

Naturally, with this absorption in the baby, Edith was slow to resume
her old interests. Of course she knew of the illness of Father Damon,
and the nurse, who was from the training-school in which Dr. Leigh was
an instructor, and had been selected for this important distinction by
the doctor, told her from time to time of affairs on the East Side. Over
there the season had opened quite as usual; indeed, it was always open;
work must go on every day, because every day food must be obtained
and rent-money earned, and the change from summer to winter was only
a climatic increase of hardships. Even an epidemic scare does not
essentially vary the daily monotony, which is accepted with a dogged
fatality:

There had been no vacation for Ruth Leigh, and she jokingly said, when
at length she got a half-hour for a visit to Edith, that she would
hardly know what to do with one if she had it.

"We have got through very well," she added. "We always dread the summer,
and we always dread the winter. Science has not yet decided which is
the more fatal, decayed vegetables or unventilated rooms. City residence
gives both a fair chance at the poor."

"Are not the people learning anything?" Edith asked.

"Not much, except to bear it, I am sorry to say. Even Father Damon--"

"Is he at work again? Do you see him often?"

"Yes, occasionally."

"I should so like to see him.