"I wonder how it’ll be when I’m married? Anyway, I bet you’d never catch me moping around like she does! If I was rich like her, and got sick, I’d have lots of flowers, and friends coming in all the time--everything nice and pretty and bright; and a trained nurse, too, I guess." It must be admitted that Angelica had little sympathy. She had a certain amount of facile generosity. She had moods when she was willing to do a great deal for any one she liked; but it was impossible for her to put herself in the place of another, to compassionate any pain which she had not actually felt herself. Losing a baby seemed to her a grief of small significance. She had seen very little of babies, and wasn’t interested in them. To her, at nineteen, the only comprehensible sorrow was that of losing a lover. She regarded Polly with irritation. She was rich, not too old, not too bad-looking; why didn’t she try to throw off this lethargy of grief and take some advantage of her opportunities? The life of a rich person, as seen by Angelica, was a very fantasy of gaiety. It might be gaiety covering a broken heart, if you wished, but always gaiety. The proper course for such as Polly would be to plunge into a whirlpool of excitement, and just reveal, from time to time, by a shadow stealing over her face, that her heart was broken. No, decidedly she could not comprehend this woman lying there with closed eyes, brooding over her immeasurable loss. Polly, however, through her greater sophistication and experience, and through her native shrewdness, found Angelica no puzzle. Now and then she asked her a well-calculated question, and she soon learned that Angelica had apparently spent all her nineteen years in learning, quite unconsciously, whatever would be useful in a lady’s service. She had spent innumerable Saturday afternoons sauntering through the big shops with girl friends, until her mind was richly stored with information. She knew just which place was best for any given article. She had compared styles and prices, and, with the amazing discernment of her sort, she had even distinguished among the various grades of customers. She knew who the really best people were, where they went for things, what they wanted, and what they paid. She knew things one wouldn’t have imagined her knowing--smart, out-of-the-way little shops for perfumes, for sweets, for lingerie. Of equal or perhaps superior value was her deftness. She could manicure, she could dress hair; she had picked up, God knows how or where, an almost professional knowledge of make-up. She could sew, she could embroider, she could quite marvelously trim hats. She told all this to Polly, because she wanted to convince her of her usefulness. And she did.