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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Saturday's Child, by Kathleen Norris
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Saturday's Child
+
+Author: Kathleen Norris
+
+Posting Date: May 20, 2013 [EBook #4687]
+Release Date: November, 2003
+First Posted: March 2, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SATURDAY'S CHILD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS
+
+SATURDAY'S CHILD
+
+VOLUME IV
+
+
+
+
+
+  "Friday's child is loving and giving;
+  But Saturday's child must work for her living."
+
+
+
+                To C. G. N.
+
+  How shall I give you this, who long have known
+     Your gift of all the best of life to me?
+     No living word of mine could ever be
+     Without the stirring echo of your own.
+     Under your hand, as mine, this book has grown,
+     And you, whose faith sets all my musing free,
+     You, whose true vision helps my eyes to see,
+     Know that these pages are not mine alone.
+
+  Not mine to give, not yours, the happy days,
+     The happy talks, the hoping and the fears
+     That made this story of a happy life.
+     But, in dear memory of your words of praise,
+     And grateful memory of four busy years,
+     Accept her portion of it, from your wife.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+Poverty
+
+
+
+
+SATURDAY'S CHILD
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Not the place in which to look for the Great Adventure, the dingy,
+narrow office on the mezzanine floor of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's great
+wholesale drug establishment, in San Francisco city, at the beginning
+of the present century. Nothing could have seemed more monotonous, more
+grimy, less interesting, to the outsider's eye at least, than life as
+it presented itself to the twelve women who were employed in
+bookkeeping there. Yet, being young, as they all were, each of these
+girls was an adventuress, in a quiet way, and each one dreamed bright
+dreams in the dreary place, and waited, as youth must wait, for
+fortune, or fame, or position, love or power, to evolve itself somehow
+from the dulness of her days, and give her the key that should
+open--and shut--the doors of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's offices to her
+forever.
+
+And, while they waited, working over the unvaried, stupid columns of
+the company's books, they talked, confided, became friends, and
+exchanged shy hints of ambition. The ill-ventilated, neglected room was
+a little world, and rarely, in a larger world, do women come to know
+each other as intimately as these women did.
+
+Therefore, on a certain sober September morning, the fact that Miss
+Thornton, familiarly known as "Thorny," was out of temper, speedily
+became known to all the little force. Miss Thornton was not only the
+oldest clerk there, but she was the highest paid, and the longest in
+the company's employ; also she was by nature a leader, and generally
+managed to impress her associates with her own mood, whatever it might
+be. Various uneasy looks were sent to-day in her direction, and by
+eleven o'clock even the giggling Kirk sisters, who were newcomers, were
+imbued with a sense of something wrong.
+
+Nobody quite liked to allude to the subject, or ask a direct question.
+Not that any one of them was particularly considerate or reserved by
+nature, but because Miss Thornton was known to be extremely unpleasant
+when she had any grievance against one of the younger clerks. She could
+maintain an ugly silence until goaded into speech, but, once launched,
+few of her juniors escaped humiliation. Ordinarily, however, Miss
+Thornton was an extremely agreeable woman, shrewd, kindly, sympathetic,
+and very droll in her passing comments on men and events. She was in
+her early thirties, handsome, and a not quite natural blonde, her mouth
+sophisticated, her eyes set in circles of a leaden pallor. An
+assertive, masterful little woman, born and reared in decent poverty,
+still Thorny claimed descent from one of the first families of
+Maryland, and talked a good deal of her birth. Her leading
+characteristic was a determination never, even in the slightest
+particular, to allow herself to be imposed upon, and she gloried in
+stories of her own success in imposing upon other people.
+
+Miss Thornton's desk stood at the inner end of the long room, nearest
+the door that led out to the "deck," as the girls called the mezzanine
+floor beyond, and so nearest the little private office of Mr. George
+Brauer, the arrogant young German who was the superintendent of the
+Front Office, and heartily detested by every girl therein.
+
+When Miss Thornton wanted to be particularly annoying to her associates
+she would remark casually that "she and Mr. Brauer" thought this or
+that, or that "she suggested, and Mr. Brauer quite agreed" as to
+something else. As a matter of fact, she disliked him as much as they
+did, although she, and any and every girl there, would really have been
+immensely pleased and flattered by his admiration, had he cared to
+bestow it. But George Brauer's sea-blue eyes never rested for a second
+upon any Front Office girl with anything but annoyed responsibility. He
+kept his friendships severely remote from the walls of Hunter, Baxter &
+Hunter, and was suspected of social ambitions, and of distinguished,
+even noble connections in the Fatherland.
+
+This morning Miss Thornton and Mr. Brauer had had a conference, as the
+lady called it, immediately after his arrival at nine o'clock, and Miss
+Murray, who sat next to Miss Thornton, suspected that it had had
+something to do with her neighbor's ill-temper. But Miss Thornton,
+delicately approached, had proved so ungracious and so uncommunicative,
+that Miss Murray had retired into herself, and attacked her work with
+unusual briskness.
+
+Next to friendly, insignificant little Miss Murray was Miss Cottle, a
+large, dark, morose girl, with untidy hair, and untidy clothes, and a
+bad complexion. Miss Cottle was unapproachable and insolent in her
+manner, from a sense of superiority. She was connected, she stated
+frequently, with one of the wealthy families of the city, whose old
+clothes, the girls suspected, she frequently wore. On Saturday, a
+half-day, upon which all the girls wore their best clothes to the
+office, if they had matinee or shopping plans for the afternoon, Miss
+Cottle often appeared with her frowsy hair bunched under a tawdry
+velvet hat, covered with once exquisite velvet roses, and her muscular
+form clad in a gown that had cost its original owner more than this
+humble relative could earn in a year. Miss Cottle's gloves were always
+expensive, and always dirty, and her elaborate silk petticoats were of
+soiled pale pinks and blues.
+
+Miss Cottle's neighbor was Miss Sherman, a freckled, red-headed, pale
+little girl, always shabby and pinched-looking, eager, silent, and
+hard-working. Miss Sherman gave the impression--or would have given it
+to anyone who cared to study her--of having been intimidated and
+underfed from birth. She had a keen sense of humor, and, when Susan
+Brown "got started," as Susan Brown occasionally did, Miss Sherman
+would laugh so violently, and with such agonized attempts at
+suppression, that she would almost strangle herself. Nobody guessed
+that she adored the brilliant Susan, unless Miss Brown herself guessed
+it. The girls only knew of Miss Sherman that she was the oldest of
+eight brothers and sisters, and that she gave her mother all her money
+every Saturday night.
+
+Miss Elsie Kirk came next, in the line of girls that faced the room,
+and Miss Violet Kirk was next to her sister. The Kirks were pretty,
+light-headed girls, frivolous, common and noisy. They had a comfortable
+home, and worked only because they rather liked the excitement of the
+office, and liked an excuse to come downtown every day. Elsie, the
+prettier and younger, was often "mean" to her sister, but Violet was
+always good-natured, and used to smile as she told the girls how Elsie
+captured her--Violet's--admirers. The Kirks' conversation was all of
+"cases," "the crowd," "the times of their lives," and "new crushes";
+they never pinned on their audacious hats to go home at night without
+speculating as to possible romantic adventures on the car, on the
+street, everywhere. They were not quite approved by the rest of the
+Front Office staff; their color was not all natural, their clothes were
+"fussy." Both wore enormous dry "rats," that showed through the thin
+covering of outer hair, their stockings were quite transparent, and
+bows of pink and lavender ribbon were visible under their thin
+shirt-waists. It was known that Elsie had been "spoken to" by old Mr.
+Baxter, on the subject of a long, loose curl, which had appeared one
+morning, dangling over her powdered neck. The Kirks, it was felt, never
+gave an impression of freshness, of soapiness, of starched apparel, and
+Front Office had a high standard of personal cleanliness. Miss
+Sherman's ears glowed coldly all morning long, from early ablutions,
+and her fingertips were always icy, and Miss Thornton and Susan Brown
+liked to allude casually to their "cold plunges" as a daily
+occurrence--although neither one ever really took a cold bath, except,
+perhaps, for a few days in mid-summer. But all of cleanliness is
+neither embraced nor denied by the taking of cold baths, and the Front
+Office girls, hours and obligations considered, had nothing on this
+score of which to be ashamed. Manicuring went on in every quiet moment,
+and many of the girls spent twenty minutes daily, or twice daily, in
+the careful adjustment of large sheets of paper as cuffs, to protect
+their sleeves. Two elastic bands held these cuffs in place, and only
+long practice made their arrangement possible. This was before the day
+of elbow sleeves, although Susan Brown always included elbow sleeves in
+a description of a model garment for office wear, with which she
+sometimes amused her associates.
+
+"No wet skirts to freeze you to death," Susan would grumble, "no high
+collar to scratch you! It's time that the office women of America were
+recognized as a class with a class dress! Short sleeves, loose, baggy
+trousers--"
+
+A shriek would interrupt her.
+
+"Yes, I SEE you wearing that in the street, Susan!"
+
+"Well, I WOULD. Overshoes," the inventor would pursue, "fleece-lined
+leggings, coming well up on your--may I allude to limbs, Miss Wrenn?"
+
+"I don't care what you allude to!" Miss Wrenn, the office prude, a
+little angry at being caught listening to this nonsense, would answer
+snappily.
+
+"Limbs, then," Susan would proceed graciously, "or, as Miss Sherman
+says, legs---"
+
+"Oh, Miss Brown! I DIDN'T! I never use that word!" the little woman
+would protest.
+
+"You don't! Why, you said last night that you were trying to get into
+the chorus at the Tivoli! You said you had such handsome--"
+
+"Oh, aren't you awful!" Miss Sherman would put her cold red fingers
+over her ears, and the others, easily amused, would giggle at intervals
+for the next half hour.
+
+Susan Brown's desk was at the front end of the room, facing down the
+double line. At her back was a round window, never opened, and never
+washed, and so obscured by the great cement scrolls that decorated the
+facade of the building that it gave only a dull blur of light,
+ordinarily, and no air at all. Sometimes, on a bright summer's morning,
+the invading sunlight did manage to work its way in through the
+dust-coated ornamental masonry, and to fall, for a few moments, in a
+bright slant, wheeling with motes, across the office floor. But usually
+the girls depended for light upon the suspended green-hooded electric
+lights, one over each desk.
+
+Susan though that she had the most desirable seat in the room, and the
+other girls carefully concealed from her the fact that they thought so,
+too. Two years before, a newcomer, she had been given this same desk,
+but it faced directly against the wall then, and was in the shadow of a
+dirty, overcrowded letter press. Susan had turned it about,
+straightened it, pushed the press down the room, against the
+coat-closet, and now, like all the other girls, she faced the room,
+could see more than any of them, indeed, and keep an eye on Mr. Brauer,
+and on the main floor below, visible through the glass inner wall of
+the office. Miss Brown was neither orderly nor industrious, but she had
+an eye for proportion, and a fine imagination. She loved small, fussy
+tasks, docketed and ruled the contents of her desk scrupulously, and
+lettered trim labels for boxes and drawers, but she was a lazy young
+creature when regular work was to be done, much given to idle and
+discontented dreams.
+
+At this time she was not quite twenty-one, and felt herself to be
+distressingly advanced in years. Like all except a few very fortunate
+girls of her age, Susan was brimming with perverted energy--she could
+have done a thousand things well and joyously, could have used to the
+utmost the exceptional powers of her body and soul, but, handicapped by
+the ideals of her sex, and lacking the rare guidance that might have
+saved her, she was drifting, busy with work she detested, or equally
+unsatisfied in idleness, sometimes lazily diverted and soothed by the
+passing hour, and sometimes stung to her very soul by longings and
+ambitions.
+
+"She is no older than I am--she works no harder than I do!" Susan would
+reflect, studying the life of some writer or actress with bitter envy.
+But how to get out of this groove, and into another, how to work and
+fight and climb, she did not know, and nobody ever helped her to
+discover.
+
+There was no future for her, or for any girl here, that she knew. Miss
+Thornton, after twelve years of work, was being paid forty-five
+dollars, Miss Wrenn, after eight years, forty, and Susan only thirty
+dollars a month. Brooding over these things, Susan would let her work
+accumulate, and endure, in heavy silence, the kindly, curious
+speculations and comments of her associates.
+
+But perhaps a hot lunch or a friendly word would send her spirits
+suddenly up again, Susan would forget her vague ambitions, and reflect
+cheerfully that it was already four o'clock, that she was going with
+Cousin Mary Lou and Billy Oliver to the Orpheum to-night, that her best
+white shirtwaist ought by this time to have come back from the laundry.
+
+Or somehow, if depression continued, she would shut her desk, in
+mid-afternoon, and leave Front Office, cross the long deck--which was a
+sort of sample room for rubber goods, and was lined with long cases of
+them--descend a flight of stairs to the main floor, cross it and
+remount the stairs on the other side of the building, and enter the
+mail-order department. This was an immense room, where fifty men and a
+few girls were busy at long desks, the air was filled with the hum of
+typewriters and the murmur of low voices. Beyond it was a door that
+gave upon more stairs, and at the top of them a small bare room known
+as the lunch-room. Here was a great locker, still marked with the
+labels that had shown where senna leaves and tansy and hepatica had
+been kept in some earlier stage of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's existence,
+and now filled with the girls' lunch-boxes, and rubber overshoes, and
+hair-brushes. There was a small gas-stove in this room, and a long
+table with benches built about it. A door gave upon a high strip of
+flat roof, and beyond a pebbled stretch of tar were the
+dressings-rooms, where there were wash-stands, and soap, and limp
+towels on rollers.
+
+Here Susan would wash her hands and face, and comb her bright thick
+hair, and straighten belt and collar. There were always girls here: a
+late-comer eating her luncheon, two chatter-boxes sharing a bit of
+powdered chamois-skin at a mirror, a girl who felt ill drinking
+something hot at the stove. Here was always company, and gossip, Susan
+might stop for a half-cup of scalding hot tea, or a chocolate from a
+striped paper bag. Returning, refreshed and cheered, to the office, she
+would lay a warm, damp hand over Miss Thornton's, and give her the news.
+
+"Miss Polk and Miss French are just going it up there, Thorny, mad as
+hops!" or "Miss O'Brien is going to be in Mr. Joe Hunter's office after
+this."
+
+"'S'at so?" Miss Thornton would interestedly return, wrinkling her nose
+under the glasses she used while she was working. And perhaps after a
+few moments she would slip away herself for a visit to the lunch-room.
+Mr. Brauer, watching Front Office through his glass doors, attempted in
+vain to discourage these excursions. The bolder spirits enjoyed defying
+him, and the more timid never dared to leave their places in any case.
+Miss Sherman, haunted by the horror of "losing her job," eyed the
+independent Miss Brown and Miss Thornton with open awe and admiration,
+without ever attempting to emulate them.
+
+Next to Susan sat severe, handsome, reserved little Miss Wrenn, who
+coldly repelled any attempts at friendship, and bitterly hated the
+office. Except for an occasional satiric comment, or a half-amused
+correction of someone's grammar, Miss Wrenn rarely spoke.
+
+Miss Cashell was her neighbor, a mysterious, pretty girl, with wicked
+eyes and a hard face, and a manner so artless, effusive and virtuous as
+to awaken the basest suspicions among her associates. Miss Cashell
+dressed very charmingly, and never expressed an opinion that would not
+well have become a cloistered nun, but the girls read her colorless
+face, sensuous mouth, and sly dark eyes aright, and nobody in Front
+Office "went" with Miss Cashell. Next her was Mrs. Valencia, a harmless
+little fool of a woman, who held her position merely because her
+husband had been long in the employ of the Hunter family, and who made
+more mistakes than all the rest of the staff put together. Susan
+disliked Mrs. Valencia because of the jokes she told, jokes that the
+girl did not in all honesty always understand, and because the little
+widow was suspected of "reporting" various girls now and then to Mr.
+Hunter.
+
+Finishing the two rows of desks, down opposite Miss Thornton again were
+Miss Kelly and Miss Garvey, fresh-faced, intelligent Irish girls,
+simple, merry, and devoted to each other. These two took small part in
+what did not immediately concern them, but went off to Confession
+together every Saturday, spent their Sundays together, and laughed and
+whispered together over their ledgers. Everything about them was
+artless and pure. Susan, motherless herself, never tired of their talk
+of home, their mothers, their married sisters, their cousins in
+convents, their Church picnics and concerts and fairs, and
+"joshes"--"joshes" were as the breath of life to this innocent pair.
+"Joshes on Ma," "joshes on Joe and Dan," "joshes on Cecilia and
+Loretta" filled their conversations.
