Would she and Roger some day meet like this for a moment on the coming of Rogie, a grown man?
Anne scarcely heard the letter Hilda had found, not in the work-basket at all, but in the pocket of her kitchen apron. It was only the postscript that drew Anne's attention in time to comment intelligently:
"We're leaving Marseilles to-morrow," Belle wrote, "and may go on to the Far East."
"Now, if that isn't just like Belle's luck," Hilda smiled and folded the letter. "Traipsing 'round like a millionaire with nothing to do. The lady has her own maid, and Belle only has to see that she takes her drops and things and doesn't get too tired. I'll bet Belle has a high old time."
Hilda looked like an excited child, prematurely gray-headed, as she nodded her assurance of Belle's ability to have a good time in any circumstance.
"I don't doubt that, but, personally, I can't imagine anything worse than trotting about with an invalid, looking after her pills and sandwiching all the lovely things in Europe into the spaces between her patient's rests."
Hilda laughed. "If I know Belle, by this time she's got that maid trained."
"She's tried, anyhow," Anne agreed, and they smiled together in appreciation of Belle's "efficiency."
Just as Anne was leaving Charlotte Welles came in, and Anne stayed on a few moments. Charlotte Welles was a slight woman with great dark eyes under cloudy brown hair, a pale skin, and pale, sweet lips. She had a soft voice, but her manner annoyed Anne. Her gentleness was so insistent, and although she never mentioned her belief in Christian Science, Anne was sure she never forgot it for a moment. She seemed always to measure one's remarks up against eternity, to discount any opposition as the meanderings of a clouded mind; to be quite sure that, in time, one would see Truth. To-night she was particularly annoying, although as Anne walked home she could not repeat a single annoying thing Mrs. Welles had said.
"She affects me as the sight of a limousine or a fur-lined overcoat affects the man with a dinner pail trudging in the street, I suppose. She's a kind of spiritual 'capitalist' with an unfair advantage over the rest of the world. Because she started with an illogical mind she's been able to accumulate this 'peace,' and never earned it through a real trouble in her life. I can't imagine what she and moms have in common, but she seems to be always dropping in. Perhaps she hopes to convert mamma to Science." But at the picture of Hilda converted to Science and moving thereafter in calm assurance through the perversities of James Mitchell, Anne laughed aloud. "Dear old moms, she'd never keep her mind on one thing long enough to demonstrate it into existence, even if she could decide what it was she wanted most."