"Not harder than others. The secret is to learn concentration and to fill all the interstices with the balm of leisure. And to work with love of the World to Be."
That November, together with Rose Darragh and Denny and Elizabeth, she was often speaking in the poor and crowded sections of the great city. Sometimes they talked to the people in dim, small halls, sometimes in larger, brighter places, sometimes there were street meetings. She grew aware that often Fay was present. Sometimes, when the meeting was over, he joined her; it began to be no infrequent thing his going uptown upon the car with her. She began to wonder.... Once in a street meeting she saw him near her as she spoke. It was a good crowd and interested. As she brought her brief, straight talk to a conclusion, Elizabeth whispered to her, "Lucien couldn't come. Is there any one else who could speak?" Hagar's eyes met John Fay's. "We lack a speaker," she said. "Couldn't you—won't you?" He nodded, stepped upon the box, and made a good speech. His drawling, telling periods, his smiling, sea-blue eyes, a story that he told and a blow or two out from the shoulder caught the fancy and then the good-will of the crowd.
An old woman, Irish, wrinkled, her hands on her hips, called out to him. "Be yez the new man? If yez are, I loike yez foine!"
He laughed at and with her. "Do you? Then you'll have to become a new woman to match me!"
The November dusk was closing in when the crowd dispersed. Elizabeth with the other woman speaker faced toward the Settlement. "Can't you come with me, Hagar?"
"No, not to-night. There are letters and letters—"
Fay asked if he might go uptown with her.
She nodded. "Yes, if you like. Good-night, Elizabeth—good-night, Mary Ware; good-night, good-night!"