+
+"And Ma yells up, 'What are you two layin' awake about?'" Miss Garvey
+would recount, with tears of enjoyment in her eyes. "But we never said
+nothing, did we, Gert? Well, about twelve o'clock we heard Leo come in,
+and he come upstairs, and he let out a yell--'My God!' he says--"
+
+But at the recollection of Leo's discovery of the sheeted form, or the
+pail of water, or whatever had awaited him at the top of the stairs,
+Miss Garvey's voice would fail entirely, and Miss Kelly would also lay
+her head down on her desk, and sob with mirth. It was infectious,
+everyone else laughed, too.
+
+To-day Susan, perceiving something amiss with Miss Thornton, sauntered
+the length of the office, and leaned over the older woman's desk. Miss
+Thornton was scribbling a little list of edibles, her errand boy
+waiting beside her. Tea and canned tomatoes were bought by the girls
+every day, to help out the dry lunches they brought from home, and
+almost every day the collection of dimes and nickels permitted a
+"wreath-cake" also, a spongy, glazed confection filled with chopped
+nuts and raisins. The tomatoes, bubbling hot and highly seasoned, were
+quite as much in demand as was the tea, and sometimes two or three
+girls made their entire lunch up by enlarging this list with cheese,
+sausages and fruit.
+
+"Mad about something," asked Susan, when the list for to-day was
+finished.
+
+Miss Thornton, under "2 wreath" wrote hastily, "Boiling! Tell you
+later," and turned it about for Susan to read, before she erased it.
+
+"Shall I get that?" she asked, for the benefit of the attentive office.
+
+"Yes, I would," answered her fellow-conspirator, as she turned away.
+
+The hour droned by. Boys came with bills, and went away again. Sudden
+sharp pangs began to assert themselves in Susan's stomach. An odor of
+burning rubber drifted up from below, as it always drifted up at about
+this time. Susan announced that she was starving.
+
+"It's not more than half-past eleven," said Miss Cottle, screwing her
+body about, so that she could look down through the glass walls of the
+office to the clock, on the main floor below. "Why, my heavens! It's
+twelve o'clock!" she announced amazedly, throwing down her pen, and
+stretching in her chair.
+
+And, in instant confirmation of the fact, a whistle sounded shrilly
+outside, followed by a dozen more whistles, high and low, constant and
+intermittent, sharp on the silent noon air. The girls all jumped up,
+except Miss Wrenn, who liked to assume that the noon hour meant nothing
+to her, and who often finished a bill or two after the hour struck.
+
+But among the others, ledgers were slammed shut, desk drawers jerked
+open, lights snapped out. Miss Thornton had disappeared ten minutes
+before in the direction of the lunch-room; now all the others followed,
+yawning, cramped, talkative.
+
+They settled noisily about the table, and opened their lunches. A
+joyous confusion of talk rose above the clinking of spoons and plates,
+as the heavy cups of steaming tea were passed and the sugar-bowl went
+the rounds; there was no milk, and no girl at Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's
+thought lemon in tea anything but a wretched affectation. Girls who had
+been too pale before gained a sudden burning color, they had been
+sitting still and were hungry, now they ate too fast. Without exception
+the Front Office girls suffered from agonies of indigestion, and most
+of them grew used to a dull headache that came on every afternoon. They
+kept flat bottles of soda-mint tablets in their desks, and exchanged
+them hourly. No youthful constitution was proof against the speed with
+which they disposed of these fresh soft sandwiches at noon-time, and
+gulped down their tea.
+
+In ten minutes some of them were ready to hurry off into sunny Front
+Street, there to saunter past warehouses, and warehouses, and
+warehouses, with lounging men eyeing them from open doorways.
+
+The Kirks disappeared quickly to-day, and some of the others went out,
+too. When Miss Thornton, Miss Sherman, Miss Cottle and Miss Brown were
+left, Miss Thornton said suddenly:
+
+"Say, listen, Susan. Listen here--"
+
+Susan, who had been wiping the table carefully, artistically, with a
+damp rag, was arrested by the tone.
+
+"I think this is the rottenest thing I ever heard, Susan," Miss
+Thornton began, sitting down at the table. The others all sat down,
+too, and put their elbows on the table. Susan, flushing uncomfortably,
+eyed Miss Thornton steadily.
+
+"Brauer called me in this morning," said Miss Thornton, in a low voice,
+marking the table with the handle of a fork, in parallel lines, "and he
+asked me if I thought--no, that ain't the way he began. Here's what he
+said first: he says, 'Miss Thornton,' he says, 'did you know that Miss
+Wrenn is leaving us?'"
+
+"What!" said all the others together, and Susan added, joyfully, "Gee,
+that means forty for me, and the crediting."
+
+"Well, now listen," Miss Thornton resumed. "I says, 'Mr. Brauer, Miss
+Wrenn didn't put herself out to inform me of her plans, but never mind.
+Although,' I says, 'I taught that girl everything she ever knew of
+office work, and the day she was here three weeks Mr. Philip Hunter
+himself came to me and said, "Miss Thornton, can you make anything of
+her?" So that if it hadn't been for me--'"
+
+"But, Thorny, what's she leaving for?" broke in Susan, with the excited
+interest that the smallest change invariably brought.
+
+"Her uncle in Milwaukee is going to pay her expenses while she takes a
+library course, I believe," Miss Thornton said, indifferently. "Anyway,
+then Brauer asked--now, listen, Susan--he asked if I thought Violet
+Kirk could do the crediting--"
+
+"Violet Kirk!" echoed Susan, in incredulous disappointment. This blow
+to long-cherished hopes gave her a sensation of actual sickness.
+
+"Violet Kirk!" the others broke out, indignant and astonished. "Why,
+she can't do it! Is he crazy? Why, Joe Hunter himself told Susan to
+work up on that! Why, Susan's done all the substituting on that! What
+does she know about it, anyway? Well, wouldn't that honestly jar you!"
+
+Susan alone did not speak. She had in turn begun to mark the table, in
+fine, precise lines, with a hairpin. She had grown rather pale.
+
+"It's a rotten shame, Susan," said Rose Murray, sympathetically. Miss
+Sherman eyed Susan with scared and sorrowful eyes. "Don't you
+care--don't you care, Susan!" said the soothing voices.
+
+"I don't care," said Susan presently, in a hard, level voice. She
+raised her somber eyes. "I don't care because I simply won't stand it,
+that's all," said she. "I'll go straight to Mr. Baxter. Yes, I WILL,
+Thorny. Brauer'll see if he can run everything this way! Is she going
+to get forty?"
+
+"What do you care if she does?" Miss Thornton said, hardily.
+
+"All right," Susan answered. "Very well. But I'll get forty next month
+or I'll leave this place! And I'm not one bit afraid to go straight to
+old 'J. G.' and tell him so, too! I'll--"
+
+"Listen, Susan, now listen," urged Miss Thornton. "Don't you get mad,
+Susan. She can't do it. It'll be just one mistake after another. Brauer
+will have to give it to you, inside of two months. She'll find," said
+Miss Thornton, with a grim tightening of the lips, "that precious few
+mistakes get by ME! I'll make that girl's life a burden, you trust me!
+And meantime you work up on that line, Sue, and be ready for it!"
+
+Susan did not answer. She was staring at the table again, cleaning the
+cracks in its worn old surface with her hairpin.
+
+"Thorny," she said huskily, "you know me. Do you think that this is
+fair?"
+
+"Aw--aw, now, Susan, don't!" Miss Thornton jumped up, and put her arm
+about Susan's shoulders, and Susan, completely unnerved by the sympathy
+in the other's tone, dropped her head upon her arm, and began to cry.
+
+A distressed murmur of concern and pity rose all about her, everyone
+patted her shoulder, and bitter denunciations of Mr. Brauer and Miss
+Kirk broke forth. Even Hunter, Baxter & Hunter were not spared, being
+freely characterized as "the rottenest people in the city to work for!"
+"It would serve them right," said more than one indignant voice, "if
+the whole crowd of us walked out on them!"
+
+Presently Susan indicated, by a few gulps, and by straightening
+suddenly, that the worst of the storm was over, and could even laugh
+shakily when Miss Thornton gave her a small, fringed lunch napkin upon
+which to wipe her eyes.
+
+"I'm a fool to cry this way," said Susan, sniffing.
+
+"Fool!" Miss Cottle echoed tenderly, "It's enough to make a cow cry!"
+
+"Not calling Susan a cow, or anything like that," said Miss Thornton
+humorously, as she softly smoothed Susan's hair. At which Susan began
+to laugh violently, and the others became almost hysterical in their
+delight at seeing her equilibrium restored.
+
+"But you know what I do with my money, Thorny," began Susan, her eyes
+filling again.
+
+"She gives every cent to her aunt," said Miss Thornton sternly, as if
+she accused the firm, Mr. Brauer and Miss Kirk by the statement.
+
+"And I've--worked--so hard!" Susan's lips were beginning to tremble
+again. But with an effort she controlled herself, fumbled for a
+handkerchief, and faced the group, disfigured as to complexion, tumbled
+as to hair, but calm.
+
+"Well, there's no help for it, I suppose!" said she hardily, in a tone
+somewhat hoarsened by tears. "You're all darlings, and I'm a fool. But
+I certainly intend to get even with Mr. Brauer!"
+
+"DON'T give up your job," Miss Sherman pleaded.
+
+"I will the minute I get another," said Susan, morosely, adding
+anxiously, "Do I look a perfect fright, Thorny? Do my eyes show?"
+
+"Not much--" Miss Cottle wavered.
+
+"Wash them with cold water, and powder your nose," advised Miss
+Thornton briskly.
+
+"And my hair--!" Susan put her hand to the disordered mass, and laughed
+helplessly.
+
+"It's all right!" Thorny patted it affectionately. "Isn't it gorgeous,
+girls? Don't you care, Susan, you're worth ten of the Kirks!"
+
+"Here they come now!" Miss Murray whispered, at the head of the stairs.
+"Beat it, Susan, don't let 'em see you!"
+
+Susan duly fled to the wash-room, where, concealed a moment later by a
+towel, and the hanging veil of her hair, she could meet the Kirks'
+glances innocently enough. Later, fresh and tidy, she took her place at
+her desk, rather refreshed by her outburst, and curiously peaceful in
+spirit. The joys of martyrdom were Susan's, she was particularly busy
+and cheerful. Fate had dealt her cruel blows before this one, she
+inherited from some persecuted Irish ancestor a grim pleasure in
+accepting them.
+
+Afternoons, from one o'clock until half-past five, seemed endless in
+Front Office. Mornings, beside being exactly one hour shorter by the
+clock, could be still more abbreviated by the few moments gained by the
+disposal of hats and wraps, the dusting of desks, sharpening of
+pencils, and filling of ink-wells. The girls used a great many blocks
+of yellow paper called scratch-pads, and scratch-pads must be gotten
+down almost daily from the closet, dusted and distributed, there were
+paper cuffs to adjust, and there was sometimes a ten or fifteen-minute
+delay before the bills for the day began to come up. But the afternoons
+knew no such delays, the girls were tired, the air in the office stale.
+Every girl, consciously or not, sighed as she took her seat at one
+o'clock.
+
+The work in Front Office was entirely with bills. These bills were of
+the sales made in the house itself the day before, and those sent by
+mail from the traveling salesmen, and were accompanied by duplicate
+bills, on thin yellow sheets. It was Mrs. Valencia's work, the easiest
+in the office, to compare originals and duplicates, and supply to the
+latter any item that was missing. Hundreds of the bills were made out
+for only one or two items, many were but one page in length, and there
+were several scores of longer ones every day, raging from two to twenty
+pages.
+
+The original bills went downstairs again immediately, and Miss
+Thornton, taking the duplicates one by one from Mrs. Valencia, marked
+the cost price of every article in the margin beyond the selling price.
+Thorny, after twelve years' experience, could jot down costs,
+percentages and discounts at an incredible speed. Drugs, patent
+medicines, surgical goods and toilet articles she could price as fast
+as she could read them, and, even while her right hand scribbled
+busily, her left hand turned the pages of her cost catalog
+automatically, when her trained eye discovered, half-way down the page,
+some item of which she was not quite sure. Susan never tired of
+admiring the swiftness with which hand, eye and brain worked together.
+Thorny would stop in her mad flight, ponder an item with absent eyes
+fixed on space, suddenly recall the price, affix the discounts, and be
+ready for the next item. Susan had the natural admiration of an
+imaginative mind for power, and the fact that Miss Thornton was by far
+the cleverest woman in the office was one reason why Susan loved her
+best.
+
+Miss Thornton whisked her finished duplicates, in a growing pile, to
+the left-hand side of Miss Munay's desk. Her neighbor also did
+"costing," but in a simpler form. Miss Murray merely marked, sometimes
+at cost, sometimes at an advance, those articles that were "B. O." or
+"bought out," not carried in Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's regular stock.
+Candy, postal-cards, cameras, sporting-goods, stamps, cigars,
+stationery, fruit-sirups, all the things in fact, that the firm's
+customers, all over the state, carried in their little country stores,
+were "B. O." Miss Murray had invoices for them all, and checked them
+off as fast as she could find their places on the duplicates.
+
+Then Miss Cottle and Susan Brown got the duplicates and "extended"
+them. So many cases of cold cream at so much per case, so many ounces
+of this or that at so much the pound, so many pounds at so much per
+ounce, and forty and ten and ten off. Two-thirds of a dozen, one
+hundredweight, one eighth of a gross, twelve per cent, off, and
+twenty-three per cent. on for freight charges; the "extenders" had to
+keep their wits about them.
+
+After that the duplicates went to Miss Sherman, who set down the
+difference between cost and selling price. So that eventually every
+article was marked five times, its original selling price, extended by
+the salesman, its cost price, separately extended, and the difference
+between the two.
+
+From Miss Sherman the bills went to the Misses Kirk, who gave every
+item a red number that marked it in its proper department, drugs or
+rubber goods or soaps and creams and colognes. The entire stock was
+divided into ten of these departments, and there were ten great ledgers
+in which to make entries for each one.
+
+And for every one of a hundred salesmen a separate great sheet was kept
+for the record of sales, all marked with the rubber stamp "B. O.," or
+the number of a department in red ink. This was called "crediting," and
+was done by Miss Wrenn. Finally, Miss Garvey and Miss Kelly took the
+now limp bills, and extracted from them bewildering figures called "the
+percentages," into the mysteries of which Susan never dared to
+penetrate.
+
+This whole involved and intricate system had originated, years before,
+in the brain of one of the younger members of the firm, whose theory
+was that it would enable everyone concerned to tell "at a glance" just
+where the firm stood, just where profits and losses lay. Theoretically,
+the idea was sound, and, in the hands of a few practiced accountants,
+it might have been practically sound as well. But the uninterested,
+untrained girls in Front Office never brought their work anywhere near
+a conclusion. Several duplicates on Miss Thornton's desk were eternally
+waiting for special prices, several more, delayed by the non-appearance
+of invoices, kept Miss Murray always in arrears, and Susan Brown had a
+little habit of tucking away in a desk drawer any duplicate whose
+extension promised to be unusually tedious or difficult. Girls were
+continually going into innocent gales of mirth because long-lost bills
+were discovered, shut in some old ledger, or rushing awe-struck to Miss
+Thornton with accounts of others that had been carried away in
+waste-baskets and burned.
+
+"Sh-sh! Don't make such a fuss," Miss Thornton would say warningly,
+with a glance toward Mr. Brauer's office. "Perhaps he'll never ask for
+them!"
+
+And perhaps he never did. If he did, the office presented him a blank
+and innocent face. "Miss Brown, did you see this bill Mr. Brauer speaks
+of?" "Beg pardon? Oh, no, Miss Thornton." "Miss Cashell, did you?"
+"Just-one-moment-Miss-Thornton-until-I-foot-up-this-column. Thank you!
+No. No, I haven't seen it, Miss Thornton. Did you trace it to my desk,
+Mr. Brauer?"
+
+Baffled, Mr. Brauer would retire to his office. Ten silent, busy
+minutes would elapse before Miss Cottle would say, in a low tone, "Bet
+it was that bill that you were going to take home and work on, Miss
+Murray!"
+
+"Oh, sure!" Miss Murray would agree, with a startled smile. "Sure.
+Mamma stuck it behind the clock--I remember now. I'll bring it down
+to-morrow."
+
+"Don't you forget it, now," Miss Thornton would perhaps command, with a
+sudden touch of authority, "old Baxter'd jump out of his skin if he
+knew we ever took 'em home!"
+
+"Well, YOU do!" Miss Murray would retort, reddening resentfully.
