“Well,” said Mrs. Wiley, smiling pacifically upon them both, “I like to think I’ve brought a little of Boston with me and transplanted it. My people”--she turned to Ginger--“have never yet, after all these years, become entirely reconciled to having me a New Yorker, but I say to them--‘My dears, cannot one have a lamp, and a fire, and a book, even in New York?’” Ginger liked their voices and the way they looked at each other. She wondered if Dean Wolcott’s mother was something like Mrs. Wiley. Presently the parents went away to their concert and the girls talked for an hour, and then Mary Wiley, who said she had been indoors all day, offered to walk with Ginger back to her hotel. They went beside the river as far as Seventy-second Street, and Mary Wiley walked with her remembered smoothness of gait, swiftly and easily on her low heeled and gray-spatted feet. Ginger, in footgear of her Aunt Fan’s choosing, seemed to be on stilts in comparison. She learned, during the walk, what her friend had meant by calling that her lazy day. Every other week day she had classes at an Italian Settlement House far uptown; she thought Ginger might enjoy visiting it with her, one day. This was the beginning--when Mary Wiley walked back into Ginger’s life on her low heels--of Ginger’s entrance into the inner city, where her Aunt Fan, ardent pilgrim that she was, and Jim Featherstone, born on West Fortieth Street, could never penetrate. She still went once or twice a week with them to dinners and “shows,” but for the rest of the time she was quietly busy with her friend: afternoons at the Settlement, early morning walks in the Park, trips on the river--over the river to the Palisades; the Russian quarter, the Syrian quarter; a service at the Greek cathedral, performances at little theaters which Jim Featherstone had shied away from as dangerously high-brow; exhibitions of strange new pictures at the smaller galleries--or mellow old pictures. Mary Wiley seemed always occupied but never hurried; her life was a brimming cup which never ran over. She took Ginger to an upstairs shop in a cross street where low-voiced saleswomen conferred together over her and sent for certain special models--“Miss Hadley, don’t you think that old-blue frock for Miss McVeagh--the one with the silver fringe?”--or “I believe that Russian peasant thing would suit Miss McVeagh----” Mary Wiley urged her to take the Russian peasant thing; it was richly red, of a soft wool stuff, boldly embellished in cobalt and dull silver. “It’s the sort of thing I’ve longed all my life to wear,” she said, and her satisfaction seemed all the deeper for being vicarious. “You can’t think what a joy it is to see it on you, Virginia! My dear, are you half thankful enough for being so beautiful? You ought to set aside a Thanksgiving Day for every month in the year!”