s be a trained nurse when I was
older, or study to be a librarian and take the City Hall examinations,
or work up to a post-office position! I had lots of plans, only of
course I was only a selfish little girl then, and I thought I would
disappear, and never let my own people hear from me again!"

"But you softened on that point, eh?" asked Jim.

"Oh, right away!" Julia's wonderful eyes shone upon him with something
unearthly in their light. "Because God decides to whom we shall belong,
Jim," said she, with childish faith, "and to start wrong with my own
people would mean that I was all wrong, everywhere. But my highest
ambition then was to grow, as the years went on, to be useful to nice
people, and to be liked by them. I never dreamed every one would be so
friendly! And when Miss Pierce and Miss Scott have asked me to their
homes, and when Mrs. Forbes took me to Santa Cruz, and Mrs. Chetwynde
asked me to dine with them, well, I can't tell you what it meant!"

"It meant that you are as good--and better, in every way--than all the
rest of them put together!" said the prejudiced Jim.

"Oh, Jim!" Julia looked at him over her teacup, a breach of manners
which Jim thought very charming. "No," she said, presently, pursuing her
own thoughts, "but I never thought of marriage! And now you come along,
Jim, so--so good to me, so infinitely dear, and I can't--I can't help
caring--" And suddenly her lip trembled, and tears filled her eyes. She
looked down at her teacup, and stirred it blindly.

"You angel!" Jim said.

"Don't--make--me--cry--!" Julia begged thickly. A second later she
looked up and laughed through tears. "And I feel like a person who has
been skipped over four or five grades at school; I don't know whether I
_can_ be a rich man's wife!" she said whimsically. "I know I can go on as
I am, reading and thinking, and listening to other people, and keeping
quiet when I have nothing to say, but--but when I think of being Mrs.
James Studdiford--"

"Oh, I love to hear you say it!" Jim leaned across the table, and put
one warm big hand over hers. "My darling little wife!"

The word dyed Julia's cheeks crimson, and for the long hour that they
lingered over their tea she seemed to Jim more charming than he had ever
found her before. Her gravity, with its deep hint of suppressed mirth,
and her mirth that was always so delicate and demure, so shot with
sudden pathos and seriousness, were equally exquisite; and her beauty