One day when Miss Toland was lunching with her Julia made some allusion to the subject, in answer to the older woman's comment that she did not look very well. "I'm _not_ very well, Aunt Sanna," said Julia, pushing her plate away, and resting both slim elbows on the table. "I'm worried." "Not about Anna?" Miss Toland asked quickly. "No-o! Anna, God bless her, is simply six-months-old perfection!" Julia said, with a brief smile. "No--about myself and Jim." Miss Toland gave her a shrewd glance. "Quarrelled, eh?" she said simply. "Oh, no!" Julia felt her eyes watering. "No. I almost wish we had. Because then I could go to him, and say 'I'm sorry!'" she stammered. "Sorry for what?" demanded Miss Toland. "For whatever I'd done!" elucidated Julia, with her April smile. "Yes, but suppose he'd done it, what then?" Miss Toland asked. "Ah, well," Julia hesitated. "Jim doesn't do things!" she said vaguely. "Jim's in one of his awful moods, I suppose?" his adopted aunt asked, after a pause. "Oh, in a dreadful one!" Julia confessed. "How long--days?" "Weeks, Aunt Sanna!" "Weeks? For the Lord's sake, that's awful!" Miss Toland frowned and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "What gets into the boy?" she said impatiently. "You don't know what it's about, I suppose?" Julia hesitated. "I think it's that he gets to thinking of my old life, when I was a little nobody, south of Market Street," she hazarded with as much truth as she could. "Oh, _really_!" Miss Toland said, in a tone of cold satire. But her look fell with infinite tenderness and pity upon the drooping little figure opposite. "Yet there's nothing of the snob about Jim," she mused unhappily. "Oh, _no_!" Julia breathed earnestly. "There isn't, eh?" Miss Toland said. "I'm not so sure. I'm not at all sure. He isn't working too hard, is he?" "He isn't working hard at all," Julia said. "Jim doesn't have a case, to worry over, twice a year. You see it's either City and County cases, that he just goes ahead and _does_, or else it's rich, rich people who have one of the older doctors, and just call Jim in to assist or consult. He was a little nervous over a demonstration before the students the other day, but at the very last second," Julia's quick smile flitted over her face, "at the very last second the assisting nurse dropped the cold bone--as they call it--that Jim was going to transplant. Doctor Chapman told him he'd bet Jim bribed the girl to do it!" "H'm!" Miss Toland said absently. "But his father was just another such moody fellow, queer as Dick's hatband!" she added, suddenly, after a pause. "Jim's father? I didn't know you knew him!" "Knew him? Indeed I did! We all lived in Honolulu in those days. Charming, charming fellow, George Studdiford, but queer. He was very musical, you know; he'd look daggers at you if you happened to sneeze in the middle of one of his Beethoven sonatas. Tim's mother was very sweet, beautiful, too, but spoiled, Julia, spoiled!"