But here and there one found women, like Carlotta and Miss Wardwell, who had mistaken their vocation, who railed against the monotony of the life, its limitations, its endless sacrifices. They showed it in their eyes.
Fifty or so against two--fifty who looked out on the world with the fearless glance of those who have seen life to its depths, and, with the broad understanding of actual contact, still found it good. Fifty who were learning or had learned not to draw aside their clean starched skirts from the drab of the streets. And the fifty, who found the very scum of the gutters not too filthy for tenderness and care, let Carlotta and, in lesser measure, the new probationer alone. They could not have voiced their reasons.
The supper-room was filled with their soft voices, the rustle of their skirts, the gleam of their stiff white caps.
When Carlotta came in, she greeted none of them. They did not like her, and she knew it.
Before her, instead of the tidy supper-table, she was seeing the medicine-tray as she had left it.
“I guess I've fixed her,” she said to herself.
Her very soul was sick with fear of what she had done.
K. saw Sidney for only a moment on Christmas Day. This was when the gay little sleigh had stopped in front of the house.
Sidney had hurried radiantly in for a moment. Christine's parlor was gay with firelight and noisy with chatter and with the clatter of her tea-cups.
K., lounging indolently in front of the fire, had turned to see Sidney in the doorway, and leaped to his feet.
“I can't come in,” she cried. “I am only here for a moment. I am out sleigh-riding with Dr. Wilson. It's perfectly delightful.”
“Ask him in for a cup of tea,” Christine called out. “Here's Aunt Harriet and mother and even Palmer!”
Christine had aged during the last weeks, but she was putting up a brave front.
Sidney ran to the front door and called: “Will you come in for a cup of tea?”
As Sidney turned back into the house, she met Palmer. He had come out in the hall, and had closed the door into the parlor behind him. His arm was still in splints, and swung suspended in a gay silk sling.
The sound of laughter came through the door faintly.
“How is he to-day?” He meant Johnny, of course. The boy's face was always with him.