Trent gave her a tender glance across the coffee service.

"Probably not," he admitted, "but I wouldn't waste my jelly if I were
you."

"I sha'n't" she determined sadly, "and that's the thing I miss most of
all--visiting the sick."

"You might devote yourself to the hospitals--there are plenty of them it
seems."

Her resignation, however, was complete, and she showed no impulse to
reach out actively again. "It wouldn't be the same, my dear--I don't
want strange paupers but real friends. Do you know," she added, with a
despair that was almost abject, "I was counting up this morning the
people I might speak to if I met them in the street, and I got them in
easily on the fingers of one hand. That included," she confessed after a
hesitation, "the doctor, the butcher's boy and the woman who comes to
scrub. It would surprise you to find what a very interesting woman she
is."

Trent rose from his chair and, coming round to where she sat, gave her a
boyish hug of sympathy. "You're a regular angel of a mother," he said
and added playfully, while he still held her, "even then I don't see how
you make it five."

She put up her large white hand and smoothed his hair across his
forehead. "That's only because I made an acquaintance in the elevator
yesterday," she replied.