+
+"Ah, well," Susan Brown would answer pompously, for Miss Thornton, "you
+forget that I'm almost a member of the firm! Me and the Baxters can do
+pretty much what we like! I'll fire Brauer to-morrow if he--"
+
+"You shut up, Susan!" Miss Thornton, her rising resentment pricked like
+a bubble, would laugh amiably, and the subject of the bill would be
+dismissed with a general chuckle.
+
+On this particular afternoon Miss Thornton delayed Susan Brown, with a
+significant glance, when the whistle blew at half-past five, and the
+girls crowded about the little closet for their wraps.
+
+"S'listen, Susan," said she, with a look full of import. Susan leaned
+over Miss Thornton's flat-topped desk so that their heads were close
+together. "Listen," said Miss Thornton, in a low tone, "I met George
+Banks on the deck this afternoon, see? And I happened to tell him that
+Miss Wrenn was going." Miss Thornton glanced cautiously about her, her
+voice sank to a low murmur. "Well. And then he says, 'Yes, I knew
+that,' he says, 'but do you know who's going to take her place?' 'Miss
+Kirk is,' I says, 'and I think it's a dirty shame!'"
+
+"Good for you!" said Susan, grateful for this loyalty.
+
+"Well, I did, Susan. And it is, too! But listen. 'That may be,' he
+says, 'but what do you know about young Coleman coming down to work in
+Front Office!'"
+
+"Peter Coleman!" Susan gasped. This was the most astonishing, the most
+exciting news that could possibly have been circulated. Peter Coleman,
+nephew and heir of old "J. G." himself, handsome, college-bred, popular
+from the most exclusive dowager in society to the humblest errand boy
+in his uncle's employ, actually coming down to Front Office daily, to
+share the joys and sorrows of the Brauer dynasty--it was unbelievable,
+it was glorious! Every girl in the place knew all about Peter Coleman,
+his golf record, his blooded terriers, his appearances in the social
+columns of the Sunday newspapers! Thorny remembered, although she did
+not boast of it, the days when, a little lad of twelve or fourteen, he
+had come to his uncle's office with a tutor, or even with an old, and
+very proud, nurse, for the occasional visits which always terminated
+with the delighted acceptance by Peter of a gold piece from Uncle
+Josiah. But Susan only knew him as a man, twenty-five now, a wonderful
+and fascinating person to watch, even, in happy moments, to dream about.
+
+"You know I met him, Thorny," she said now, eager and smiling.
+
+"'S'at so?" Miss Thornton said, politely uninterested.
+
+"Yes, old Baxter introduced me, on a car. But, Thorny, he can't be
+coming right down here into this rotten place!" protested Susan.
+
+"He'll have a desk in Brauer's office," Miss Thornton explained. "He is
+to learn this branch, and be manager some day. George says that Brauer
+is going to buy into the firm."
+
+"Well, for Heaven's sake!" Susan's thoughts flew. "But, Thorny," she
+presently submitted, "isn't Peter Coleman in college?"
+
+Miss Thornton looked mysterious, looked regretful.
+
+"I understand old J. G.'s real upset about that," she said discreetly,
+"but just what the trouble was, I'm not at liberty to mention. You know
+what young men are."
+
+"Sure," said Susan, thoughtfully.
+
+"I don't mean that there was any scandal," Miss Thornton amended
+hastily, "but he's more of an athlete than a student, I guess--"
+
+"Sure," Susan agreed again. "And a lot he knows about office work,
+NOT," she mused. "I'll bet he gets a good salary?"
+
+"Three hundred and fifty," supplied Miss Thornton.
+
+"Oh, well, that's not so much, considering. He must get that much
+allowance, too. What a snap! Thorny, what do you bet the girls all go
+crazy about him!"
+
+"All except one. I wouldn't thank you for him."
+
+"All except TWO!" Susan went smiling back to her desk, a little more
+excited than she cared to show. She snapped off her light, and swept
+pens and blotters into a drawer, pulling open another drawer to get her
+purse and gloves. By this time the office was deserted, and Susan could
+take her time at the little mirror nailed inside the closet door.
+
+A little cramped, a little chilly, she presently went out into the
+gusty September twilight of Front Street. In an hour the wind would die
+away. Now it was sweeping great swirls of dust and chaff into the eyes
+of home-going men and women. Susan, like all San Franciscans, was used
+to it. She bent her head, sank her hands in her coat-pockets, and
+walked fast.
+
+Sometimes she could walk home, but not to-night, in the teeth of this
+wind. She got a seat on the "dummy" of a cable-car. A man stood on the
+step, holding on to the perpendicular rod just before her, but under
+his arm she could see the darkened shops they passed, girls and men
+streaming out of doors marked "Employees Only," men who ran for the car
+and caught it, men who ran for the car and missed it. Her bright eyes
+did not miss an inch of the crowded streets.
+
+Susan smiled dreamily. She was arranging the details of her own
+wedding, a simple but charming wedding in Old Saint Mary's. The groom
+was of course Mr. Peter Coleman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The McAllister Street cable-car, packed to its last inch, throbbed upon
+its way so jerkily that Susan, who was wedged in close to the glass
+shield at the front of the car, had sometimes to cling to the seat with
+knees and finger-tips to keep from sliding against her neighbor, a
+young man deep in a trade-journal, and sometimes to brace herself to
+withstand his helpless sliding against her. They both laughed presently
+at the absurdity of it.
+
+"My, don't they jerk!" said the friendly Susan, and the young man
+agreed fervently, in a bashful mumble, "It's fierce, all right," and
+returned to his book. Susan, when she got down at her corner, gave him
+a little nod and smile, and he lifted his hat, and smiled brightly in
+return.
+
+There was a little bakery on this corner, with two gaslights flaring in
+its window. Several flat pies and small cakes were displayed there, and
+a limp curtain, on a string, shut off the shop, where a dozen people
+were waiting now. A bell in the door rang violently, whenever anyone
+came out or in. Susan knew the bakery well, knew when the rolls were
+hot, and just the price and variety of the cookies and the pies.
+
+She knew, indeed, every inch of the block, a dreary block at best,
+perhaps especially dreary in this gloomy pitiless summer twilight. It
+was lined with shabby, bay-windowed, three-story wooden houses, all
+exactly alike. Each had a flight of wooden steps running up to the
+second floor, a basement entrance under the steps, and a small cemented
+yard, where papers and chaff and orange peels gathered, and grass
+languished and died. The dining-room of each house was in the basement,
+and slatternly maids, all along the block, could be seen setting
+tables, by flaring gas-light, inside. Even the Nottingham lace curtains
+at the second-story windows seemed akin, although they varied from the
+stiff, immaculate, well-darned lengths that adorned the rooms where the
+Clemenceaus--grandmother, daughter and granddaughter, and direct
+descendants of the Comte de Moran--were genteelly starving to death, to
+the soft, filthy, torn strips that finished off the parlor of the
+noisy, cheerful, irrepressible Daleys' once-pretentious home. Poverty
+walked visibly upon this block, the cold, forbidding poverty of pride
+and courage gone wrong, the idle, decorous, helpless poverty of fallen
+gentility. Poverty spoke through the unobtrusive little signs over
+every bell, "Rooms," and through the larger signs that said "Costello.
+Modes and Children's Dressmaker." Still another sign in a second-story
+bay said "Alice. Milliner," and a few hats, dimly discernible from the
+street, bore out the claim.
+
+Upon the house where Susan Brown lived with her aunt, and her aunt's
+three daughters, there was no sign, although Mrs. Lancaster, and Mary
+Lou, Virginia and Georgianna had supported themselves for many years by
+the cheerless process known as taking boarders. Sometimes, when the
+Lancasters were in especially trying financial straits, the possibility
+of a little sign was discussed. But so far, the humiliating extreme had
+been somehow avoided.
+
+"No, I feel that Papa wouldn't like it," Mrs. Lancaster persisted.
+
+"Oh, Papa! He'd have died first!" the daughters would agree, in eager
+sympathy. And the question of the sign would be dismissed again.
+
+"Papa" had been a power in his day, a splendid, audacious, autocratic
+person, successful as a pioneer, a miner, a speculator, proud of a
+beautiful and pampered Southern wife and a nurseryful of handsome
+children. These were the days of horses and carriages, when the Eddy
+Street mansion was built, when a score of servants waited upon Ma and
+the children. But terrible times came finally upon this grandeur, the
+stock madness seized "Papa," he was a rich man one day, a millionaire
+the next,--he would be a multi-millionaire next week! Ma never ceased
+to be grateful that Papa, on the very day that his fortune crashed to
+ruin, came home too sick and feverish to fully comprehend the calamity,
+and was lying in his quiet grave before his widow and her children did.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster, in her fresh expensive black, with her five black-clad
+children beside her, thus had the world to face, at thirty-four.
+George, the first-born, destined to die in his twentieth summer, was
+eighteen then, Mary Lou sixteen, helpless and feminine, and Alfred, at
+thirteen, already showed indications of being entirely spoiled. Then
+came conscientious, gentle little Virginia, ten years old, and finally
+Georgianna, who was eight.
+
+Out of the general wreckage, the Fulton Street house was saved, and to
+the Fulton Street house the spoiled, terrified little family moved.
+Mary Lou sometimes told Susan with mournful pride of the weeping and
+wailing of those days, of dear George's first job, that, with the check
+that Ma's uncle in Albany sent every month, supported the family. Then
+the uncle died, and George died, and Ma, shaken from her silent and
+dignified retirement, rose to the occasion in a manner that Mary Lou
+always regarded as miraculous, and filled the house with boarders. And
+enjoyed the new venture thoroughly, too, although Mary Lou never
+suspected that. Perhaps Ma, herself, did not realize how much she liked
+to bustle and toil, how gratifying the stir and confusion in the house
+were, after the silent want and loneliness. Ma always spoke of women in
+business as unfortunate and hardened; she never spoke of her livelihood
+as anything but a temporary arrangement, never made out a bill in her
+life. Upon her first boarders, indeed, she took great pride in
+lavishing more than the luxuries for which their board money could
+possibly pay. Ma reminded them that she had no rent to pay, and that
+the girls would soon be married, and Alfie working.
+
+But Papa had been dead for twenty years now, and still the girls were
+unmarried, and Alfred, if he was working, was doing it in so fitful and
+so casual a manner as to be much more of a burden than a help to his
+mother. Alfred lost one position after another because he drank, and
+Ma, upon whose father's table wine had been quite a matter of course,
+could not understand why a little too much drinking should be taken so
+seriously by Alfie's employers, and why they could not give the boy
+another--and another, and another--chance. Ma never alluded, herself,
+to this little weakness of Alfie's. He was still her darling, the one
+son she had left, the last of the Lancasters.
+
+But, as the years went on, she grew to be less of the shrinking
+Southern lady, more the boarding-house keeper. If she wrote no bills,
+she kept them pretty straight in her head, and only her endless courage
+and industry kept the crazy enterprise afloat, and the three idle girls
+comfortable and decently dressed. Theoretically, they "helped Ma."
+Really, one well-trained servant could have done far more than Mary
+Lou, Virginia and Georgie did between them. This was, of course,
+primarily her own fault. Ma belonged to the brisk and bustling type
+that shoves aside a pair of eager little hands, with "Here, I can do
+that better myself!" She was indeed proud of the fact that Mary Lou, at
+thirty-six, could not rent a room or receipt a bill if her life were at
+stake. "While I'm here, I'll do this, dear," said Ma, cheerfully. "When
+I'm gone you'll have quite enough to do!"
+
+Susan entered a small, square entrance-hall, papered in arabesques of
+green against a dark brown, where a bead of gas flickered dispiritedly
+in a red glass shade over the newel post. Some fly-specked calling
+cards languished in the brass tray of an enormous old walnut hat-rack,
+where several boarders had already hung wraps and hats.
+
+The upper part of the front door was set with two panels of beveled
+glass, decorated with a scroll design in frosted glass. When Susan
+Brown had been a very small girl she would sometimes stand inside this
+door and study the passing show of Fulton Street for hours at a time.
+Somebody would come running up the street steps, and pull the bell!
+Susan could hear it tinkle far downstairs in the kitchen, and would
+bashfully retire to the niche by the hat-rack. Minnie or Lizzie, or
+perhaps a Japanese schoolboy,--whoever the servant of the hour might
+be, would come slowly up the inside stairs, and cautiously open the
+street door an inch or two.
+
+A colloquy would ensue. No, Mrs. Lancaster wasn't in, no, none of the
+family wasn't in. He could leave it. She didn't know, they hadn't said.
+He could leave it. No, she didn't know.
+
+The collector would discontentedly depart, and instantly Mary Lou or
+Georgie, or perhaps both, would hang over the railing in the upper hall.
+
+"Lizzie, who was it?" they would call down softly, impatient and
+excited, as Lizzie dragged her way upstairs.
+
+"Who was it, Mary Lou?"
+
+"Why, how do I know?"
+
+"Here, GIVE it to me, Lizzie!"
+
+A silence. Then, "Oh, pshaw!" and the sound of a closing door. Then
+Lizzie would drag downstairs again, and Susan would return to her
+silent contemplation of the street.
+
+She had seen nothing particularly odd or unattractive about the house
+in those little-girl days, and it seemed a perfectly normal
+establishment to her now. It was home, and it was good to get home
+after the long day. She ran up the flight of stairs that the gas-bead
+dimly lighted, and up another, where a second gas-jet, this one without
+a shade, burned unsteadily and opened the door, at the back of the
+third-floor hall, that gave upon the bedroom that she shared with Mary
+Lou and Georgianna. The boarding-house was crowded, at this particular
+time, and Georgie, who flitted about as a rule to whatever room chanced
+to be empty, was now quartered here and slept on a narrow couch, set at
+an angle from the bay-window, and covered with a worn strip of chenille.
+
+It was a shabby room, and necessarily crowded, but it was bright, and
+its one window gave an attractive view of little tree-shaded backyards
+below, where small tragedies and comedies were continually being
+enacted by dogs and babies and cats and the crude little maids of the
+neighborhood. Susan enjoyed these thoroughly, and she and Georgie also
+liked to watch the girl in the house just behind theirs, who almost
+always forgot to draw the shades when she lighted her gas. Whatever
+this unconscious neighbor did they found very amusing.
+
+"Oh, look, Georgie, she's changing her slippers. Don't miss this--She
+must be going out to-night!" Susan would quiver with excitement until
+her cousin joined her at the window.
+
+"Well, I wish you could have seen her trying her new hat on to-day!"
+Georgie would contribute. And both girls would kneel at the window as
+long as the bedroom in the next house was lighted. "Gone down to meet
+that man in the light overcoat," Susan would surmise, when the light
+went out, and if she and Georgie, hurrying to the bakery, happened to
+encounter their neighbor, they had much difficulty in suppressing their
+mirth.
+
+To-night the room that the cousins shared was empty, and Susan threw
+her hat and coat over the foot of the large, lumpy wooden bed that
+seemed to take up at least one-half of the floor-space. She sat down on
+the side of the bed, feeling the tension of the day relax, and a
+certain lassitude creep over her. An old magazine lay nearby on a
+chair, she reached for it, and began idly to re-read it.
+
+Beside the bed and Georgie's cot, there was a walnut bureau in the
+room, two chairs and one rocking chair, and a washstand. One the latter
+was a china basin, half-full of cold, soapy water, a damp towel was
+spread upon the pitcher that stood beside it on the floor. The wet pink
+soap, lying in a blue saucer, scented the room. On the bureau were
+combs and brushes, powders and cold creams, little brass and china
+trays filled with pins and buttons, and an old hand-mirror, in a
+loosened, blackened silver mounting. There was a glazed paper candy-box
+with hairpins in it, and a little liqueur glass, with "Hotel
+Netherlands" written upon it in gold, held wooden collar buttons and
+odd cuff-links. A great many hatpins, some plain, some tarnished and
+ornate, all bent, were stuck into a little black china boot. A basket
+of china and gold wire was full of combings, some dotted veils were
+folded into squares, and pinned into the wooden frame of the mirror,
+and the mirror itself was thickly rimmed with cards and photographs and
+small souvenirs of all sorts, that had been stuck in between the glass
+and the frame. There were dance cards with dangling tiny pencils on
+tasseled cords, and score cards plastered with tiny stars. There were
+calling cards, and newspaper clippings, and tintypes taken of young
+people at the beach or the Chutes. A round pilot-biscuit, with a dozen
+names written on it in pencil, was tied with a midshipman's hat-ribbon,
+there were wooden plates and champagne corks, and toy candy-boxes in
+the shapes of guitars and fire-crackers. Miss Georgie Lancaster, at
+twenty-eight, was still very girlish and gay, and she shared with her
+mother and sisters the curious instinctive acquisitiveness of the woman
+who, powerless financially and incapable of replacing, can only save.
