Voice and smile were full of praise; yet behind the praise (Nona also knew) lurked the unformulated apprehension: "All this running after sick people and unhappy people--is it going to turn into a vocation?" Nothing could have been more distasteful to Mrs. Manford than the idea that her only daughter should be not only good, but merely good: like poor Aggie Heuston, say... Nona could hear her mother murmuring: "I can't imagine where on earth she got it from," as if alluding to some physical defect unaccountable in the offspring of two superbly sound progenitors. They started early, for forty-eight hours of accumulated leisure had reinforced Pauline's natural activity. Amalasuntha, mysteriously smiling and head-shaking over the incommunicable figures of Klawhammer's offer, had bustled back to town early on Monday, leaving the family to themselves--and a certain feeling of flatness had ensued. Dexter, his wife thought, seemed secretly irritated, but determined to conceal his irritation from her. It was about Michelangelo, no doubt. Lita was silent and sleepy. No one seemed to have anything particular to do. Even in town Mondays were always insipid. But in the afternoon Manford "took Lita off their hands," as his wife put it, by carrying her away for the long-deferred spin in the Buick; and Pauline plunged back restfully into visiting-lists and other domestic preoccupations. She certainly had nothing to worry about, and much to rejoice in, yet she felt languid and vaguely apprehensive. She began to wonder if Alvah Loft's treatment were of the lasting sort, or if it lost its efficacy, like an uncorked drug. Perhaps the Scientific Initiate she had been told about would have a new panacea for the mind as well as for the epiderm. She would telephone and make an appointment; it always stimulated her to look forward to seeing a new healer. As Mrs. Swoffer said, one ought never to neglect a spiritual opportunity; and one never knew on whom the Spirit might have alighted. Mrs. Swoffer's conversation was always soothing and yet invigorating, and Pauline determined to see her too. And there was Arthur--poor Exhibit A!--on Jim's account it would be kind to look him up if there were time; unless Nona could manage that too, in the intervals of solacing Maisie. It was so depressing--and so useless--to sit in a hospital parlour, looking at old numbers of picture papers, while those awful white-sleeved rites went on in the secret sanctuary of tiles and nickel-plating. It would do Nona good to have an excuse for slipping away. Pauline's list of things-to-be-done had risen like a spring tide as soon as she decided to go to town for the day. There was hair-waving, manicuring, dressmaking--her dress for the Cardinal's reception. How was she ever to get through half the engagements on her list? And of course she must call at the hospital with a big basket of grapes and flowers...