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Ida slept for two hours longer and rose in a philosophical mood. As she more than once had remarked to Ora, "nothing in life is just what you figured it out beforehand"; and this, one of life's most unwelcome lessons, it had not taken her twenty-six years to learn. She had, in fact, accepted and docketed it while women twice her age were nursing their illusions.
She had expected to be met at the station not only by her husband but by Ruby and Pearl, to say nothing of reporters. "She had slunk in like a nobody," and her husband declined to feed the fires of her vanity, blazing so merrily these last ten months. Never mind. She had the genius of quick readjustment and a sharp eye for the next move in the great law of compensation.