+
+Moments went by, a quarter-hour, a half-hour, and still Susan sat
+hunched up stupidly over her book. It was not an interesting magazine,
+she had read it before, and her thoughts ran in an uneasy undercurrent
+while she read. "I ought to be doing my hair--it must be half-past six
+o'clock--I must stop this--"
+
+It was almost half-past six when the door opened suddenly, and a large
+woman came in.
+
+"Well, hello, little girlie!" said the newcomer, panting from the climb
+upstairs, and turning a cold, fresh-colored cheek for Susan's kiss. She
+took off a long coat, displaying beneath, a black walking-skirt, an
+elaborate high collar, and a view of shabby corset and shabby
+corset-cover between. "Ma wanted butter," she explained, with a
+pleasant, rueful smile, "and I just slipped into anything to go for it!"
+
+"You're an angel, Mary Lou," Susan said affectionately.
+
+"Oh, angel!" Miss Lancaster laughed wearily, but she liked the
+compliment for all that. "I'm not much of an angel," she said with a
+sigh, throwing her hat and coat down beside Susan's, and assuming a
+somewhat spotted serge skirt, and a limp silk waist a trifle too small
+for her generous proportions. Susan watched her in silence, while she
+vigorously jerked the little waist this way and that, pinning its torn
+edges down firmly, adjusting her skirt over it, and covering the
+safety-pin that united them with a cracked patent-leather belt.
+
+"There!" said Mary Lou, "that doesn't look very well, but I guess it'll
+do. I have to serve to-night, and I will not wear my best skirt into
+the kitchen. Ready to go down?"
+
+Susan flung her book down, yawned.
+
+"I ought to do my hair--" she began.
+
+"Oh, you look all right," her cousin assured her, "I wouldn't bother."
+
+She took a small paper bag full of candy from her shopping bag and
+tucked it out of sight in a bureau drawer. "Here's a little sweet bite
+for you and me, Sue," said she, with childish, sweet slyness, "when
+Jinny and Ma go to the lecture to-night, we'll have OUR little party,
+too. Just a little secret between you and me."
+
+They went downstairs with their arms about each other, to the big front
+dining-room in the basement. The lower hall was dark and draughty, and
+smelled of boiling vegetables. There was a telephone on a little table,
+close by the dining-room door, and a slender, pretty young woman was
+seated before it. She put her hand over the transmitter, as they came
+downstairs, and said in a smiling whisper, "Hello, darling!" to Susan.
+"Shut the door," she added, very low, "when you go into the
+dining-room."
+
+Susan nodded, and Georgianna Lancaster returned at once to her
+telephoned conversation.
+
+"Yes, you did!" said she, satirically, "I believe that! ... Oh, of
+course you did! ... And I suppose you wrote me a note, too, only I
+didn't get it. Now, listen, why don't you say that you forgot all about
+it, I wouldn't care ... Honestly, I wouldn't ... honestly, I wouldn't
+... Yes, I've heard that before ... No, he didn't either, Rose was
+furious. ... No, I wasn't furious at all, but at the same time I didn't
+think it was a very gentlemanly way to act, on your part ..."
+
+Susan and Mary Lou went into the dining-room, and the closing door shut
+off the rest of the conversation. The household was quite used to
+Georgie's quarrels with her male friends.
+
+A large, handsome woman, who did not look her sixty years, was moving
+about the long table, which, spread with a limp and slightly spotted
+cloth, was partially laid for dinner. Knives, spoons, forks and rolled
+napkins were laid in a little heap at each place, the length of the
+table was broken by salt shakers of pink and blue glass, plates of soda
+crackers, and saucers of green pickles.
+
+"Hello, Auntie!" Susan said, laying an arm about the portly figure, and
+giving the lady a kiss. Mrs. Lancaster's anxious eye went to her oldest
+daughter.
+
+"Who's Georgie talking to?" she asked, in a low tone.
+
+"I don't know, Ma," Mary Lou said, sympathetically, pushing a chair
+against the table with her knee, "Fred Persons, most likely."
+
+"No. 'Tisn't Fred. She just spoke about Fred," said the mother
+uneasily. "This is the man that didn't meet them Sunday. Sometimes,"
+she complained, "it don't seem like Georgie has any dignity at all!"
+She had moved to the china closet at one end of the room, and now stood
+staring at it. "What did I come here for?" she asked, helplessly.
+
+"Glasses," prompted Susan, taking some down herself.
+
+"Glasses," Mrs. Lancaster echoed, in relief. "Get the butter, Mary Lou?"
+
+"In the kitchen, Ma." Miss Lancaster went into the kitchen herself, and
+Susan went on with the table-setting. Before she had finished, a
+boarder or two, against the unwritten law of the house, had come
+downstairs. Mrs. Cortelyou, a thin little wisp of a widow, was in the
+rocker in the bay-window, Major Kinney, fifty, gray, dried-up, was on
+the horsehair sofa, watching the kitchen door over his paper. Georgia,
+having finished her telephoning, had come in to drop idly into her own
+chair, and play with her knives and forks. Miss Lydia Lord, a plain,
+brisk woman, her upper lip darkened with hair, her figure flat and
+square, like a boy's, had come down for her sister's tray, and was
+talking to Susan in the resolutely cheerful tone that Susan always
+found annoying, when she was tired.
+
+"The Keiths are off for Europe again, Susan,--dear me! isn't it lovely
+for the people who can do those things!" said Miss Lord, who was
+governess in a very wealthy household, and liked to talk of the city's
+prominent families. "Some day you and I will have to find a million
+dollars and run away for a year in Italy! I wonder, Sue," the mild
+banter ceased, "if you could get Mary's dinner? I hate to go into the
+kitchen, they're all so busy--"
+
+Susan took the tray, and went through the swinging door, and into the
+kitchen. Two or three forms were flitting about in the steam and smoke
+and flickering gas-light, water was running, gravy hissing on the
+stove; Alice, the one poor servant the establishment boasted, was
+attempting to lift a pile of hot plates with an insufficient cloth.
+Susan filled her tray silently.
+
+"Anything I can do, Mary Lou?"
+
+"Just get out of the WAY, lovey--that's about all--I salted that once,
+Ma. If you don't want that table, Sue--and shut the door, dear! The
+smoke--"
+
+Susan was glad to get out of the kitchen, and in a moment Mrs.
+Lancaster and Mary Lou came into the dining-room, too, and Alice rang
+the dinner bell. Instantly the boarders streamed downstairs, found
+their places with a general murmuring of mild little pleasantries. Mrs.
+Lancaster helped the soup rapidly from a large tureen, her worried eyes
+moved over the table-furnishings without pause.
+
+The soup was well cooled before the place next to Susan was filled by a
+tall and muscular young man, with very blue eyes, and a large and
+exceptionally charming mouth. The youth had teeth of a dazzling
+whiteness, a smile that was a bewildering Irish compound of laughter
+and tears, and sooty blue-black hair that fitted his head like a thick
+cap. He was a noisy lad, this William Oliver, opinionated, excitable, a
+type that in its bigness and broadness seemed almost coarse, sometimes,
+but he had all a big man's tenderness and sweetness, and everyone liked
+him. Susan and he quarreled with and criticized each other, William
+imitating her little affectations of speech and manner, Susan reviling
+his transparent and absurd ambitions, but they had been good friends
+for years. Young Oliver's mother had been Mrs. Lancaster's housekeeper
+for the most prosperous period in the history of the house, and if
+Susan naturally felt that the son of a working housekeeper was
+seriously handicapped in a social sense, she nevertheless had many
+affectionate memories of his mother, as the kindly dignified "Nellie"
+who used to amuse them so delightfully on rainy days. Nellie had been
+long dead, now, and her son had grown up into a vigorous, enthusiastic
+young person, burning his big hands with experiments in physics and
+chemistry, reading the Scientific American late into the night, until
+his broad shoulders were threatened with a permanent stoop, and his
+eager eyes blinked wearily at breakfast, anxious to disprove certain
+accepted theories, and as eager to introduce others, unaffected,
+irreverent, and irresistibly buoyant. William could not hear an opera
+praised without dragging Susan off to gallery seats, which the lady
+frankly characterized as "smelly," to see if his opinion agreed with
+that of the critics. If it did not, Susan must listen to long
+dissertations upon the degeneracy of modern music. His current passion
+was the German language, which he was studying in odd moments so that
+he might translate certain scientific treatises in a manner more to the
+scientific mind.
+
+"Hello, Susan, darling!" he said now, as he slipped into his chair.
+
+"Hello, heart's delight!" Susan answered composedly.
+
+"Well, here--here--here!" said an aged gentleman who was known for no
+good reason as "Major," "what's all this? You young folks going to give
+us a wedding?"
+
+"Not unless I'm chloroformed first, Major," Susan said, briskly, and
+everybody laughed absently at the well-known pleasantry. They were all
+accustomed to the absurdity of the Major's question, and far more
+absorbed just now in watching the roast, which had just come on.
+Another pot-roast. Everybody sighed.
+
+"This isn't just what I meant to give you good people to-night," said
+Mrs. Lancaster cheerfully, as she stood up to carve, "but butchers can
+be tyrants, as we all know. Mary Lou, put vegetables on that for Mrs.
+Cortelyou."
+
+Mary Lou briskly served potatoes and creamed carrots and summer squash;
+Susan went down a pyramid of saucers as she emptied a large bowl of
+rather watery tomato-sauce.
+
+"Well, they tell us meat isn't good for us anyway!" piped Mrs. Kinney,
+who was rheumatic, and always had scrambled eggs for dinner.
+
+"--ELEGANT chicken, capon, probably, and on Sundays, turkey all winter
+long!" a voice went on in the pause.
+
+"My father ate meat three times a day, all his life," said Mrs. Parker,
+a dark, heavy woman, with an angelic-looking daughter of nineteen
+beside her, "and papa lived to be--let me see--"
+
+"Ah, here's Jinny!" Mrs. Lancaster stopped carving to receive the kiss
+of a tall, sweet-faced, eye-glassed young woman who came in, and took
+the chair next hers. "Your soup's cold, dear," said she tenderly.
+
+Miss Virginia Lancaster looked a little chilly; her eyes, always weak,
+were watery now from the sharp evening air, and her long nose red at
+the tip. She wore neat, plain clothes, and a small hat, and laid black
+lisle gloves and a small black book beside her plate as she sat down.
+
+"Good evening, everybody!" said she, pleasantly. "Late comers mustn't
+complain, Ma, dear. I met Mrs. Curry, poor thing, coming out of the
+League rooms, and time flew, as time has a way of doing! She was
+telling me about Harry," Miss Virginia sighed, peppering her soup
+slowly. "He knew he was going," she resumed, "and he left all his
+little things--"
+
+"Gracious! A child of seven?" Mrs. Parker said.
+
+"Oh, yes! She said there was no doubt of it."
+
+The conversation turned upon death, and the last acts of the dying.
+Loretta Parker related the death of a young saint. Miss Lord, pouring a
+little lime water into most of her food, chewed religiously, her eyes
+moving from one speaker's face to another.
+
+"I saw my pearl to-day," said William Oliver to Susan, under cover of
+the general conversation.
+
+"Eleanor Harkness? Where?"
+
+"On Market Street,--the little darling! Walking with Anna Carroll.
+Going to the boat."
+
+"Oh, and how's Anna?"
+
+"Fine, I guess. I only spoke to them for a minute. I wish you could
+have seen her dear little laugh--"
+
+"Oh, Billy, you fatuous idiot! It'll be someone else to-morrow."
+
+"It will NOT," said William, without conviction "No, my little treasure
+has all my heart--"
+
+"Honestly," said Susan, in fine scorn, "it's cat-sickening to hear you
+go on that way! Especially with that snapshot of Anna Carroll still in
+your watch!"
+
+"That snapshot doesn't happen to be still in my watch, if it's any
+business of yours!" the gentleman said, sweetly.
+
+"Why, it is TOO! Let's see it, then!"
+
+"No, I won't let you see it, but it's not there, just the same."
+
+"Oh, Billy, what an awful lie!"
+
+"Susan!" said Mrs. Lancaster, partly in reproof, partly to call her
+niece's attention to apple-pie and tapioca pudding.
+
+"Pudding, please, auntie." Susan subsided, not to break forth again
+until the events of the day suddenly rushed into her mind. She hastily
+reviewed them for William's benefit.
+
+"Well, what do you care?" he consoled her for the disappointment,
+"here's your chance to bone up on the segregating, or crediting, or
+whatever you call it."
+
+"Yes, and then have someone else get it!"
+
+"No one else could get it, if you understood it best!" he said
+impatiently.
+
+"That shows just about how much you know about the office!" Susan
+retorted, vexed at his lack of sympathy. And she returned to her
+pudding, with the real cream of the day's news yet untold.
+
+A few moments later Billy was excused, for a struggle with German in
+the night school, and departed with a joyous, "Auf wiedersehen,
+Fraulein Brown!" to Susan. Such boarders as desired were now drinking
+their choice between two dark, cool fluids that might have been tea, or
+might have been coffee, or might have been neither.
+
+"I am going a little ahead of you and Georgie, Ma," said Virginia,
+rising, "for I want to see Mamie Evans about tickets for Saturday."
+
+"Say, listen, Jin, I'm not going to-night," said Miss Georgie, hastily,
+and with a little effort.
+
+"Why, you said you were, Georgie!" the older sister said reproachfully.
+"I thought you'd bring Ma."
+
+"Well, I'm not, so you thought wrong!" Georgie responded airily.
+
+"Somebody coming to see you, dear?" asked her mother.
+
+"I don't know--maybe." Miss Georgie got up, brushing the crumbs from
+her lap.
+
+"Who is it, dear?" her mother pursued, too casually.
+
+"I tell you it may not be anyone, Ma!" the girl answered, suddenly
+irritated. A second later they heard her running upstairs.
+
+"I really ought to be early--I promised Miss Evans--" Virginia murmured.
+
+"Yes, I know, lovey," said her mother. "So you run right along. I'll
+just do a few little things here, and come right after you." Virginia
+was Mrs. Lancaster's favorite child, now she kissed her warmly. "Don't
+get all tired out, my darling!" said she, and when the girl was gone
+she added, "Never gives ONE thought to herself!"
+
+"She's an angel!" said Loretta Parker fervently.
+
+"But I kind of hate to have you go down to League Hall alone, Ma," said
+Mary Lou, who was piling dishes and straightening the room, with
+Susan's help.
+
+"Yes, let us put you on the car," Susan suggested.
+
+"I declare I hate to have you," the older woman hesitated.
+
+"Well, I'll change," Mary Lou sighed wearily. "I'll get right into my
+things, a breath of air will do us both good, won't it, Sue?"
+
+Presently they all walked to the McAllister Street car. Susan, always
+glad to be out at night, found something at which to stop in every shop
+window; she fairly danced along at her cousin's side, on the way back.
+
+"I think Fillmore Street's as gay as Kearney, don't you, Mary Lou?
+Don't you just hate to go in. Don't you wish something exciting would
+happen?"
+
+"What a girl you are for wanting excitement, Sue. I want to get back
+and see that Georgie hasn't shut everyone out of the parlor!" worried
+Mary Lou.
+
+They went through the basement door to the dining room, where one or
+two old ladies were playing solitaire, on the red table-cloth, under
+the gas-light. Susan drew up a chair, and plunged into a new library
+book. Mary Lou, returning from a trip upstairs, said noiselessly, "Gone
+walking!" and Susan looked properly disgusted at Georgie's lack of
+propriety. Mary Lou began a listless game of patience, with a shabby
+deck of cards taken from the sideboard drawer, presently she grew
+interested, and Susan put aside her book, and began to watch the cards,
+too. The old ladies chatted at intervals over their cards. One game
+followed another, Mary Lou prefacing each with a firm, "Now, no more
+after this one, Sue," and a mention of the time.
+
+It was like many of their evenings, like three hundred evenings a year.
+The room grew warm, the gas-lights crept higher and higher, flared
+noisily, and were lowered. Mary Lou unfastened her collar, Susan
+rumpled her hair. The conversation, always returning to the red king
+and the black four-spot, ranged idly here and there. Susan observed
+that she must write some letters, and meant to take a hot bath and go
+early to bed. But she sat on and on; the cards, by the smallest
+percentage of amusement, still held them.
