e least sentimental, would
have been almost unendurable to her. Miss Gibbons, in that acrid
antiseptic way of hers, simply washed her soul in cold water and clothed
it again in the garments of self-respect.

Her manner to Rose, even as their friendship ripened and grew more
confident, never changed. Nor did the manner Rose adopted toward her.
Their endless talks resulted in a good deal of self-revelation, but this
was never direct. Miss Gibbons never again came as near to a
confidential account of her life, as she did on that first afternoon,
when she explained the thoroughness of her acquaintance with Judge
Granger. And Rose never explained how it had happened that she was left
at the mercy of the town of Centropolis by the failure of _The Girl
Up-stairs_ company. But she poured out for her friend a wealth of
illustrative reminiscences, drawn from her childhood, her days at the
university, her life on the stage; and though she was a good deal more
reticent about it, she even touched on her married life with Rodney; at
least, on the collateral incidents of it.

Miss Gibbons listened to all this with a hunger she didn't conceal, and
this eagerness gave Rose a pretty vivid picture of the inner life the
little woman had lived here in Centropolis.

If she'd been born a boy instead of a girl, she'd probably have equaled,
or outstripped, Rose thought, her father's eminence. With her courage,
her vitality, her fine penetrating intelligence, she'd have managed to
win her way out of this stagnant little back-water of life. But, having
been born a girl, brought up helpless, as became the daughter of the
circuit judge, and then having had this support wrenched from under her
at the critical moment, there had been nothing for her but--hats.

She'd never gone sour, at that; never, apparently, wasted any hours in
repining. She'd made, after a fashion, a career of hats; had risen on
them, to a position of acknowledged social consequence. There must have
been disquieting echoes in her, rhythms that answered to the pulsation
of an ampler life. She never could hope to get out into it, she
undoubtedly knew, but she took every opportunity she could get for a
glimpse at it. Rose's incursion into her life must have been a godsend
to her.

She probably pieced together a pretty good picture of Rose, too. But she
did this piecing in silence and kept her surmises to herself.

In a material way, her adoption of Rose was an immense success.