there was a side of Emily's nature which Geoffrey admired more than he appreciated, it was her wonderful instinct for assistance. Philanthropy with Geoffrey had never taken up much time; it had been an affair of furtive half-crowns. But Emily went into the question of lame dogs with the eye and hand of the reformer. She was at direct variance with the psalmist, who suggests with cynical emphasis that it costs too much to redeem a soul, and that one should leave this particular adventure alone forever.
Emily had an undoubted faculty for making people stand on their own feet, and it was Geoffrey's fault if he did n't care to meet them in this ameliorated attitude. He thought that Emily's protégées had had too many disasters. He could have stood one or two, though his hours with Emily had been curtailed on several occasions by the time it took to relate them; but Geoffrey felt as if people who insisted on so many troubles had made a habit of misfortune. He was therefore more annoyed than interested when Emily rang him up one afternoon to tell him of a fresh discovery.
"I 've found her," she said through the telephone. "O Geoff, I 've found her! It's too pitiful; I never dreamed there could be such lonely misery. It's very strange, too, for I was hoping that just now I might find some one we were specially meant to help together, and I am sure it is Fanny. She has simply been sent to us."
"What for?" asked Geoffrey, nervously. "I mean—who is Fanny?"
"She's just a girl," Emily said softly, "who has been cut to pieces by life. I found her in a hospital—the one I always visit. She's had a terrible operation, but when I came across her she was just going to be sent out, with no home or friends to be sent to, and no money. Is n't civilization awful? She's almost a lady. I feel as if that made it so much worse, don't you?"
Geoffrey said he did. Generally, when they were n't ladies, Emily saw them in the housekeeper's room, and he had only to hear about them afterward.
"Poor thing," Emily went on, "she's been literally at death's door. She wants to give up her old way of life now and start quite afresh. It's been so wonderful watching the new light dawn!"
"What was her way of life?" Geoffrey asked a little suspiciously. Emily's voice became vague.
"Oh, did n't I tell you?" she explained. "She's not been—respectable, you know. It's all been very dreadful, but I do wish you'd come and see her; we might think of something together. I can't quite make her out. She's strangely reticent."
Geoffrey gave a sigh of relief. Fanny's reticence seemed the one palliating fact in the situation.
"Could n't your mother take up Fanny, if she's got to be taken up?" he feebly suggested.
Emily's voice sounded as if something cold and wet had been suddenly dropped upon it.
"I think not, dear," she said patiently. "The modern mind can deal at such a different angle with stories like poor Fanny's. Besides, mother would n't like it at all. She's been a little difficult as it is. She won't let me have her to stay in the house because of the servants. Fanny is here now, but only in the dining-room till tea. You will come, won't you?"
Geoffrey agreed instantly to come, but he secretly approved of the dining-room.
Emily was very particular about Geoffrey's work in the mornings. She never interrupted him, but she thought his work would naturally be over by two o'clock in the afternoon. She always rang him up then to find out, and if Geoff could see Emily, his work always was over at two o'clock.
He hastened to the Derings', and was immediately shown up into the dining-room. Mrs. Dering was cutting out children's underclothes upon the dining-room table. It was an old oak table, charmingly narrow and gate-legged, which, though a little uncomfortable at meals, was obviously four hundred years old. It reminded Geoff of early Renaissance pictures of the last supper, and did very well for cutting out.
Emily was sitting near the open window smoking a cigarette, a thing she did only to put other people at their ease, for she rather disliked smoking. She gave Geoffrey a radiant, confident look—the look of a woman who has received nothing but happiness and security from the hand of the man she loves.
Fanny was not smoking, but when Geoffrey's condemnatory eyes rested upon her, he could not have supposed that she was otherwise than easy. Her attitude seemed to imply that it was a great thing to be sitting in a comfortable arm-chair for half an hour, and no use bothering much about what was going to happen afterward.