Mrs. Thorpe greeted her friend cordially. "I am so glad to see you," she said; "I was feeling a bit down-hearted this morning and longing for a congenial friend."
"Then my plan is opportune," said Mrs. Mayhew. "I came in the carriage to take you home with me for the day. Mr. Thorpe will come to tea and spend the evening, I hope. My brother, Professor Vane, is spending a few days with us, and he and Mr. Thorpe are congenial spirits, you know."
"I am sure that Mr. Thorpe will be pleased to meet your brother again. I had a letter from Mrs. Vane a few days ago. She mentioned that the Professor meant to visit you before long."
"I am glad to know that your friendship with Mrs. Vane ripened into a correspondence."
"We do not correspond regularly. I had a book of hers, one which she let me take last summer. I returned it not long ago and received a letter from her saying that it had arrived safely."
Mrs. Thorpe accepted her friend's invitation for the day and as they drove through the bracing atmosphere her unhappy fancies seemed to fall away from her. There was something in Mrs. Mayhew's personality, wholesome and practical, yet winsome as well, that had a tendency to arouse Mrs. Thorpe out of her troubled dreams and dispel the visions of her morbid imagination.
Yet when they were seated in Mrs. Mayhew's parlor, each with her bit of work, the first topic of conversation plunged her troubled mind again into a sea of doubt and despair.
Mrs. Mayhew drew her chair a little nearer to the grate, rested comfortably in its cushioned depths and let her work lay idle in her hands.
"They tell me," she said, "that there is a great deal of suffering among the poor people on the Flat this winter. The Ladies' Benevolent Society is doing what it can to help them, but cannot reach them all. Geraldine went over to the Flat with some of the ladies yesterday. She tells me that the condition of some of the homes they visited is dreadful to behold."
It is needless to say that Mrs. Mayhew did not know the effect that her words would have upon her friend. She knew that Mrs. Thorpe was often inclined to take other people's burdens sadly to heart, but she was far from knowing the state of mind that her words had wrought in her now.