"There is no one in the world as useless as I am," she thought finally.
"It is only just a bad season," Rose Brent tried to cheer her up; "there is lots of unemployment about; we will find something for you soon."
But to Joan it seemed as if the iron of being absolutely unwanted was entering into her soul.
There was only one shred of comfort in all this dreariness. Life at Shamrock House was so cheap that she was eating up but very little of Uncle John's allowance. She wondered sometimes if the old people at home ever asked at the Bank as to how her money matters stood, or had they shut her so completely out of their lives that even that was of no interest to them? Miss Abercrombie wrote fairly regularly, but though she could give Joan news of the home people she had to admit that Aunt Janet never mentioned or alluded to her niece in any way.
"She is harder than I thought she could be," wrote Miss Abercrombie; "or is it perhaps that you have killed her heart?"
Once Joan's pride fell so low that she found herself writing Aunt Janet a pathetic, vague appeal to be allowed to creep back into the shelter of the old life. But she tore the letter up in the morning and scattered its little pieces along the gutter of Digby Street. Digby Street was sucking into its undercurrents her youth, her cheerfulness, her hope; only pride was left, she must make a little struggle to hold on to pride, and then news came from Miss Abercrombie that Aunt Janet had been ill and that the Rutherfords had gone abroad. Apart from her fruitless journeys in search of work, her days held nothing. She so dreaded the atmosphere of Shamrock House that very often she would have to walk herself tired out of all feeling before she could go back there; sometimes she cried night after night, weak, stupid tears, shut up in the dreariness of her little room, and very often her thoughts turned back to Gilbert—the comfort of their little flat, the theatres, the suppers, the dances and the passion-held nights when he had loved her. More and more she thought of Gilbert as the dreariness of Digby Street closed round her days.
If her baby had lived, would life have been easier for her, or would it only have meant—as she had first believed in her days of panic that it would mean—an added hardship, a haunting shame? It was the lack of love in her life that left so aching a void, the fact that apparently no one cared or heeded what became of her. The baby would at least have brought love to her, in its little hands, in its weak strength that looked to her for shelter.
"I should be happier," she said once stormily to Rose, "if I could have a cat to keep. I think I shall buy a kitten."
The other girl had looked at her, smiling dryly. "Pets are strictly against the rules in Shamrock House," she reminded her.
It was in one of her very despondent moods that Joan first met the young man with blue eyes. She never knew him by any name, and their acquaintance, or whatever it could be called, came to an abrupt end on the first occasion when he ventured to speak to her. Womanlike, she had been longing for him to do so for some time, but resented it bitterly when he did. Perhaps something faintly contemptuous, a shadowed hint that he had noticed her interest in him, flamed up the desire to snub him in her heart, or perhaps it was a feeling of self-shame to find herself so poor a beggar at friendship's gate.