+
+At ten o'clock Mrs. Lancaster and Virginia came in, bright-eyed and
+chilly, eager to talk of the lecture. Mrs. Lancaster loosened her coat,
+laid aside the miserable little strip of fur she always wore about her
+throat, and hung her bonnet, with its dangling widow's veil, over the
+back of her deep chair. She drew Susan down to sit on her knee. "All
+the baby auntie's got," she said. Georgie presently came downstairs,
+her caller, "that fresh kid I met at Sallie's," had gone, and she was
+good-natured again. Mary Lou produced the forgotten bag of candy; they
+all munched it and talked. The old ladies had gone upstairs long ago.
+
+All conversations led Mrs. Lancaster into the past, the girls could
+almost have reconstructed those long-ago, prosperous years, from
+hearing her tell of them.
+
+"--Papa fairly glared at the man," she was saying presently, won to an
+old memory by the chance meeting of an old friend to-night, "I can see
+his face this day! I said, 'Why, papa, I'd JUST as soon have these
+rooms!' But, no. Papa had paid for the best, and he was going to have
+the best--"
+
+"That was Papa!" laughed his daughters.
+
+"That was Papa!" his widow smiled and sighed. "Well. The first thing I
+knew, there was the proprietor,--you may imagine! Papa says, 'Will you
+kindly tell me why I have to bring my wife, a delicate, refined
+Southern woman--'"
+
+"And he said beautiful, too, Ma!"
+
+Mrs. Lancaster laughed mildly.
+
+"Poor papa! He was so proud of my looks! 'Will you tell me,' he says,
+'why I have to put my wife into rooms like these?' 'Sir,' the landlord
+says, 'I have only one better suite--'"
+
+"Bridal suite, he said, Ma!"
+
+"Yes, he did. The regular bridal suite. I wasn't a bride then, that was
+after poor George was born, but I had a very high color, and I always
+dressed very elegantly. And I had a good figure, your father's two
+hands could meet around my waist. Anyway, then Papa--dear me, how it
+all comes back!--Papa says, fairly shouting, 'Well, why can't I have
+that suite?' 'Oh, sir,' the landlord says, 'a Mr. George Lancaster has
+engaged that for his wife, and they say that he's a man who WILL get
+what he pays for--'" Another mild laugh interrupted the narrative.
+
+"Didn't you nearly DIE, Ma?"
+
+"Well, my dear! If you could have seen the man's face when Papa--and
+how well he did this sort of thing, deary me!--whips out a card--"
+
+They all laughed merrily. Then Mrs. Lancaster sighed.
+
+"Poor Papa, I don't know what he would have done if he could have seen
+us to-day," she said. "It's just as well we couldn't see ahead, after
+all!"
+
+"Gee, but I'd like to see what's coming," Susan said thoughtfully.
+
+"Bed is coming next!" Mary Lou said, putting her arm about the girl.
+Upstairs they all filed sleepily, lowering the hall gases as they went.
+Susan yawningly kissed her aunt and Virginia good-night, on the second
+floor, where they had a dark and rather colorless room together. She
+and the other girls went on up to the third-story room, where they
+spent nearly another hour in dilatory undressing. Susan hesitated again
+over the thought of a hot bath, decided against it, decided against
+even the usual brushing of her hair to-night, and sprang into bed to
+lie flat on her tired back, watching Mary Lou make up Georgie's bed
+with dislocating yawns, and Georgie, wincing as she put her hair into
+tight "kids." Susan slept in a small space bounded by the foot of the
+bed, the head of the bed, the wall, and her cousin's large person, and,
+as Mary Lou generally made the bed in the morning by flapping the
+covers back without removing them, they were apt to feel and smell
+unaired, and to be rumpled and loose at the foot. Susan could not turn
+over in the night without arousing Mary Lou, who would mutter a
+terrified "What is it--what is it?" for the next ten minutes. Years
+before, Susan, a timid, country-bred child, had awakened many a time in
+the night, frightened by the strange city noises, or the fire-bells,
+and had lain, with her mouth dry, and her little heart thundering,
+through lessening agonies of fright. But she never liked to awake Mary
+Lou. Now she was used to the city, and used to the lumpy, ill-made bed
+as well; indeed Susan often complained that she fell asleep too fast,
+that she wanted to lie awake and think.
+
+But to-night she lay awake for a long time. Susan was at twenty-one no
+more than a sweet and sunny child, after all. She had accepted a rather
+cheerless destiny with all the extraordinary philosophy and patience of
+a child, thankful for small pleasures, enduring small discomforts
+gaily. No situation was too hopeless for Susan's laughter, and no
+prospect too dark for her bright dreams. Now, to-night for the first
+time, the tiny spark of a definite ambition was added to this natural
+endowment. She would study the work of the office systematically, she
+would be promoted, she would be head girl some day, some day very soon,
+and obliged, as head girl, to come in and out of Mr. Peter Coleman's
+office constantly. And by the dignity and gravity of her manner, and
+her personal neatness, and her entire indifference to his
+charms--always neat little cuffs and collars basted in her tailor-made
+suit--always in her place on the stroke of half-past eight--
+
+Susan began to get sleepy. She turned over cautiously, and bunched her
+pillow comfortably under one cheek. Hazy thoughts wheeled through her
+tired brain. Thorny--the man on the dummy--the black king--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Among Mrs. Lancaster's reminiscences Susan had heard none more often
+than the one in which the first appearance of Billy Oliver and his
+mother in the boarding-house was described. Mrs. Oliver had been newly
+widowed then, and had the round-faced, square-shouldered little Billy
+to support, in a city that was strange and unfriendly. She had gone to
+Mrs. Lancaster's intending merely to spend a day or two, until the
+right work and the right home for herself and Billy should be found.
+
+"It happened to be a bad time for me," Mrs. Lancaster would say,
+recalling the event. "My cook had gone, the house was full, and I had a
+quinsy sore throat. But I managed to find her a room, and Alfie and
+George carried in a couch for the little boy. She borrowed a broom, I
+remember, and cleaned out the I room herself. I explained how things
+were with me, and that I ought to have been on my back THEN! She was
+the cleanest soul I ever saw, she washed out the very bureau drawers,
+and she took the little half-curtain down, it was quite black,--we used
+to keep that window open a good deal. Well, and we got to talking, and
+she told me about her husband's death, he was a surveyor, and a pretty
+clever man, I guess. Poor thing, she burst right out crying--"
+
+"And you kept feeling sicker and sicker, Ma."
+
+"I began to feel worse and worse, yes. And at about four o'clock I sent
+Ceely,--you remember Ceely, Mary Lou!--for the doctor. She was getting
+dinner--everything was upset!"
+
+"Was that the day I broke the pitchers, Ma?"
+
+"No. That was another day. Well, when the doctor came, he said BED. I
+was too wretched then to say boo to a goose, and I simply tumbled in.
+And I wasn't out of bed for five weeks!"
+
+"Ma!"
+
+"Not for five weeks. Well. But that first night, somebody knocked at my
+door, and who should it be but my little widow! with her nice little
+black gown on, and a white apron. She'd brought me some gruel, and she
+began to hang up my things and straighten the room. I asked about
+dinner, and she said she had helped Ceely and that it was all right.
+The relief! And from that moment she took hold, got a new cook, cleaned
+house, managed everything! And how she adored that boy! I don't think
+that, in the seven years that she was with me, Nellie ever spent an
+evening away from him. Poor Nellie! And a witty, sweet woman she was,
+too, far above that sort of work. She was taking the public library
+examinations when she died. Nellie would have gone a long way. She was
+a real little lady. Billy must be more like his father, I imagine."
+
+"Oh, now, Ma!" There was always someone to defend Billy. "Look how good
+and steady Billy is!"
+
+"Steady, yes, and a dear, dear boy, as we all know. But--but very
+different from what I would wish a son of mine to be!" Mrs. Lancaster
+would say regretfully.
+
+Susan agreed with her aunt that it was a great pity that a person of
+Billy's intelligence should voluntarily grub away in a dirty iron
+foundry all the days of his youth, associating with the commonest types
+of laboring men. A clerkship, an agency, a hundred refined employments
+in offices would have seemed more suitable, or even a professional
+vocation of some sort. But she had in all honesty to admit that
+Alfred's disinclination to do anything at all, and Alfred's bad habits,
+made Billy's industry and cleanness and temperance a little less
+grateful to Mrs. Lancaster than they might otherwise have been.
+
+Alfred tried a great many positions, and lost them all because he could
+not work, and could not refrain from drinking. The women of his family
+called Alfred nothing more unkind than "unfortunate," and endured the
+drunkenness, the sullen aftermath, the depression while a new job was
+being found, and Alfie's insufferable complacency when the new job was
+found, with tireless patience and gentleness. Mary Lou carried Alfie's
+breakfast upstairs to his bed, on Sunday mornings, Mrs. Lancaster often
+gave him an early dinner, and hung over him adoringly while he ate it,
+because he so hated to dine with the boarders. Susan loaned him money,
+Virginia's prayers were all for him, and Georgie laughed at his jokes
+and quoted him as if he had been the most model of brothers. How much
+they realized of Alfie's deficiencies, how important the matter seemed
+to them, even Susan could not guess Mrs. Lancaster majestically forbade
+any discussion of Alfie. "Many a boy has his little weakness in early
+youth," she said, "Alfie will come out all right!"
+
+She had the same visionary optimism in regarding her daughters'
+futures. The girls were all to marry, of course, and marry well, far
+above their present station, indeed.
+
+"Somehow I always think of Mary Lou's husband as a prominent officer,
+or a diplomat," Mrs. Lancaster would say. "Not necessarily very rich,
+but with a comfortable private income. Mary Lou makes friends very
+easily, she likes to make a good appearance, she has a very gracious
+manner, and with her fine figure, and her lovely neck, she would make a
+very handsome mistress for a big home--yes, indeed you would, dear!
+Where many a woman would want to run away and hide, Mary Lou would be
+quite in her element--"
+
+"Well, one thing," Mary Lou would say modestly, "I'm never afraid to
+meet strangers, and, don't you know you've spoken of it, Ma? I never
+have any trouble in talking to them. Do you remember that woman in the
+grocery that night, Georgie, who said she thought I must have traveled
+a great deal, I had such an easy way of speaking? And I'd love to dress
+every night for dinner."
+
+"Of course you would!" her mother always said approvingly. "Now,
+Georgie," she would pursue, "is different again. Where Mary Lou only
+wants the very NICEST people about her, Georgie cares a good deal more
+for the money and having a good time!"
+
+"The man I marry has got to make up his mind that I'm going to keep on
+the go," Georgie would admit, with an independent toss of her head.
+
+"But you wouldn't marry just for that, dear? Love must come, too."
+
+"Oh, the love would come fast enough, if the money was there!" Georgie
+would declare naughtily.
+
+"I don't like to have you say that even in fun, dear! ... Now Jinny,"
+and Mrs. Lancaster would shake her head, "sometimes I think Jinny would
+be almost too hard upon any man," she would say, lovingly. "There are
+mighty few in this world good enough for her. And I would certainly
+warn any man," she usually added seriously, "that Jinny is far finer
+and more particular than most women. But a good, good man, older than
+she, who could give her a beautiful home--"
+
+"I would love to begin, on my wedding-day, to do some beautiful, big,
+charitable thing every day," Virginia herself would say eagerly. "I
+would like to be known far and wide as a woman of immense charities.
+I'd have only one handsome street suit or two, each season, beside
+evening dresses, and people would get to know me by sight, and bring
+their babies up to me in the street--" Her weak, kind eyes always
+watered at the picture.
+
+"But Mama is not ready yet to let you go!" her mother would say
+jealously. "We'll hope that Mr. Right will be a long time arriving!"
+
+Then it was Susan's turn.
+
+"And I want some fine, good man to make my Sue happy, some day," her
+aunt often said, affectionately. Susan writhed in spirit under the
+implication that no fine, good man yet had desired the honor; she had a
+girl's desire that her affairs--or the absence of affairs--of the heart
+should not be discussed. Susan felt keenly the fact that she had never
+had an offer of marriage; her one consolation, in this humiliation, was
+that no one but herself could be quite sure of it. Boys had liked her,
+confided in her, made her small Christmas presents,--just how other
+girls led them from these stages to the moment of a positive
+declaration, she often wondered. She knew that she was attractive to
+most people; babies and old men and women, servants and her associates
+in the office, strangers on ferryboats and sick people in hospitals
+alike responded to her friendliness and gaiety. But none of these was
+marriageable, of course, and the moment Susan met a person who was, a
+subtle change crept over her whole personality, veiled the bright
+charm, made the friendliness stiff, the gaiety forced. Susan, like all
+other girls, was not herself with the young unmarried men of her
+acquaintance; she was too eager to be exactly what they supposedly
+wanted her to be. She felt vaguely the utter unnaturalness of this,
+without ever being able to analyze it. Her attitude, the attitude of
+all her sex, was too entirely false to make an honest analysis
+possible. Susan, and her cousins, and the girls in the office, rather
+than reveal their secret longings to be married, would have gone
+cheerfully to the stake. Nevertheless, all their talk was of men and
+marriage, and each girl innocently appraised every man she met, and was
+mentally accepting or refusing an offer of marriage from him before she
+had known him five minutes.
+
+Susan viewed the single state of her three pretty cousins with secret
+uneasiness. Georgie always said that she had refused "dozens of
+fellows," meeting her mother's occasional mild challenge of some
+specific statement with an unanswerable "of course you didn't know, for
+I never told you, Ma." And Virginia liked to bemoan the fact that so
+many nice men seemed inclined to fall in love with herself, a girl who
+gave absolutely no thought to such things at all. Mrs. Lancaster
+supported Virginia's suspicions by memories of young men who had
+suddenly and mysteriously appeared, to ask her to accept them as
+boarders, and young attorneys who had their places in church changed to
+the pews that surrounded the Lancaster pew. But Susan dismissed these
+romantic vapors, and in her heart held Mary Lou in genuine admiration,
+because Mary Lou had undoubtedly and indisputably had a real lover,
+years ago.
+
+Mary Lou loved to talk of Ferd Eastman still; his youth, his manly
+charms, his crossing an empty ball-room floor, on the memorable evening
+of their meeting, especially to be introduced to her, and to tell her
+that brown hair was his favorite color for hair. After that the
+memories, if still fondly cherished, were less bright. Mary Lou had
+been "perfectly wretched," she had "cried for nights and nights" at the
+idea of leaving Ma; Ma had fainted frequently. "Ma made it really hard
+for me," said Mary Lou. Ma was also held to blame for not reconciling
+the young people after the first quarrel. Ma might have sent for Ferd.
+Mary Lou, of course, could do nothing but weep.
+
+Poor Mary Lou's weeping soon had good cause. Ferd rushed away, rushed
+into another marriage, with an heiress and a beauty, as it happened,
+and Mary Lou had only the dubious consolation of a severe illness.
+
+After that, she became cheerful, mild, unnecessary Mary Lou, doing a
+little bit of everything about the house, appreciated by nobody. Ferd
+and his wife were the great people of their own little town, near
+Virginia City, and after a while Mary Lou had several pictures of their
+little boy to treasure,--Robbie with stiff curls falling over a lace
+collar, and plaid kilts, in a swing, and Robbie in velvet
+knickerbockers, on a velocipede.
+
+The boarding-house had a younger affair than Mary Lou's just now in the
+attachment felt for lovely Loretta Parker by a young Mission doctor,
+Joseph O'Connor. Susan did not admire the gentleman very much, with his
+well-trimmed little beard, and his throaty little voice, but she could
+not but respect the dreamy and indifferent Loretta for his
+unquestionable ardor. Loretta wanted to enter a convent, to her
+mother's bitter anguish, and Susan once convulsed Georgie by the remark
+that she thought Joe O'Connor would make a cute nun, himself.
+
+"But think of sacrificing that lovely beard!" said Georgie.
+
+"Oh, you and I could treasure it, Georgie! Love's token, don't you
+know?"
+
+Loretta's affair was of course extremely interesting to everyone at
+Mrs. Lancaster's, as were the various "cases" that Georgie continually
+talked of, and the changing stream of young men that came to see her
+night after night. But also interesting were all the other lives that
+were shut up here together, the varied forms which sickness and
+money-trouble can take for the class that has not learned to be poor.
+Little pretenses, timid enjoyments and mild extravagances were all
+overshadowed by a poverty real enough to show them ever more shadowy
+than they were. Susan grew up in an atmosphere where a lost pair of
+overshoes, or a dentist's bill, or a counterfeit half-dollar, was a
+real tragedy. She was well used to seeing reddened eyes, and hearing
+resigned sighs at the breakfast table, without ever knowing what little
+unforeseen calamity had caused them. Every door in the dark hallways
+shut in its own little story of suffering and privation. Susan always
+thought of second-floor alcoved bedrooms as filled with the pungent
+fumes of Miss Beattie's asthma powder, and of back rooms as redolent of
+hot kerosene and scorched woolen, from the pressing of old Mr. Keane's
+suits, by Mrs. Keane. She could have identified with her eyes shut any
+room in the house. A curious chilliness lurked in the halls, from
+August to May, and an odor compounded of stale cigarette smoke, and
+carbolic acid, and coal-gas, and dust.
