Hagar told her as they walked. Elizabeth listened, knew nothing of them, but said gravely that it was a common lot nowadays. "I have seen many hard winters, but this promises to be one of the worst." She advised writing guardedly to Mrs. Green, until she found out how Thomasine and Jim wrote themselves. "They may not be telling her how bad it is, and if she cannot help, it is right that they shouldn't. I believe, too, in being hopeful. If they're sturdy, intelligent people, they'll weather the gale somehow, barring accidents. It's the miserable accidents--the strained arm, your Marietta's illness after the baby--things like that that tip the scales against them. Well, cheer up, child! You may hear that they've got work and are happy.--This is the Settlement." Three old residences, stranded long years ago when "fashionable society" moved away, first street by street and at last mile by mile, formed the Settlement. Made one building by archways cut through, grave and plain, with a dignity of good woodwork and polished brass and fit furniture sparely placed, the house had the poise and force of a galleon caught and held intact in the arms of some sargasso sea. All around it were wrecks of many natures, strangled, pinned down, and disintegrating, but it had not disintegrated. One use and custom had left it, but another had passed in with a nobler plan. Hagar Ashendyne went through the place, wondering, saw the workrooms, the classrooms, the assembly-room, the dwelling-rooms, austere, with a quiet goodness and fairness, of the people who dwelled there and made the heart of the place. "It is not like a convent," she said in a low voice; "at least, I imagine it is not--and yet--" "Oh, the two ideas have a point of contact!" answered Elizabeth cheerfully. "Only, here, the emphasis is laid on action." She met several people whom she thought she would like to meet again, and at the last minute came in Marie Caton. It was Marie, who, at five o'clock, put her on the Elevated that would take her home in twenty minutes. Marie had met the Maines--"I'm Southern, too, you know,"--and she promised to come to see Hagar, and she said that Hagar and Rachel Bolt must come, some Sunday afternoon, to the Settlement. "That is chiefly when we see our personal friends."