"Oh, that's true! That's true!" cried Von Shierbrand.
"Oh, Kate, I do love you. You seem to complete me. When I'm with you I understand myself. Please try to love me, dear. We'll get a little home and have a garden and a library--think how restful it will be. I can't tell you how I want a place I can call home."
"There they come," warned Kate as she heard footsteps on the stairs. "You must take 'no' for your answer, dear man. I feel just like a mother to you."
Dr. von Shierbrand arose, obviously offended, and he allied himself with Mary Morrison on the way to the concert. Kate walked with Honora and David until they met with Professor Wickersham, who was also bound for Mandel Hall and the somewhat tempered classicism which the Theodore Thomas Orchestra offered to "the University crowd."
"Please walk with me, Miss Barrington," said Wickersham. "I want you to explain the universe to me."
"I can do that nicely," retorted Kate, "because Dr. von Shierbrand has already explained it to me."
Blue-eyed Mary was pouting. She never liked any variety of amusement, conversational or otherwise, in which she was not the center.
So Kate's life sped along. It was not very significant, perhaps, or it would not have seemed so to the casual onlooker, but life is measured by its inward rather than its outward processes, and Kate felt herself being enriched by her experiences.
She enjoyed being brought into contact with the people she met in her work--not alone the beneficiaries of her ministrations, but the policemen and the police matrons and the judges of the police court. She joined a society of "welfare workers," and attended their suppers and meetings, and tried to learn by their experience and to keep her own ideas in abeyance.