Isabella had a vision of Steve Johnston's large, heavy head with its thick, black hair, and she began to feel a respect for the stolid man.
"John said he had great ability," she remarked. "I'm so glad it all came out right in the end."
"I had my first servant when the promotion came, and that spring we took a little house,—it was crowded in the flat, and noisy."
"You will find it so much easier now, and you will like St. Louis."
"Oh, yes! But it hasn't been really bad,—the struggle, the being poor. You see we were both well and strong, and we loved so much, and we always had the problem of how to live,—that draws you together if you have the real thing in you. It isn't sordid trying to see what a quarter can be made to do. It's exciting."
As she recalled the fight, a tender smile illuminated her face and curved her lips upward. To her poverty had not been limiting, grinding, but an exhilarating fight that taxed her resources of mind and body.
"Of course there are a lot of things you can't have. But most people have more than they know how to handle, no matter where they are!"
Isabelle was puzzled by this remark, and explained Alice Johnston's content by her age, her lack of experience, at least such experience as she had had. For life to her presented a tantalizing feast of opportunities, and it was her intention to grasp as many of these as one possibly could. Any other view of living seemed not only foolish but small-minded. Without any snobbishness she considered that her sphere and her husband's could not be compared with the Johnstons'. The Lanes, she felt, were somehow called to large issues.
Nevertheless, Isabelle could understand that Alice's marriage was quite a different thing from what hers was,—something to glorify all the petty, sordid details, to vivify the grimy struggle of keeping one's head above the social waters.
"Now," Alice concluded, "we can save! And start the children fairly. But I wonder if we shall ever be any happier than we have been,—any closer, Steve and I?"