Thomasine--Thomasine began to bloom afresh. Factory and department store and business school and office lay behind her--each a stage upon a somewhat dull and dusty and ambuscade-beset road of life. Business school and office, training for mind and fingers alike, a resulting "place" with a fair-dealing firm--all that was Hagar's helping, a matter of the last six or seven years. And now Hagar had come back and had made Thomasine an offer, and Thomasine closed with it very simply and gladly. She had from the beginning worked hard and as best she could and had given good value for her pay; and now she was going still to do all that, but to do it with a singing heart and her hunger for beauty and fitness fed. The colour came back into her cheeks; she began to take on a sprite-like beauty. She brought seriously into conversation one day the fact that she had always been good at finding four-leafed clovers.... Jim and Marietta were doing fairly, still over in New Jersey. "Fairly" meant a poor house which Marietta did her best to keep clean, and two of the children working, and the city for summer and winter, and Jim's pay envelope neither larger nor heavier, but the cost of living both. But Jim had his "job," and Marietta was not so ailing as she used to be, and the two children brought in a little, and Thomasine helped each month; so they might be said to be doing much better than many others. There was even talk of being able one day to get--the whole family being fond of music--one of the cheaper phonographs. Hagar and Thomasine worked through the mornings, Hagar thinking, remembering, creating; Thomasine taking from her the labour of record; caring also for her letters and the keeping of accounts and all small, recurring business. And Thomasine loved to do any shopping that arose to be done,--which was well, for Hagar hated shopping,--and loved to keep the apartment "just so." The two lived in quiet, harmonious intercourse, together in working hours, but when working hours were over, each going freely her individual way. Thomasine, too, had friends. She wrote to Jim and Marietta and to Maggie at home, taking care of the mother with the spine, that she hadn't been so happy since they used to go to grandmother's at Gilead Balm.... Rose Darragh--Rose Darragh had not been at Hagar's housewarming. She was speaking that night in Newark. But some days afterwards she came--came late one afternoon with the statement that she had the evening free. She and Thomasine and Hagar dined in the café together, but Thomasine hurried through her dinner, for she was going to the theatre with a fellow-stenographer with whom she had worked for two years downtown, and who was "such a nice girl," and with the stenographer's brother, who looked like a nice brother. Hagar and Rose Darragh, left at the table, sipped their coffee.