Or sometimes, when for any reason the attendance upon the sewing classes was poor, Miss Toland bought herself a new blank book, dated it fiercely, and proceeded to ransack the neighbourhood for children in a house-to-house canvass. Julia and she would take a car into Mission Street, eat their dinner at the Colonial dining-room, where all sorts of wholesome dairy dishes were consumed by hungry hundreds every night, and where a white-clad man turned batter cakes in the window. "They do that everywhere in New York," said Miss Toland, thereby thrilling Julia. "What, d'you like New York?" asked the older woman. "I've never seen it!" Julia breathed. "Well, some day we'll go on--study methods there. Spring's the time," said Miss Toland, raising gold-rimmed eyeglasses to study the grimy and spotted menu. "Spring afternoons on the Avenue, or driving in the Park--it's quite wonderful! I see they have chicken pie specially starred, thirty-five cents; shall we try that?" After the meal the canvassing began, Miss Toland doing all the talking, while Julia stared about the small, stuffy interiors, and smiled at the babies and old women. Miss Toland jotted down in her book all the details she gathered in each house, and only stopped in her quest when the hour and the darkened houses reminded her that the evening was flying. This might keep up every free evening for two weeks; it would end as suddenly as it began, and Miss Toland enter upon a lazy and luxurious phase. She would spend whole mornings and even afternoons in bed, reading and dozing, and fresh from a hot bath at four o'clock, would summon her assistant and make a suggestion or two. "Julia, suppose we go down to the Palace for tea?" Julia, standing gravely in the doorway, considered. "The girls won't be gone for another hour, Miss Toland!" "The--Oh, the girls, to be sure. Of course. Who else is there, Julia?" "Miss Parker and Miss Chetwynde. And Mrs. Forbes Foster was here for a little while." Miss Toland, drawing on silk stockings, would make a grimace. "What did you tell them?" "Sick headache." "Oh, yes, quite right! Well, get through out there, and we'll go somewhere." The assistant, about to depart, would hesitate: "I have nothing to wear but my tailor-made and a white waist, Miss Toland." "And quite good enough! No one will notice us." Perhaps truly no one noticed the eagerly talking, middle-aged woman and her pretty and serious little companion, as they sat in a quiet corner of the big grill-room, eating their dinner, but Julia noticed everything, and even while she answered Miss Toland politely, her eyes were moving constantly to and fro. She watched the cellarer, in his leather apron, the well-dressed, chattering men and women who came and went; she drank in the warm, perfumed air as if it were the elixir of life. The music enchanted her, the big room with its lofty ceiling, its clustered lights and flowers, swam in a glorious blur before her.