"Naturally," responded Julia; "and after all, this will be as good a cause as nursing sick soldiers, though I understand your disappointment."
As the two friends talked, Julia's face lost the pensive expression that Lois had remarked when she first came in. The expression had no deeper reason than her feeling of dissatisfaction with her winter's work, a regret that what she had undertaken must hamper her now, when greater things were claiming the attention of so many other of her friends. Yet before Lois went home she had begun to see that she need not be dissatisfied with her own limitations.
"'They also serve who only stand and wait,'" Lois had quoted apropos to herself, just as Philip had quoted it some weeks before, and Julia found this line of Milton's even more applicable to her own case than Philip had to his. For there was a prospect that Lois, if the war continued, might find it possible to offer herself as a nurse, while Julia was sure that the duties that she had assumed would prevent her doing this, even as Philip knew that he could not leave his father. Julia regretted, too, that she had not as much money to offer as she would have had but for her year's work at the Mansion.
Miss Ambrose, to whom Lois had referred, was not a relative, nor even an old friend. She had made the acquaintance of this elderly woman by chance toward the close of her Radcliffe course, and had found her way to Miss Ambrose's heart without special effort on her own part. An accident had enabled her to do Miss Ambrose a real kindness. The older woman had been greatly pleased to learn that Lois was studying at Radcliffe. Her own tastes in her younger days had inclined her to a college education, but, alas! at that time there was small opportunity for a woman to go to college. In interesting herself in Lois' college work she had seemed to live over again her own youth, and she was never weary of hearing the details of college life. Later, when Lois was on the point of leaving Radcliffe, because she had not the money to stay there longer, Miss Ambrose insisted on her accepting from her the sum necessary to enable her to remain. In view of the older woman's kindness, and also because a genuine friendship existed between the two, it was natural that Lois should wish to stay with Miss Ambrose while she was ill. Indeed, she was glad to do this, even though she had to curb her desire to be a nurse during the war.