"It's a term: One half of us doesn't know how the other half lives."
"I see," said Hagar. "Well, I'll be glad when I get out of fractions."
Both laughed. A kind of soft, friendly brightness prevailed in the third-floor back bedroom. There was no open fire, but they sat on either side of the little squat table, and the reading-lamp with a yellowy globe did the job of a common luminary. The light reached out to each and linked them together. Rachel Bolt was small and dark and slender. Much of the time she passed for a cynical and rather melancholy young woman; then, occasionally, sheaths parted like opening wings and something showed that was vivid and deep and duskily luminous. The next moment the rift might close, but there had been received an impression of the inward depths. She had been married at eighteen, her first child born a year later. She was now twenty-five, and had been a widow for two years. In worldly wisdom and savoir faire, and in several emotional experiences she was well ahead of Hagar, but in other respects the brain ways of the younger in years were deeper and older. Whatever differences, their planes were near enough for a comprehension that, continually deepening, passed before long into the country of lasting friendship.
CHAPTER XV
LOOKING FOR THOMASINE
When Hagar had been ten days in New York, she went early one afternoon to find Thomasine. She had the address, and upon showing it to Rachel the latter had pronounced it "poor but respectable," adding, "Are you sure you ought to go alone?"
"'Ought to go alone?—ought to go alone?'—I am so tired of that phrase 'ought to go alone'!" said Hagar. "At Gilead Balm they said, 'Don't go beyond the Mile-and-a-Half Cedar!' You say yourself that I couldn't get lost, and I was brought up with Thomasine, and Jim and his wife are perfectly good people."
Downstairs, as she was passing the parlour doors, Mrs. Maine called to her from within. "Where are you going, dear?" Hagar entered and explained. "That is very nice of you to look her up, but do you think you ought to go alone?" Hagar explained that, too; whereupon Mrs. Maine patted her hand and told her to trot along, but always to be careful! As the front door closed after her, her hostess resumed her box of chocolates and the baby sacque she was knitting. "It isn't as though I had promised to give her, or to make Rachel give her, continual chaperonage! To look after her in a general way is all that could possibly be expected. Besides, it's foolish always to be nervous about people!" She took a chocolate cream and began the sleeve. "Medway Ashendyne, with all those millions, isn't doing very much for her. She couldn't dress more plainly if she tried. I wonder what he means to do with her eventually. Perhaps he doesn't mean anything—just to let things drift...."