Julie was blank with disappointment, but it was useless to insist, so she left the letter sealed and stamped and ready for the address. She did not know it, but that night when all the house was quiet, old Miss Fogg slipped out and, going secretly down a side street, posted the letter which she had managed to address, after looking all about and up and down to be sure that no one was spying at her. XVIII The summer days slipped by. The intense city heat of mid-August burned itself up toward September. Old Miss Fogg waited and waited, but there came no answer to the letter. Julie fought against the old woman’s despairing disappointment, buoying her up with the power of her own spirit. She had often the feeling that wide wings spread themselves, out of the sheer force of her devotion, and bore that broken and defeated bit of old age up into a sunny atmosphere. Then she would be rewarded for all her pains. A faint flush would run into the old cheeks, she would look at Julie out of clear eyes from which all the crafty despair was momentarily gone, and which were almost as serene as the eyes of a happy child. It was that look which was a reward for all Julie’s efforts. She was thinking of it, hoping for it one day as she came along the street late in the afternoon. She was to have a little party for Miss Fogg that evening. The old woman was coming down to have supper with Julie and Tim and perhaps, if they could coax her into it, to go to a moving picture afterward. For the occasion Julie had done up one of Miss Fogg’s white muslin waists for her, earlier in the afternoon. She had done it with especial care, and was proud of her handiwork. She took it upstairs, holding it daintily on a coat-hanger so as not to wrinkle its perishable freshness, and displayed it to the old woman. Miss Fogg had looked really pleased, and had promised to put it on. Julie was bringing home now a number of small packages for the supper party. All the preparations filled her with an intensity of happiness. So much so that merely doing them was not enough; she must sit down a moment and think them all over. Accordingly, when she came to Monroe Park on her homeward way, she sat down for a moment on one of its benches. The park was shady, with the slanting green-gold light of late afternoon sifting through the trees. Silver showers from the fountain sprayed up and caught the sunlight, and groups of very small children, looking almost unearthly in that glamour of green and gold effulgence, ran and played upon the grass, or up and down the paths, their laughter a whimsical undercurrent beneath the grown-up noises of the city.