+
+Those women in the house who did not go to business every day generally
+came down to the breakfast table very much as they rose from bed. Limp
+faded wrappers and "Juliet" slippers were the only additions made to
+sleeping wear. The one or two men of the house, with Susan and Jane
+Beattie and Lydia Lord, had breakfasted and gone long before these
+ladies drifted downstairs. Sometimes Mrs. Parker and Loretta made an
+early trip to Church, but even then they wore only long cloaks over
+very informal attire, and joined the others, in wrappers, upon their
+return.
+
+Loitering over coffee and toast, in the sunny dining-room, the morning
+wasted away. The newspapers were idly discussed, various scraps of the
+house gossip went the rounds. Many a time, before her entrance into the
+business world, Susan had known this pleasant idleness to continue
+until ten o'clock, until eleven o'clock, while the room, between the
+stove inside and the winter sunshine outside, grew warmer and warmer,
+and the bedrooms upstairs waited in every stage of appalling disorder
+and confusion.
+
+Nowadays Susan ran downstairs just before eight o'clock, to gulp down
+her breakfast, with one eye on the clock. The clatter of a cable car
+passing the corner meant that Susan had just time to pin on her hat,
+seize her gloves and her lunch, and catch the next cable-car. She
+flashed through the dreary little entrance yard, past other yards, past
+the bakery, and took her seat on the dummy breathless with her hurry,
+exhilarated by the morning freshness of the air, and filled with happy
+expectation for the new day.
+
+On the Monday morning that Mr. Peter Coleman made his appearance as a
+member of the Front Office staff, Susan Brown was the first girl to
+reach the office. This was usually the case, but to-day Susan,
+realizing that the newcomer would probably be late, wished that she had
+the shred of an excuse to be late herself, to have an entrance, as it
+were. Her plain suit had been well brushed, and the coat was
+embellished by a fresh, dainty collar and wide cuffs of white linen.
+Susan had risen early to wash and press these, and they were very
+becoming to her fresh, unaffected beauty. But they must, of course, be
+hung in the closet, and Susan, taking her place at her desk, looked
+quite as usual, except for the spray of heliotrope pinned against her
+lavender shirtwaist.
+
+The other girls were earlier than was customary, there was much
+laughing and chatting as desks were dusted, and inkwells filled for the
+day. Susan, watching soberly from her corner, saw that Miss Cottle was
+wearing her best hat, that Miss Murray had on the silk gown she usually
+saved for Saturdays, that Thorny's hair was unusually crimped and
+puffed, and that the Kirks were wearing coquettish black silk aprons,
+with pink and blue bows. Susan's face began to burn. Her hand
+unobtrusively stole to her heliotrope, which fell, a moment later, a
+crushed little fragrant lump, into her waste-basket. Presently she went
+into the coat closet.
+
+"Remind me to take these to the French Laundry at noon," said Susan,
+pausing before Thorny's desk, on her way back to her own, with a tight
+roll of linen in her hand. "I left 'em on my coat from yesterday.
+They're filthy."
+
+"Sure, but why don't you do 'em yourself, Susan, and save your two
+bits?"
+
+"Well, maybe I will. I usually do." Susan yawned.
+
+"Still sleepy?"
+
+"Dying for sleep. I went with my cousin to St. Mary's last night, to
+hear that Mission priest. He's a wonder."
+
+"Not for me! I've not been inside a church for years. I had my friend
+last night. Say, Susan, has he come?"
+
+"Has who come?"
+
+"Oh, you go to, Susan! Young Coleman."
+
+"Oh, sure!" Susan's eyes brightened intelligently. "That's so, he was
+coming down to-day, wasn't he?"
+
+"Girls," said Miss Thornton, attracting the attention of the entire
+room, "what do you know about Susan Brown's trying to get away with it
+that she's forgotten about Peter Coleman!"
+
+"Oh, Lord, what a bluff!" somebody said, for the crowd.
+
+"I don't see why it's a bluff," said Susan hardily, back at her own
+desk, and turning her light on, full above her bright, innocent face.
+"I intended to wear my grandfather's gray uniform and my aunt's widow's
+veil to make an impression on him, and you see I didn't!"
+
+"Oh, Susan, you're awful!" Miss Thornton said, through the general
+shocked laughter. "You oughtn't say things like that," Miss Garvey
+remonstrated. "It's awful bad luck. Mamma had a married cousin in
+Detroit and she put on a widow's veil for fun--"
+
+At ten o'clock a flutter went through the office. Young Mr. Coleman was
+suddenly to be seen, standing beside Mr. Brauer at his high desk. He
+was exceptionally big and broad, handsome and fresh looking, with a
+look of careful grooming and dressing that set off his fine head and
+his fine hands; he wore a very smart light suit, and carried well the
+affectation of lavender tie and handkerchief and hose, and an opal
+scarf-pin.
+
+He seemed to be laughing a good deal over his new work, but finally sat
+down to a pile of bills, and did not interrupt Mr. Brauer after that
+oftener than ten times a minute. Susan met his eye, as she went along
+the deck, but he did not remember her, or was too confused to recognize
+her among the other girls, and they did not bow. She was very
+circumspect and very dignified for a week or two, always busy when
+Peter Coleman came into Front Office, and unusually neat in appearance.
+Miss Murray sat next to him on the car one morning, and they chatted
+for fifteen minutes; Miss Thornton began to quote him now and then;
+Miss Kirk, as credit clerk, spent at least a morning a week in Mr.
+Brauer's office, three feet away from Mr. Coleman, and her sister
+tripped in there now and then on real or imagined errands.
+
+But Susan bided her time. And one afternoon, late in October, returning
+early to the office, she found Mr. Coleman loitering disconsolately
+about the deck.
+
+"Excuse me, Miss Brown," said he, clearing his throat. He had, of
+course, noticed this busy, absorbed young woman.
+
+Susan stopped, attentive, unsmiling.
+
+"Brauer," complained the young man, "has gone off and locked my hat in
+his office. I can't go to lunch."
+
+"Why didn't you walk through Front Office?" said Susan, leading the way
+so readily and so sedately, that the gentleman was instantly put in the
+position of having addressed her on very slight provocation.
+
+"This inner door is always unlocked," she explained, with maternal
+gentleness.
+
+Peter Coleman colored.
+
+"I see--I am a bally ass!" he said, laughing.
+
+"You ought to know," Susan conceded politely. And suddenly her dimples
+were in view, her blue eyes danced as they met his, and she laughed too.
+
+This was a rare opportunity, the office was empty, Susan knew she
+looked well, for she had just brushed her hair and powdered her nose.
+She cast about desperately in her mind for something--anything!--to
+keep the conversation going. She had often thought of the words in
+which she would remind him of their former meeting.
+
+"Don't think I'm quite as informal as this, Mr. Coleman, you and I have
+been properly introduced, you know! I'm not entirely flattered by
+having you forget me so completely, Mr. Coleman!"
+
+Before she could choose either form, he said it himself.
+
+"Say, look here, look here--didn't my uncle introduce us once, on a
+car, or something? Doesn't he know your mother?"
+
+"My mother's dead," said Susan primly. But so irresistible was the well
+of gaiety bubbling up in her heart that she made the statement mirthful.
+
+"Oh, gosh, I do beg your pardon--" the man stammered. They both,
+although Susan was already ashamed of herself, laughed violently again.
+
+"Your uncle knows my aunt," she said presently, coldly and unsmilingly.
+
+"That's it," he said, relieved. "Quite a French sentence, 'does the
+uncle know the aunt'?" he grinned.
+
+"Or 'Has the governess of the gardener some meat and a pen'?" gurgled
+Susan. And again, and more merrily, they laughed together.
+
+"Lord, didn't you hate French?" he asked confidentially.
+
+"Oh, HATE it!" Susan had never had a French lesson.
+
+There was a short pause--a longer pause. Suddenly both spoke.
+
+"I beg your pardon--?"
+
+"No, you. You were first."
+
+"Oh, no, you. What were you going to say?"
+
+"I wasn't going to say anything. I was just going to say--I was going
+to ask how that pretty, motherly aunt of yours is,--Mrs. Baxter?"
+
+"Aunt Clara. Isn't she a peach? She's fine." He wanted to keep talking,
+too, it was obvious. "She brought me up, you know." He laughed
+boyishly. "Not that I'd want you to hold that against her, or anything
+like that!"
+
+"Oh, she'll live that down!" said Susan.
+
+That was all. But when Peter Colernan went on his way a moment later he
+was still smiling, and Susan walked to her desk on air.
+
+The office seemed a pleasant place to be that afternoon. Susan began
+her work with energy and interest, the light falling on her bright
+hair, her fingers flying. She hummed as she worked, and one or two
+other girls hummed with her.
+
+There was rather a musical atmosphere in Front Office; the girls
+without exception kept in touch with the popular music of the day, and
+liked to claim a certain knowledge of the old classics as well. Certain
+girls always hummed certain airs, and no other girl ever usurped them.
+Thus Thorny vocalized the "Spring Song," when she felt particularly
+cheerful, and to Miss Violet Kirk were ceded all rights to Carmen's own
+solos in "Carmen." Susan's privilege included "The Rosary" and the
+little Hawaiian fare-well, "Aloha aoi." After the latter Thorny never
+failed to say dreamily, "I love that song!" and Susan to mutter
+surprisedly, "I didn't know I was humming it!"
+
+All the girls hummed the Toreador's song, and the immediate favorites
+of the hour, "Just Because She Made Those Goo-Goo Eyes," and "I Don't
+Know Why I Love You but I Do," and "Hilee-Hilo" and "The Mosquito
+Parade." Hot discussions as to the merits of various compositions
+arose, and the technique of various singers.
+
+"Yes, Collamarini's dramatic, and she has a good natural voice," Miss
+Thornton would admit, "but she can't get AT it."
+
+Or, "That's all very well," Miss Cottle would assert boldly, "but
+Salassa sings better than either Plancon or de Reszke. I'm not saying
+this myself, but a party that KNOWS told me so."
+
+"Probably the person who told you so had never heard them," Miss
+Thornton would say, bringing the angry color to Miss Cottle's face, and
+the angry answer:
+
+"Well, if I could tell you who it IS, you'd feel pretty small!"
+
+Susan had small respect for the other girls' opinions, and almost as
+little for her own. She knew how ignorant she was. But she took to
+herself what credit accrued to general quoting, quoting from
+newspapers, from her aunt's boarders, from chance conversations
+overheard on the cars.
+
+"Oh, Puccini will never do anything to TOUCH Bizet!" Susan asserted
+firmly. Or, "Well, we'd be fighting Spain still if it wasn't for
+McKinley!" Or, "My grandmother had three hundred slaves, and slavery
+worked perfectly well, then!" If challenged, she got very angry. "You
+simply are proving that you don't know anything about it!" was Susan's
+last, and adequate, answer to questioners.
+
+But as a rule she was not challenged. Some quality in Susan set her
+apart from the other girls, and they saw it as she did. It was not that
+she was richer, or prettier, or better born, or better educated, than
+any or all of them. But there was some sparkling, bubbling quality
+about her that was all her own. She read, and assimilated rather than
+remembered what she read, adopted this little affectation in speech,
+this little nicety of manner. She glowed with varied and absurd
+ambitions, and took the office into her confidence about them. Wavering
+and incomplete as her aunt's influence had been, one fact had early
+been impressed upon her; she was primarily and absolutely a "lady."
+Susan's forebears had really been rather ordinary folk, improvident and
+carefree, enjoying prosperity when they had it with the uneducated,
+unpractical serenity of the Old South, shiftless and lazy and unhappy
+in less prosperous times.
+
+But she thought of them as most distinguished and accomplished
+gentlefolk, beautiful women environed by spacious estates, by exquisite
+old linen and silver and jewels, and dashing cavaliers rising in gay
+gallantry alike to the conquest of feminine hearts, or to their
+country's defense. She bore herself proudly, as became their
+descendants. She brought the gaze of her honest blue eyes frankly to
+all the other eyes in the world, a lady was unembarrassed in the
+presence of her equals, a lady was always gracious to her inferiors.
+
+Her own father had been less elevated in rank than his wife, yet Susan
+could think of him with genuine satisfaction. He was only a vague
+memory to her now, this bold heart who had challenged a whole family's
+opposition, a quarter of a century before, and carried off Miss Sue
+Rose Ralston, whose age was not quite half his forty years, under her
+father's very eyes.
+
+When Susan was born, four years later, the young wife was still
+regarded by her family as an outcast. But even the baby Susan, growing
+happily old enough to toddle about in the Santa Barbara rose-garden
+that sheltered the still infatuated pair, knew that Mother was
+supremely indifferent to the feeling toward her in any heart but one.
+Martin Brown was an Irishman, and a writer of random essays. His
+position on a Los Angeles daily newspaper kept the little family in
+touch with just the people they cared to see, and, when the husband and
+father was found dead at his desk one day, with his wife's picture over
+the heart that had suddenly and simply ceased to serve him, there were
+friends all about to urge the beautiful widow to take up at least a
+part of his work, in the old environment.
+
+But Sue Rose was not quite thirty, and still girlish, and shrinking,
+and helpless. Beside, there was Lou's house to go to, and five thousand
+dollars life insurance, and three thousand more from the sale of the
+little home, to meet the immediate need. So Susan and her mother came
+up to Mrs. Lancaster, and had a very fine large room together, and
+became merged in the older family. And the eight thousand dollars
+lasted a long time, it was still paying little bills, and buying
+birthday presents, and treating Alfie to a "safety bicycle," and Mary
+Lou to dancing lessons when, on a wet afternoon in her thirteenth
+summer, little Susan Brown came in from school to find that Mother was
+very ill.
+
+"Just an ugly, sharp pain, ducky, don't look so scared!" said Mother,
+smiling gallantly, but writhing under the bed covers. "Dr. Forsythe has
+been here, and it's nothing at all. Ah-h-h!" said Mother, whimsically,
+"the poor little babies! They go through this, and we laugh at them,
+and call it colic! Never-laugh-at-another-baby, Sue! I shan't. You'd
+better call Auntie, dear. This--this won't do."
+
+A day or two later there was talk of an operation. Susan was told very
+little of it. Long afterward she remembered with certain resentment the
+cavalier manner in which her claims were dismissed. Her mother went to
+the hospital, and two days later, when she was well over the
+wretchedness of the ether, Susan went with Mary Lou to see her, and
+kissed the pale, brave little face, sunk in the great white pillows.
+
+"Home in no time, Sue!" her mother said bravely.
+
+But a few days later something happened, Susan was waked from sleep,
+was rushed to the hospital again, was pressed by some unknown hand into
+a kneeling position beside a livid and heavily breathing creature whom
+she hardly recognized as her mother. It was all confusing and
+terrifying; it was over very soon. Susan came blinking out of the dimly
+lighted room with Mary Lou, who was sobbing, "Oh, Aunt Sue Rose! Aunt
+Sue Rose!" Susan did not cry, but her eyes hurt her, and the back of
+her head ached sharply.
+
+She cried later, in the nights, after her cousins had seemed to be
+unsympathetic, feeling that she needed her mother to take her part. But
+on the whole the cousins were devoted and kind to Susan, and the child
+was as happy as she could have been anywhere. But her restless ambition
+forced her into many a discontented hour, as she grew, and when an
+office position was offered her Susan was wild with eagerness to try
+her own feet.
+
+"I can't bear it!" mourned her aunt, "why can't you stay here happily
+with us, lovey? My own girls are happy. I don't know what has gotten
+into you girls lately, wanting to rush out like great, coarse men! Why
+can't you stay at home, doing all the little dainty, pretty things that
+only a woman can do, to make a home lovely?"
+
+"Don't you suppose I'd much RATHER not work?" Susan demanded
+impatiently. "I can't have you supporting me, Auntie. That's it."
+
+"Well, if that's it, that's nonsense, dear. As long as Auntie lives all
+she asks is to keep a comfortable home for her girls."
+
+"Why, Sue, you'll be implying that we all ought to have taken horrid
+office positions," Virginia said, in smiling warning.
+
+Susan remained mutinously silent.
+
+"Have you any fault to find with Auntie's provision for you, dear?"
+asked Mrs. Lancaster, patiently.
+
+"Oh, NO, auntie! That's not it AT ALL!" Susan protested, "it's just
+simply that I--I can't--I need money, sometimes--" She stopped,
+miserably.
