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"Wasn't she too beautiful, Lawrence? Don't you like her best in that simple dress? It makes her look like the real Lily the Lily I know." He met Gerty Farish's brimming gaze. "The Lily we know," he corrected; and his cousin, beaming at the implied understanding, exclaimed joyfully: "I'll tell her that! She always says you dislike her."
Smedley were very agreeable and entertaining, and did very well together, though such different persons. Mr. Farish is the most primitive, simple-hearted man I ever saw. The bells were ringing in honour of Professor Farish's election, or, as Mr. Smedley said, at the Professor's expense. Farish insisted upon it very coolly that they were not ringing for him, but for a shoulder of mutton.
"I shouldn't have minded, you know, if I'd got the money " and at Miss Farish's protesting "Oh!" she repeated calmly: "Not a straw, my dear; for, in the first place, they wouldn't have quite dared to ignore me; and if they had, it wouldn't have mattered, because I should have been independent of them. But now !" The irony faded from her eyes, and she bent a clouded face upon her friend.
And it was so delightful that this higher degree of sympathy should be reached through their interest in Lily Bart! Gerty's affection for her friend a sentiment that had learned to keep itself alive on the scantiest diet had grown to active adoration since Lily's restless curiosity had drawn her into the circle of Miss Farish's work.
Moreover, by some obscure process of logic, she felt that her momentary burst of generosity had justified all previous extravagances, and excused any in which she might subsequently indulge. Miss Farish's surprise and gratitude confirmed this feeling, and Lily parted from her with a sense of self-esteem which she naturally mistook for the fruits of altruism.
Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss Farish's stairs.
I was one of the girls at Miss Farish's club you helped me to go to the country that time I had lung-trouble. My name's Nettie Struther. It was Nettie Crane then but I daresay you don't remember that either." Yes: Lily was beginning to remember. The episode of Nettie Crane's timely rescue from disease had been one of the most satisfying incidents of her connection with Gerty's charitable work.
To give up her apartment, and shrink to the obscurity of a boarding-house, or the provisional hospitality of a bed in Gerty Farish's sitting-room, was an expedient which could only postpone the problem confronting her; and it seemed wiser as well as more agreeable to remain where she was and find some means of earning her living.
In the whole work-room there was only one skin beneath which the blood still visibly played; and that now burned with vexation as Miss Bart, under the lash of the forewoman's comment, began to strip the hat-frame of its over-lapping spangles. To Gerty Farish's hopeful spirit a solution appeared to have been reached when she remembered how beautifully Lily could trim hats.
She stayed on partly for the comfort of Gerty Farish's nearness, and partly for lack of knowing where to go. She understood well enough the nature of the task before her. She must set out to regain, little by little, the position she had lost; and the first step in the tedious task was to find out, as soon as possible, on how many of her friends she could count.
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