Three old residences, stranded long years ago when "fashionable society" moved away, first street by street and at last mile by mile, formed the Settlement. Made one building by archways cut through, grave and plain, with a dignity of good woodwork and polished brass and fit furniture sparely placed, the house had the poise and force of a galleon caught and held intact in the arms of some sargasso sea. All around it were wrecks of many natures, strangled, pinned down, and disintegrating, but it had not disintegrated. One use and custom had left it, but another had passed in with a nobler plan.
Hagar Ashendyne went through the place, wondering, saw the workrooms, the classrooms, the assembly-room, the dwelling-rooms, austere, with a quiet goodness and fairness, of the people who dwelled there and made the heart of the place. "It is not like a convent," she said in a low voice; "at least, I imagine it is not--and yet--"
"Oh, the two ideas have a point of contact!" answered Elizabeth cheerfully. "Only, here, the emphasis is laid on action."
She met several people whom she thought she would like to meet again, and at the last minute came in Marie Caton. It was Marie, who, at five o'clock, put her on the Elevated that would take her home in twenty minutes. Marie had met the Maines--"I'm Southern, too, you know,"--and she promised to come to see Hagar, and she said that Hagar and Rachel Bolt must come, some Sunday afternoon, to the Settlement. "That is chiefly when we see our personal friends."
That night Hagar wrote to her grandmother and to Mrs. Green. In four days time she heard from the latter. Yes, Jim and all of them and Thomasine had moved to New Jersey. Times were hard, Jim said, and work was slack, and they thought they could better themselves. Sure enough he had got a right good job. They were living where it wasn't so crowded as it was in New York, almost in the country, right by a big mill. There was a row of houses, just alike, Thomasine said, and they were living in one of them. There wasn't any yard, but you could walk into the country and see the woods, and Thomasine said the sky was wonderful at night, all red from a furnace. Thomasine hadn't got work yet, but she thought that she would. There was a place where they made silk into ribbons, and she thought there'd be a place for her there. Marietta was better, and the children were fine. Mrs. Green sent the address--and Gilead Balm certainly missed Hagar.