+
+"Come, now!" Mrs. Lancaster, all sweet tolerance of the vagary, folded
+her hands to await enlightenment. "Come, now! Tell auntie what you need
+money for. What is this special great need?"
+
+"No one special thing, auntie--" Susan was anything but sure of her
+ground. As a matter of fact she did not want to work at all, she merely
+felt a frantic impulse to do something else than settle down for life
+as Mary Lou and Virginia and Georgie had done. "But clothes cost
+money," she pursued vaguely.
+
+"What sort of a gown did you want, dear?" Mrs. Lancaster reached for
+her shabby purse. Susan refused the gift of a gown with many kisses,
+and no more was said for a while of her working.
+
+This was in her seventeenth summer. For more than a year after that she
+drifted idly, reading a great many romantic novels, and wishing herself
+a young actress, a lone orphan, the adored daughter of an invalid
+father or of a rich and adoring mother, the capable, worshiped oldest
+sister in a jolly big family, a lovely cripple in a bright hospital
+ward, anything, in short, except what she was.
+
+Then came the offer of a position in Front Office, and Susan took it on
+her own responsibility, and resigned herself to her aunt's anger. This
+was a most unhappy time for all concerned.
+
+But it was all over now. Auntie rebeled no more, she accepted the fact
+as she had accepted other unwelcome facts in her life. And soon Susan's
+little salary came to be depended upon by the family; it was not much,
+but it did pay a gas or a laundry bill, it could be "borrowed" for the
+slippers Georgie must have in a hurry, or the ticket that should carry
+Alfie to Sacramento or Stockton for his new job. Virginia wondered if
+Sue would lend her two dollars for the subscription to the "Weekly
+Era," or asked, during the walk to church, if Susan had "plate-money"
+for two? Mary Lou used Susan's purse as her own. "I owe you a dollar,
+Sue," she would observe carelessly, "I took it yesterday for the
+cleaner."
+
+Or, on their evening walks, Mary Lou would glance in the candy-store
+window. "My! Don't those caramels look delicious! This is my treat,
+now, remind me to give it back to you." "Oh, Ma told me to get eggs,"
+she would remember suddenly, a moment later. "I'll have to ask you to
+pay for them, dearie, until we get home."
+
+Susan never was repaid these little loans. She could not ask it. She
+knew very well that none of the girls ever had a cent given her except
+for some definite and unavoidable purchase. Her aunt never spent money.
+They lived in a continual and agonizing shortage of coin.
+
+Lately, however, Susan had determined that if her salary were raised
+she would save the extra money, and not mention the fact of the raise
+at home. She wanted a gray feather boa, such as Peter Coleman's girl
+friends wore. It would cost twenty dollars, but what beauty and
+distinction it lent to the simplest costume!
+
+Since young Mr. Coleman's appearance in Front Office certain young
+girls very prominent in San Francisco society found various reasons for
+coming down, in mid-afternoon, to the establishment of Hunter, Baxter &
+Hunter, for a chat with old Mr. Baxter, who appeared to be a great
+favorite with all girls. Susan, looking down through the glass walls of
+Front Office, would suddenly notice the invasion of flowered hats and
+smart frocks, and of black and gray and white feather-boas, such as her
+heart desired. She did not consciously envy these girls, but she felt
+that, with their advantages, she would have been as attractive as any,
+and a boa seemed the first step in the desired direction. She always
+knew it when Mr. Baxter sent for Peter, and generally managed to see
+him as he stood laughing and talking with his friends, and when he saw
+them to their carriages. She would watch him wistfully when he came
+upstairs, and be glad when he returned briskly to his work, as if the
+interruption had meant very little to him after all.
+
+One day, when a trio of exquisitely pretty girls came to carry him off
+bodily, at an early five o'clock, Miss Thornton came up the office to
+Susan's desk. Susan, who was quite openly watching the floor below,
+turned with a smile, and sat down in her place.
+
+"S'listen, Susan," said Miss Thornton, leaning on the desk, "are you
+going to the big game?"
+
+"I don't know," said Susan, suddenly wild to go.
+
+"Well, I want to go," pursued Miss Thornton, "but Wally's in Los
+Angeles." Wally was Miss Thornton's "friend."
+
+"What would it cost us, Thorny?"
+
+"Two-fifty."
+
+"Gosh," said Susan thoughtfully. The big intercollegiate game was not
+to be seen for nothing. Still, it was undoubtedly THE event of the
+sporting year.
+
+"Hat come?" asked Thorny.
+
+"Ye-es." Susan was thinking. "Yes, and she's made it look lovely," she
+admitted. She drew a sketch of a little face on her scratch pad. "Who's
+that?" asked Miss Thornton, interestedly. "Oh, no one!" Susan said, and
+scratched it out.
+
+"Oh, come on, Susan, I'm dying to go!" said the tempter.
+
+"We need a man for that, Thorny. There's an awful crowd."
+
+"Not if we go early enough. They say it's going to be the closest YET.
+Come on!"
+
+"Thorny, honest, I oughtn't to spend the money," Susan persisted.
+
+"S'listen, Susan." Miss Thornton spoke very low, after a cautious
+glance about her. "Swear you won't breathe this!"
+
+"Oh, honestly I won't!"
+
+"Wait a minute. Is Elsie Kirk there?" asked Miss Thornton. Susan
+glanced down the office.
+
+"Nope. She's upstairs, and Violet's in Brauer's office. What is it?"
+
+"Well, say, listen. Last night--" began Miss Thornton, impressively,
+"Last night I and Min and Floss and Harold Clarke went into the Techau
+for supper, after the Orpheum show. Well, after we got seated--we had a
+table way at the back--I suddenly noticed Violet Kirk, sitting in one
+of those private alcoves, you know--?"
+
+"For Heaven's sake!" said Susan, in proper horror.
+
+"Yes. And champagne, if you please, all as bold as life! And all
+dressed up, Susan, I wish you could have seen her! Well. I couldn't see
+who she was with--"
+
+"A party?"
+
+"A party--no! One man."
+
+"Oh, Thorny--" Susan began to be doubtful, slowly shook her head.
+
+"But I tell you I SAW her, Sue! And listen, that's not all. We sat
+there and sat there, an hour I guess, and she was there all that time.
+And when she got up to go, Sue, I saw the man. And who do you suppose
+it was?"
+
+"Do I know him?" A sick premonition seized Susan, she felt a stir of
+agonizing jealousy at her heart. "Peter Coleman?" she guessed, with
+burning cheeks. "Peter Coleman! That kid! No, it was Mr. Phil!"
+
+"Mr. Phil HUNTER!" But, through all her horror, Susan felt the warm
+blood creep back to her heart.
+
+"Sure."
+
+"But--but Thorny, he's married!"
+
+Miss Thornton shrugged her shoulders, and pursed her lips, as one well
+accustomed, if not reconciled, to the wickedness of the world.
+
+"So now we know how she can afford a velvet tailor-made and ostrich
+plumes," said she. Susan shrank in natural cleanness of heart, from the
+ugliness of it.
+
+"Ah, don't say such things, Thorny!" she said. Her brows contracted.
+"His wife enjoying Europe!" she mused. "Can you beat it?"
+
+"I think it's the limit," said Miss Thornton virtuously, "and I think
+old J. B. would raise the roof. But anyway, it shows why she got the
+crediting."
+
+"Oh, Thorny, I can't BELIEVE it! Perhaps she doesn't realize how it
+looks!"
+
+"Violet Hunter!" Thorny said, with fine scorn. "Now you mark my words,
+Susan, it won't last--things like this don't--"
+
+"But--but don't they sometimes last, for years?" Susan asked, a little
+timidly, yet wishing to show some worldly wisdom, too.
+
+"Not like her, there's nothing TO her," said the sapient Miss Thornton.
+"No. You'll be doing that work in a few months, and getting forty. So
+come along to the big game, Sue."
+
+"Well--" Susan half-promised. But the big game was temporarily lost
+sight of in this horrid news of Violet Kirk. Susan watched Miss Kirk
+during the remainder of the afternoon, and burst out with the whole
+story, to Mary Lou, when they went out to match a piece of tape that
+night.
+
+"Dear me, Ma would hate to have you coming in contact with things like
+that, Sue!" worried Mary Lou. "I wonder if Ma would miss us if we took
+the car out to the end of the line? It's such a glorious night!
+Let's,--if you have carfare. No, Sue, it's easy enough to rob a girl of
+her good name. There were some people who came to the house once, a man
+and his wife. Well, I suppose I was ordinarily polite to the man, as I
+am to all men, and once or twice he brought me candy--but it never
+entered my head--"
+
+It was deliciously bracing to go rushing on, on the car, past the
+Children's Hospital, past miles of sandhills, out to the very shore of
+the ocean, where the air was salt, and filled with the dull roaring of
+surf. Mary Lou, sharing with her mother a distaste for peanuts, crowds,
+tin-type men, and noisy pleasure-seekers, ignored Susan's hints that
+they walk down to the beach, and they went back on the same car.
+
+When they entered the close, odorous dining-room, an hour later,
+Georgie, lazily engaged with Fan-tan, had a piece of news.
+
+"Susan, you sly thing! He's adorable!" said Georgie.
+
+"Who?" said Susan, taking a card from her cousin's hand. Dazedly she
+read it. "Mr. Peter Coleman."
+
+"Did he call?" she asked, her heart giving a great bound.
+
+"Did he call? With a perfect heart-breaker of a puppy--!"
+
+"London Baby," Susan said, eagerly.
+
+"He was airing the puppy, he SAID" Georgie added archly.
+
+"One excuse as well as another!" Mary Lou laughed delightedly as she
+kissed Susan's glowing cheek.
+
+"He wouldn't come in," continued Georgie, "which was really just as
+well, for Loretta and her prize idiot were in the parlor, and I
+couldn't have asked him down here. Well, he's a darling. You have my
+blessing, Sue."
+
+"It's manners to wait until you're axed," Susan said demurely. But her
+heart sang. She had to listen to a little dissertation upon the joys of
+courtship, when she and Mary Lou were undressing, a little later,
+tactfully concealing her sense of the contrast between their two
+affairs.
+
+"It's a happy, happy time," said Mary Lou, sighing, as she spread the
+two halves of a shabby corset upon the bed, and proceeded to insert a
+fresh lacing between them. "It takes me back to the first time Ferd
+called upon me, but I was younger than you are, of course, Sue. And
+Ferd--!" she laughed proudly, "Do you think you could have sent Ferd
+away with an excuse? No, sir, he would have come in and waited until
+you got home, poor Ferd! Not but what I think Peter--" He was already
+Peter!--"did quite the correct thing! And I think I'm going to like
+him, Sue, if for no other reason than that he had the sense to be
+attracted to a plainly-dressed, hard-working little mouse like my Sue--"
+
+"His grandfather ran a livery stable!" said Susan, smarting under the
+role of the beggar maiden.
+
+"Ah, well, there isn't a girl in society to-day who wouldn't give her
+eyes to get him!" said Mary Lou wisely. And Susan secretly agreed.
+
+She was kept out of bed by the corset-lacing, and so took a bath
+to-night and brushed and braided her hair. Feeling refreshed in body
+and spirit by these achievements, she finally climbed into bed, and
+drifted off upon a sea of golden dreams. Georgie's teasing and Mary
+Lou's inferences might be all nonsense, still, he HAD come to see her,
+she had that tangible fact upon which to build a new and glorious
+castle in Spain.
+
+Thanksgiving broke dull and overcast, there was a spatter of rain on
+the sidewalk, as Susan loitered over her late holiday breakfast, and
+Georgie, who was to go driving that afternoon with an elderly admirer,
+scolded violently over her coffee and rolls. No boarders happened to be
+present. Mrs. Lancaster and Virginia were to go to a funeral, and dwelt
+with a sort of melancholy pleasure upon the sad paradox of such an
+event on such a day. Mary Lou felt a little guilty about not attending
+the funeral, but she was responsible for the roasting of three great
+turkeys to-day, and could not be spared. Mrs. Lancaster had stuffed the
+fowls the night before.
+
+"I'll roast the big one from two o'clock on," said Mary Lou, "and give
+the little ones turn and turn about. The oven won't hold more than two."
+
+"I'll be home in time to make the pudding sauce," her mother said, "but
+open it early, dear, so that it won't taste tinny. Poor Hardings! A
+sad, sad Thanksgiving for them!" And Mrs. Lancaster sighed. Her hair
+was arranged in crisp damp scallops under her best bonnet and veil, and
+she wore the heavy black skirt of her best suit. But her costume was
+temporarily completed by a light kimono.
+
+"We'll hope it's a happy, happy Thanksgiving for dear Mr. Harding, Ma,"
+Virginia said gently.
+
+"I know, dear," her mother said, "but I'm not like you, dear. I'm
+afraid I'm a very poor, weak, human sort!"
+
+"Rotten day for the game!" grumbled Susan.
+
+"Oh, it makes me so darn mad!" Georgie added, "here I've been working
+that precious idiot for a month up to the point where he would take his
+old horse out, and now look at it!"
+
+Everyone was used to Georgie's half-serious rages, and Mrs. Lancaster
+only smiled at her absently.
+
+"But you won't attempt to go to the game on a day like this!" she said
+to Susan.
+
+"Not if it pours," Susan agreed disconsolately.
+
+"You haven't wasted your good money on a ticket yet, I hope, dear?"
+
+"No-o," Susan said, wishing that she had her two and a half dollars
+back. "That's just the way of it!" she said bitterly to Billy, a little
+later. "Other girls can get up parties for the game, and give dinners
+after it, and do everything decently! I can't even arrange to go with
+Thorny, but what it has to rain!"
+
+"Oh, cheer up," the boy said, squinting down the barrel of the rifle he
+was lovingly cleaning. "It's going to be a perfect day! I'm going to
+the game myself. If it rains, you and I'll go to the Orpheum mat., what
+do you say?"
+
+"Well--" said Susan, departing comforted. And true to his prediction
+the sky really did clear at eleven o'clock, and at one o'clock, Susan,
+the happiest girl in the world, walked out into the sunny street, in
+her best hat and her best gown, her prettiest embroidered linen collar,
+her heavy gold chain, and immaculate new gloves.
+
+How could she possibly have hesitated about it, she wondered, when she
+came near the ball-grounds, and saw the gathering crowds; tall young
+men, with a red carnation or a shaggy great yellow chrysanthemum in
+their buttonholes; girls in furs; dancingly impatient small boys, and
+agitated and breathless chaperones. And here was Thorny, very pretty in
+her best gown, with a little unusual and unnatural color on her cheeks,
+and Billy Oliver, who would watch the game from the "dollar section,"
+providentially on hand to help them through the crowd, and buy Susan a
+chrysanthemum as a foil to Thorny's red ribbons. The damp cool air was
+sweet with violets; a delightful stir and excitement thrilled the
+moving crowd. Here was the gate. Tickets? And what a satisfaction to
+produce them, and enter unchallenged into the rising roadway, leaving
+behind a line of jealously watching and waiting people. With Billy's
+help the seats were easily found, "the best seats on the field," said
+Susan, in immense satisfaction, as she settled into hers. She and
+Thorny were free to watch the little tragedies going on all about them,
+people in the wrong seats, and people with one ticket too few.
+
+Girls and young men--girls and young men--girls and young men--streamed
+in the big gateways, and filed about the field. Susan envied no one
+to-day, her heart was dancing. There was a racy autumnal tang in the
+air, laughter and shouting. The "rooters" were already in place, their
+leader occasionally leaped into the air like a maniac, and conducted a
+"yell" with a vigor that needed every muscle of his body.
+
+And suddenly the bleachers went mad and the air fluttered with banners,
+as the big teams rushed onto the field. The players, all giants they
+looked, in their clumsy, padded suits, began a little practice play
+desperately and violently. Susan could hear the quarter's voice clear
+and sharp, "Nineteen-four-eighty-eight!"
+
+"Hello, Miss Brown!" said a voice at her knee. She took her eyes from
+the field. Peter Coleman, one of a noisy party, was taking the seat
+directly in front of her.
+
+"Well!" she said, gaily, "be you a-follering of me, or be I a-follering
+of you?"
+
+"I don't know!--How do you do, Miss Thornton!" Peter said, with his
+delighted laugh. He drew to Susan the attention of a stout lady in
+purple velvet, beside him. "Mrs. Fox--Miss Brown," said he, "and Miss
+Thornton--Mrs. Fox."
+
+"Mrs. Fox," said Susan, pleasantly brief.
+
+"Miss Brown," said Mrs. Fox, with a wintry smile.
+
+"Pleased to meet any friend of Mr. Coleman's, I'm sure," Thorny said,
+engagingly.
