After the meal the canvassing began, Miss Toland doing all the talking, while Julia stared about the small, stuffy interiors, and smiled at the babies and old women. Miss Toland jotted down in her book all the details she gathered in each house, and only stopped in her quest when the hour and the darkened houses reminded her that the evening was flying.
This might keep up every free evening for two weeks; it would end as suddenly as it began, and Miss Toland enter upon a lazy and luxurious phase. She would spend whole mornings and even afternoons in bed, reading and dozing, and fresh from a hot bath at four o'clock, would summon her assistant and make a suggestion or two.
"Julia, suppose we go down to the Palace for tea?"
Julia, standing gravely in the doorway, considered.
"The girls won't be gone for another hour, Miss Toland!"
"The—Oh, the girls, to be sure. Of course. Who else is there, Julia?"
"Miss Parker and Miss Chetwynde. And Mrs. Forbes Foster was here for a little while."
Miss Toland, drawing on silk stockings, would make a grimace.
"What did you tell them?"
"Sick headache."