“Why is it assumed, really,” said she, “that women are such poor little butterflies that amusing and being amused should absorb all their energies?  I don’t think of myself as a pet, do you, Miss Heth?  Give us something solid to do, and the world wouldn’t be so full of discontented women.  Do you know, if I had a daughter,” said Mrs. Page, “and she wasn’t married after three years ‘out,’ and hadn’t developed any special talent, I should send her straight down to Hartman’s Business College, and have her learn typewriting.  Yes, I should!—­and make her get a place in an office, too, at five dollars a week!...”

The distinguished visitor remained twenty minutes in the improbable drawing-room, and contrived to make herself interesting.  When she rose to go, she mentioned that she was staying at her mother’s place in the country till after Thanksgiving, and was only in town for the day.  And then, as she held out her hand, smiling in a simple and friendly way, her expression changed, and she brought up her other hand and laid it over Carlisle’s.

“My dear,” she began, with some embarrassment, “I wonder if you will let a much older woman say how truly she has sympathized with you in—­all this trouble—­and how much she has admired you, too?...”

Cally’s eyes wavered and fell.  And suddenly she divined that this, and nothing else, was what Mrs. Page had come to say.

“All of us make mistakes in this world,” went on the kind voice—­“all that I know do wrong.  But not all of us, I’m afraid, have the courage to go back and set right what we did, as bravely as you have done.”

The girl stood dumb....  Strange, indeed, that the first word of understanding sympathy she had had since her home-coming—­barring only Hen Cooney—­should have come from this worse than stranger, whom at a distance she had long secretly envied and disliked.  One touch of generous kindness, and the hostility of years seemed to fall away....

She raised her eyes, trying with indifferent success to smile.  But perhaps her look showed something of what she felt:  for Mrs. Page immediately took the girl’s face between her hands and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“May I?...  I mean by it that I hope you’ll let me know you better, when I’m home again....  Good-bye.”

Cally caught the gloved hand upon her cheek, and said, with an impulsiveness far from her habit: 

“I think you’re the sweetest person I ever saw....”

* * * * *

And two days later, she said to her mother, though in a distinctly frivolous tone: 

“What would you think of me as a Settlement worker, mamma?”

“Settlement worker?...  Well, we’ll see,” said Mrs. Heth, absently.  “It remains to be seen how far the best people are going in for it....”

Cally laughed.  She was beautifully dressed, and felt perfectly poised.  It was five o’clock in the afternoon, and she and her mother were in the new vindication limousine, en route to the old Dabney House.