imagined at first sight. Those two girls had talked to each other
as though they were old friends; as though they had known each
other all their lives. That was the thing which perplexed R.
Jones.

With the tread of a red Indian, he approached the door and put
his ear to it. He found he could hear quite comfortably.

Aline, meantime, inside the room, had begun to draw comfort from
Joan's very appearance, she looked so capable.

Joan's eyes had changed the expression they had contained during
the recent interview. They were soft now, with a softness that
was half compassionate, half contemptuous. It is the compensation
which life gives to those whom it has handled roughly in order
that they shall be able to regard with a certain contempt the
small troubles of the sheltered. Joan remembered Aline of old,
and knew her for a perennial victim of small troubles. Even in
their schooldays she had always needed to be looked after and
comforted. Her sweet temper had seemed to invite the minor slings
and arrows of fortune. Aline was a girl who inspired
protectiveness in a certain type of her fellow human beings. It
was this quality in her that kept George Emerson awake at nights;
and it appealed to Joan now.

Joan, for whom life was a constant struggle to keep the wolf
within a reasonable distance from the door, and who counted that
day happy on which she saw her way clear to paying her weekly
rent and possibly having a trifle over for some coveted hat or
pair of shoes, could not help feeling, as she looked at Aline,