They were not restricted, even, to a regular route, when their subject took them out of it.  They could have a glimpse of Memphis, or Babylon, or Alexandria, or Athens, by way of following out an allusion or synchronism.

Hazel and Ada almost came to the conclusion that this was the perfection of travelling, and the supersedure of all literal and laborious sightseeing; and Sylvie Argenter ventured the Nipperism that “tea and coffee and spices might or might not be a little different right off the bush, but if shiploads were coming in to you all the time, you might combine things with as much comfort on the whole, perhaps, as you would have in sailing round for every separate pinch to Ceylon, and Java, and Canton.”

The leaf had got turned between Leicester Place and Pilgrim Street.  I suppose you knew it would as well as I.

Bel Bree had met Dorothy first in silk-and-button errands for her Aunt Blin’s “finishings,” at the thread-store where Dot tended.  (Such machine-sewing as they could obtain, Ray had done at home, since they came into the city; and Dot had taken this place at Brade and Matchett’s.) Then they came across each other in their waitings at the Public Library, and so found out their near neighborhood.  At last, growing intimate, Dorothy had introduced Bel to the Chapel Bible class, and thence brought her into Desire’s especial little club at her own house.

After the travel-talk was over,—­and they began with it early, so that all might reach home at a safe hour in the evening,—­very often some one or two would linger a few moments for some little talk of confidence or advice with Desire.  These girls brought their plans to her; their disappointments, their difficulties, their suggestions; not one would make a change, or take any new action, without telling her.  They knew she cared for them.  It was the beginning of all religion that she taught them in this faith, this friendliness.  Every soul wants some one to come to; it is easy to pass from the experience of human sympathy to the thought of the Divine; without it the Divine has never been revealed.

One bright night in this October, Dot Ingraham waited, letting her sister walk on with Frank Sunderline, who had called for them, and asking Bel Bree to stop a minute and go with her.  “We’ll take the car, presently,” she said to Ray.  “We shall be at home almost as soon as you will.”

“It is about the shop work,” she said to Desire, who stepped back into the library with her.

“I do not think I can do it much longer.  I am pretty strong for some things, but this terrible standing!  I could walk all day; but cramped up behind those counters, and then reaching up and down the boxes and things,—­I feel sometimes when I get through at night, as if my bones had all been racked.  I haven’t told them at home, for fear they would worry about me; they think now I’ve lost flesh, and I suppose I have;