"But he's married, Jim!"
"Divorced, Aunt Sanna."
"Oh, Jim, that's awful!" said his aunt, horrified.
"Well, it may come to nothing. Ted's only twenty—I hope devoutly it will. There—that's all the news!" Jim jumped up from his chair, and gave his aunt a kiss. "Why don't you come over and get it for yourself, now and then! I don't know how much there is in any of this stuff, because I use my rooms at the club a good deal, but it's all in the wind. That little Julia Page is a peach, isn't she?"
"You said that once," Miss Toland said dispassionately. Jim grinned, unabashed. He had been in love with one girl or another since his fourteenth year, and liked nothing so much as having his affairs of the heart discussed.
"Well, it's true, and I'll say it again for luck!" said he. "Who is she? I suppose Pius Aloysius Maloney, or some good soul who comes to teach the kids boxing, has got it all framed up with her?"
"I don't know any Mr. Maloney," Miss Toland answered imperturbably. "Mr. Craig is director of the Boys' Club, and I know he admires her, and she has another admirer, too, who comes here now and then. But how likely she is to marry I really can't say! She's an extremely ambitious girl, and she has determined to raise herself."
"Raise herself!" Jim said, with a casual laugh. "I don't suppose she started much lower than other people?"
"Oh, I imagine she did. Her father was a—I don't know—a sort of drummer, I guess, but her mother is an awful person, and her grandfather was a day labourer!"
"Ha!" Jim said, discomfited. "Well, see you tomorrow!" he added, departing. He walked briskly to the corner of the street, and experienced a thump at the heart when a casual backward glance discovered Julia, in a most fetching hat, coming out of the settlement house with a market basket on her arm. She did not see him, and Jim decided not to see her. Of course she was a little peach, but that labourer grandfather was too much.