It was not, however, an easy matter to make friends with old Miss Fogg, as Julie discovered, in spite of her ardent longing to do so. The next morning, full of friendly desire, she went up the stairs to the bare third floor where the old woman had her room, and knocked upon her door. There was no answer. The empty hall was deserted and still save for the complaint of a few flies upon the dim unwashed window at one end, which gave what little light there was. Behind the closed door that faced her there was no sound. Julie waited there, the bearer of a cup of life that was brimful and eager to pour itself out in self-donation. A second time she knocked and waited, and finally a third time. Then at last she heard a noise within the room. The bed creaked, and footsteps came toward the door. The handle was turned and old Miss Fogg looked forth. In spite of herself Julie fell back a step or two. The old face staring out at her was so startling, so haggard, so defiant, and so horrible with despair, that she was speechless before it. For an instant the head was thrust out at her, its gray unbrushed hair, its withered neck set in torn nightgown-ruffles, looking like some grotesque despairing Jack-in-the-box. Then before Julie could muster a word, the face was withdrawn, the door banged shut, and the key twisted in the lock. Julie turned and fled down to her own room, her heart pounding, and her knees rather weak beneath her. “But I will get in to her yet. I will, I will!” she told herself. Later in the day she confessed her failure to Mrs. Watkins. “Well, didn’t I tell you that was just the way it would be?” the other said, taking a gloomy satisfaction in the coming true of her prediction. “But I will get in to help her yet,” Julie persisted. “She scares me; but I won’t let her shut herself up and suffer like that all alone. I can’t bear to think of it: it hurts me all through.” “Well, she’s not the only one suffering these days,” Mrs. Watkins returned sombrely. “Look at the awful things happening in Europe: young men being killed, an’ children starving, an’ old folks driven out of their homes.” Mrs. Watkins was holding her youngest child, a little boy of two, in her arms and rocking as she spoke. “I know,” Julie assented, “but that’s ’way off there across the ocean; Miss Fogg’s right here, right up over my head, suffering. The things that are happenin’ over there don’t seem so close.” “Don’t it seem close when it’s our own men, our own boys, fightin’?” Mrs. Watkins challenged. “My Lord! my youngest brother’s over there right this minute! It don’t seem far away to _me_--nor to my mother.” “I know, I know,” Julie answered hastily, breathlessly. “I know; but--” “You’re lucky that your man don’t have to go. Why was it you said they turned him down?” “It was--it was flat foot,” Julie said. She cleared her throat after she had said it, swallowing nervously, her eyes fixed upon her sewing.