"Yes. I feel as if a hand had reached out from the blue and rescued me. I'm going to work."
Again Herrick's face changed so that Pat wondered whether she had been quite right about him in either of her estimates. He looked older, heavier and rather bored.
"Yes," he said quietly, "I think that is your work."
For a moment Jean and Herrick looked at each other.
"I think it is and I expect to be very happy in it."
"I hope you will."
Herrick filled all three glasses and cried gayly:
"To the Poor, God bless 'em."
Pat stayed ten days. Sometimes she went with Jean on cases and sometimes she was out all day on work of her own. But every evening the three met for dinner in the studio and afterwards Jean and Pat talked social and educational reforms. At first Herrick listened, not quite grasping the vital import of these things to them; then, one night, he asked Jean, with a lurking smile that annoyed even Pat, whether she really expected to make over the world.
"No," Jean answered shortly, "I don't; but I'm going to patch at it as long as I have strength in my body."