The doctor flushed.
"Daphne—"
"Do you?" queried Drusilla, interestedly. "Why?"
"Well—" the doctor said rather apologetically, "perhaps I shouldn't; but most of the settlements that I know are filled with workers who are charming women, too good to be stenographers or clerks or housekeepers. They come to the settlements, where they receive a good salary and keep their social position, which they feel they could not do if they worked. You see it's rather a fad to be a social settlement worker, and most of the women couldn't make their living to save their soul at work that really took trained brains or executive ability."
"Do tell!" said Drusilla. "I kind of thought something like that when I saw Mrs. Harris, but she seemed to be real pert."
"Oh, I am only generalizing. Some of them, the heads especially, are competent women, but the great average—" and he spread his hands out expressively.
"Well, anyway, Dr. Eaton—you remember that big blue pencil that we use to draw across the names that ain't no good?—I got a new name to-day to add to that list—settlements—and I want to git home and sharpen the pencil."
CHAPTER XIII
Drusilla had one neighbor whom, to use her own words, she "couldn't abide." Miss Sarah Lee lived across the road from her, in a small house left her by her father. This old man had also left her money enough to live in a modest way, and an unkind Providence had left her high and dry on the matrimonial shores, and she was embittered. She had been born and reared in Brookvale and had seen the other girls married and settled in their homes, with their children growing up around them. She had tried for years to get a husband, but finally, at the age of thirty-eight, had given up the fight; and instead of sharing in the happiness of her lifelong neighbors, she had drifted into being the neighborhood gossip, picking flaws in everything and searching with microscopic eye to find the failures in the lives of those around her, trying to find satisfaction in her unmarried state by seeing only the darker side of the matrimonial adventures around her. If a man came home late after dining well but not wisely with his companions, be sure Sarah Lee heard of it. She would take her sewing and go to some neighbor and say in her softly purring voice, "Isn't it too bad that Mr. Smith neglects his wife so dreadfully, and it is shocking the way he drinks. Now the other night, etc., etc.," until her garrulous tongue would make a great crime of perhaps only a small indiscretion. Drusilla had been a joy to her, as she was new in the neighborhood, and she regaled her with all the gossip, much to Drusilla's disgust and discomfiture; but she was too kindly to be rude to the bitter-tongued woman, who was the only one of her neighbors who "ran in" or who brought their sewing and sat down for a "real visit."