She's one of the few wealthy women I know who have real
ideals, and live up to them."
"Oh, she has a 'mission'!" Johnnie's interest in Doctor Alvarado's
other guest suddenly fell away, and his tone indicated as much. As
the doctor was about to reply the ringing of the door-bell
summoned him away.
O'Reilly had met women with ideals, with purposes, with
avocations, and his opinion of them was low. Women who had
"missions" were always tiresome, he had discovered. This one, it
appeared, was unusual only in that she had adopted a particularly
exacting form of charitable work. Nursing, even as a rich woman's
diversion, must be anything but agreeable. O'Reilly pictured this
Evans person in his mind--a large, plain, elderly creature,
obsessed with impractical ideas of uplifting the masses! She would
undoubtedly bore him stiff with stories of her work: she would
reproach him with neglect of his duties to the suffering. Johnnie
was too poor to be charitable and too deeply engrossed at the
moment with his own troubles to care anything whatever about the
"masses."
And she was a "miss." That meant that she wore thick glasses and
probably kept cats.
A ringing laugh from the cramped hallway interrupted these
reflections; then a moment later Doctor Alvarado was introducing
O'Reilly to a young woman so completely out of the picture, so
utterly the opposite of his preconceived notions, that he was
momentarily at a loss.
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