+
+"Miss Thornton," Mrs. Fox responded, with as little tone as is possible
+to the human voice.
+
+After that the newcomers, twelve or fourteen in all, settled into their
+seats, and a moment later everyone's attention was riveted on the
+field. The men were lining up, big backs bent double, big arms hanging
+loose, like the arms of gorillas. Breathless attention held the big
+audience silent and tense.
+
+"Don't you LOVE it?" breathed Susan, to Thorny.
+
+"Crazy about it!" Peter Coleman answered her, without turning.
+
+It was a wonderful game that followed. Susan never saw another that
+seemed to her to have the same peculiar charm. Between halves, Peter
+Coleman talked almost exclusively to her, and they laughed over the
+peanuts that disappeared so fast.
+
+The sun slipped down and down the sky, and the air rose chilly and
+sweet from the damp earth. It began to grow dark. Susan began to feel a
+nervous apprehension that somehow, in leaving the field, she and Thorny
+would become awkwardly involved in Mrs. Fox's party, would seem to be
+trying to include themselves in this distinguished group.
+
+"We've got to rush," she muttered, buttoning up her coat.
+
+"Oh, what's your hurry?" asked Thorny, who would not have objected to
+the very thing Susan dreaded.
+
+"It's so dark!" Susan said, pushing ahead. They were carried by the
+crowd through the big gates, out to the street. Lights were beginning
+to prick through the dusk, a long line of street cars was waiting,
+empty and brightly lighted. Suddenly Susan felt a touch on her shoulder.
+
+"Lord, you're in a rush!" said Peter Coleman, pushing through the crowd
+to join them. He was somehow dragging Mrs. Fox with him, the lady
+seemed outraged and was breathless. Peter brought her triumphantly up
+to Susan.
+
+"Now what is it that you want me to do, you ridiculous boy!" gasped
+Mrs. Fox,--"ask Miss Brown to come and have tea with us, is that it?
+I'm chaperoning a few of the girls down to the Palace for a cup of tea,
+Miss Brown,--perhaps you will waive all formality, and come too?"
+
+Susan didn't like it, the "waive all formality" showed her exactly how
+Mrs. Fox regarded the matter. Her pride was instantly touched. But she
+longed desperately to go. A sudden thought of the politely interested
+Thorny decided her.
+
+"Oh, thank you! Thank you, Mr. Coleman," she smiled, "but I can't,
+to-night. Miss Thornton and I are just--"
+
+"Don't decline on MY account, Miss Brown," said Thorny, mincingly, "for
+I have an engagement this evening, and I have to go straight home--"
+
+"No, don't decline on any account!" Peter said masterfully, "and don't
+tell wicked lies, or you'll get your mouth washed out with soap! Now,
+I'll put Miss Thornton on her car, and you talk to Hart here--Miss
+Brown, this is Mr. Hart--Gordon, Miss Brown--until I come back!"
+
+He disappeared with Thorny, and Susan, half terrified, half delighted,
+talked to Mr. Hart at quite a desperate rate, as the whole party got on
+the dummy of a car. Just as they started, Peter Coleman joined them,
+and during the trip downtown Susan kept both young men laughing, and
+was her gayest, happiest self.
+
+The Palace Hotel, grimy and dull in a light rainfall, was nevertheless
+the most enchanting place in the world to go for tea, as Susan knew by
+instinct, or hearsay, or tradition, and as all these other young people
+had proved a hundred times. A covered arcade from the street led
+through a row of small, bright shops into the very center of the hotel,
+where there was an enormous court called the "Palm-garden," walled by
+eight rising tiers of windows, and roofed, far above, with glass. At
+one side of this was the little waiting-room called the "Turkish Room,"
+full of Oriental inlay and draperies, and embroideries of daggers and
+crescents.
+
+To Susan the place was enchanting beyond words. The coming and going of
+strange people, the arriving carriages with their slipping horses, the
+luggage plastered with labels, the little shops,--so full of
+delightful, unnecessary things, candy and glace fruits, and orchids and
+exquisite Chinese embroideries, and postal cards, and theater tickets,
+and oranges, and paper-covered novels, and alligator pears! The very
+sight of these things aroused in her heart a longing that was as keen
+as pain. Oh, to push her way, somehow, into the world, to have a right
+to enjoy these things, to be a part of this brilliant, moving show, to
+play her part in this wonderful game!
+
+Mrs. Fox led the girls of her party to the Turkish Room to-night,
+where, with much laughter and chatter, they busied themselves with
+small combs, mirrors powder boxes, hairpins and veils. One girl, a Miss
+Emily Saunders, even loosened her long, thin, silky hair, and let it
+fall about her shoulders, and another took off her collar while she
+rubbed and powdered her face.
+
+Susan sat rather stiffly on a small, uncomfortable wooden chair,
+entirely ignored, and utterly miserable. She smiled, as she looked
+pleasantly from one face to another, but her heart was sick within her.
+No one spoke to her, or seemed to realize that she was in the room. A
+steady stream of talk--such gay, confidential talk!--went on.
+
+"Let me get there, Connie, you old pig, I'm next. Listen, girls, did
+you hear Ward to-day? Wasn't that the richest ever, after last night!
+Ward makes me tired, anyway. Did Margaret tell you about Richard and
+Ward, last Sunday? Isn't that rich! I don't believe it, but to hear
+Margaret tell it, you'd think--Wait a minute, Louise, while I pin this
+up! Whom are you going with to-night? Are you going to dinner there?
+Why don't you let us call for you? That's all right, bring him along.
+Will you? All right. That's fine. No, and I don't care. If it comes
+I'll wear it, and if it doesn't come I'll wear that old white
+rag,--it's filthy, but I don't care. Telephone your aunt, Con, and then
+we can all go together. Love to, darling, but I've got a suitor. You
+have not! I have TOO! Who is it? Who is it, I like that! Isn't she
+awful, Margaret? Mother has an awful crush on you, Mary, she said--Wait
+a minute! I'm just going to powder my nose. Who said Joe Chickering
+belonged to you? What nerve! He's mine. Isn't Joe my property? Don't
+come in here, Alice, we're just talking about you--"
+
+"Oh, if I could only slip out somehow!" thought Susan desperately. "Oh,
+if only I hadn't come!"
+
+Their loosened wraps were displaying all sorts of pretty little
+costumes now. Susan knew that the simplest of blue linen shirtwaists
+was under her own coat. She had not courage to ask to borrow a comb, to
+borrow powder. She knew her hair was mussed, she knew her nose was
+shiny--
+
+Her heart was beating so fast, with angry resentment of their serene
+rudeness, and shame that she had so readily accepted the casual
+invitation that gave them this chance to be rude, that she could hardly
+think. But it seemed to be best, at any cost, to leave the party now,
+before things grew any worse. She would make some brief excuse to Mrs.
+Fox,--headache or the memory of an engagement--
+
+"Do you know where Mrs. Fox is?" she asked the girl nearest her. For
+Mrs. Fox had sauntered out into the corridor with some idea of
+summoning the men.
+
+The girl did not answer, perhaps did not hear. Susan tried again.
+
+"Do you know where Mrs. Fox went to?"
+
+Now the girl looked at her for a brief instant, and rose, crossing the
+little room to the side of another girl.
+
+"No, I really don't," she said lightly, civilly, as she went.
+
+Susan's face burned. She got up, and went to the door. But she was too
+late. The young men were just gathering there in a noisy group. It
+appeared that there was sudden need of haste. The "rooters" were to
+gather in the court presently, for more cheering, and nobody wanted to
+miss the sight.
+
+"Come, girls! Be quick!" called Mrs. Fox. "Come, Louise, dear! Connie,"
+this to her own daughter, "you and Peter run ahead, and ask for my
+table. Peter, will you take Connie? Come, everybody!"
+
+Somehow, they had all paired off, in a flash, without her. Susan needed
+no further spur. With more assurance than she had yet shown, she
+touched the last girl, as she passed, on the arm. It chanced to be Miss
+Emily Saunders. She and her escort both stopped, laughing with that
+nervous apprehension that seizes their class at the appearance of the
+unexpected.
+
+"Miss Saunders," said Susan quickly, "will you tell Mrs. Fox that my
+headache is much worse. I'm afraid I'd better go straight home--"
+
+"Oh, too bad!" Miss Saunders said, her round, pale, rather unwholesome
+face, expressing proper regret. "Perhaps tea will help it?" she added
+sweetly.
+
+It was the first personal word Susan had won. She felt suddenly,
+horrifyingly--near to tears.
+
+"Oh, thank you, I'm afraid not!" she smiled bravely. "Thank you so
+much. And tell her I'm sorry. Good-night."
+
+"Good-night!" said Miss Saunders. And Susan went, with a sense of
+escape and relief, up the long passageway, and into the cool, friendly
+darkness of the streets. She had an unreasoning fear that they might
+follow her, somehow bring her back, and walked a swift block or two,
+rather than wait for the car where she might be found.
+
+Half an hour later she rushed into the house, just as the Thanksgiving
+dinner was announced, half-mad with excitement, her cheeks ablaze, and
+her eyes unnaturally bright. The scene in the dining-room was not of
+the gayest; Mrs. Lancaster and Virginia were tired and depressed, Mary
+Lou nervously concerned for the dinner, Georgie and almost all of the
+few boarders who had no alternative to dining in a boarding-house
+to-day were cross and silent.
+
+But the dinner was delicious, and Susan, arriving at the crucial
+moment, had a more definite effect on the party than a case of
+champagne would have had. She chattered recklessly and incessantly, and
+when Mrs. Lancaster's mild "Sue, dear!" challenged one remark, she
+capped it with another still less conventional.
+
+Her spirits were infectious, the gaiety became general. Mrs. Parker
+laughed until the tears streamed down her fat cheeks, and Mary Lord,
+the bony, sallow-faced, crippled sister who was the light and joy of
+Lydia Lord's drudging life, and who had been brought downstairs to-day
+as a special event, at a notable cost to her sister's and William
+Oliver's muscles, nearly choked over her cranberry sauce. Susan
+insisted that everyone should wear the paper caps that came in the
+bonbons, and looked like a pretty witch herself, under a cone-shaped
+hat of pink and blue. When, as was usual on all such occasions, a
+limited supply of claret came on with the dessert, she brought the
+whole company from laughter very close to tears, as she proposed, with
+pretty dignify, a toast to her aunt, "who makes this house such a happy
+home for us all." The toast was drunk standing, and Mrs. Lancaster
+cried into her napkin, with pride and tender emotion.
+
+After dinner the diminished group trailed, still laughing and talking,
+upstairs to the little drawing-room, where perhaps seven or eight of
+them settled about the coal fire. Mrs. Lancaster, looking her best in a
+low-necked black silk, if rather breathless after the hearty dinner,
+eaten in too-tight corsets, had her big chair, Georgia curled girlishly
+on a footstool at her feet. Miss Lydia Lord stealthily ate a soda mint
+tablet now and then; her sister, propped with a dozen pillows on the
+sofa, fairly glowed with the unusual pleasure and excitement. Little
+Mrs. Cortelyou rocked back and forth; always loquacious, she was
+especially talkative after to-night's glass of wine.
+
+Virginia, who played certain simple melodies very prettily, went to the
+piano and gave them "Maryland" and "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,"
+and was heartily applauded. Mary Lou was finally persuaded to sing
+Tosti's "Farewell to Summer," in a high, sweet, self-conscious soprano.
+
+Susan had disappeared. Just after dinner she had waylaid William
+Oliver, with a tense, "Will you walk around the block with me, Billy? I
+want to talk to you," and William, giving her a startled glance, had
+quietly followed her through the dark lower hall, and into the
+deserted, moonlighted, wind-swept street. The wind had fallen: stars
+were shining.
+
+"Billy," said Susan, taking his arm and walking him along very rapidly,
+"I'm going away--"
+
+"Going away?" he said sympathetically. This statement always meant that
+something had gone very wrong with Susan.
+
+"Absolutely!" Susan said passionately. "I want to go where nobody knows
+me, where I can make a fresh start. I'm going to Chicago."
+
+"What the DEUCE are you raving about?" Mr. Oliver asked, stopping short
+in the street. "What have you been doing now?"
+
+"Nothing!" Susan said, with suddenly brimming eyes. "But I hate this
+place, and I hate everyone in it, and I'm simply sick of being treated
+as if, just because I'm poor--"
+
+"You sound like a bum second act, with somebody throwing a handful of
+torn paper down from the wings!" Billy observed. But his tone was
+kinder than his words, and Susan, laying a hand on his coat sleeve,
+told him the story of the afternoon; of Mrs. Fox, with her supercilious
+smile; of the girls, so bitterly insulting; of Peter, involving her in
+these embarrassments and then forgetting to stand by her.
+
+"If one of those girls came to us a stranger," Susan declared, with a
+heaving breast, "do you suppose we'd treat her like that?"
+
+"Well, that only proves we have better manners than they have!"
+
+"Oh, Bill, what rot! If there's one thing society people have, it's
+manners!" Susan said impatiently. "Do you wonder people go crazy to get
+hold of money?" she added vigorously.
+
+"Nope. You've GOT to have it. There are lots of other things in the
+world," he agreed, "but money's first and foremost. The only reason _I_
+want it," said Billy, "is because I want to show other rich people
+where they make their mistakes."
+
+"Do you really think you'll be rich some day, Billy?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+Susan walked on thoughtfully.
+
+"There's where a man has the advantage," she said. "He can really work
+toward the thing he wants."
+
+"Well, girls ought to have the same chance," Billy said generously.
+"Now I was talking to Mrs. Carroll Sunday--"
+
+"Oh, how are the Carrolls?" asked Susan, diverted for an instant.
+
+"Fine. They were awfully disappointed you weren't along.--And she was
+talking about that very thing. And she said her three girls were going
+to work just as Phil and Jim do."
+
+"But Billy, if a girl has a gift, yes. But you can't put a girl in a
+foundry or a grocery."
+
+"Not in a foundry. But you could in a grocery. And she said she had
+talked to Anna and Jo since they were kids, just as she did to the
+boys, about their work."
+
+"Wouldn't Auntie think she was crazy!" Susan smiled. After a while she
+said more mildly:
+
+"I don't believe Peter Coleman is quite as bad as the others!"
+
+"Because you have a crush on him," suggested Billy frankly. "I think he
+acted like a skunk."
+
+"Very well. Think what you like!" Susan said icily. But presently, in a
+more softened tone, she added, "I do feel badly about Thorny! I
+oughtn't to have left her. It was all so quick! And she DID have a
+date, at least I know a crowd of people were coming to their house to
+dinner. And I was so utterly taken aback to be asked out with that
+crowd! The most exclusive people in the city,--that set."
+
+"You give me an awful pain when you talk like that," said Billy,
+bluntly. "You give them a chance to sit on you, and they do, and then
+you want to run away to Chicago, because you feel so hurt. Why don't
+you stay in your own crowd?"
+
+"Because I like nice people. And besides, the Fox crowd isn't ONE bit
+better than I am!" said the inconsistent Susan, hotly. "Who were their
+ancestors! Miners and servants and farmers! I'd like to go away," she
+resumed, feverishly, "and work up to be something GREAT, and come back
+here and have them tumbling over themselves to be nice to me--"
+
+"What a pipe dream!" Billy observed. "Let 'em alone. And if Coleman
+ever offers you another invitation--"
+
+"He won't!" interposed Susan.
+
+"--Why, you sit on him so quick it'll make his head spin! Get busy at
+something, Susan. If you had a lot of work to do, and enough money to
+buy yourself pretty clothes, and to go off on nice little trips every
+Sunday,--up the mountain, or down to Santa Cruz, you'd forget this
+bunch!"
+
+"Get busy at what?" asked Susan, half-hopeful, half in scorn.
+
+"Oh, anything!"
+
+"Yes, and Thorny getting forty-five after twelve years!"
+
+"Well, but you've told me yourself how Thorny wastes time, and makes
+mistakes, and conies in late, and goes home early---"
+
+"As if that made any difference! Nobody takes the least notice!" Susan
+said hotly. But she was restored enough to laugh now, and a passing
+pop-corn cart made a sudden diversion. "Let's get some crisps, Bill!
+Let's get a lot, and take some home to the others!"
+
+So the evening ended with Billy and Susan in the group about the fire,
+listening idly to the reminiscences that the holiday mood awakened in
+the older women. Mrs. Cortelyou had been a California pioneer, and
+liked to talk of the old prairie wagons, of Indian raids, of flood and
+fire and famine. Susan, stirred by tales of real trouble, forgot her
+own imaginary ones. Indians and wolves in the strange woods all about,
+a child at the breast, another at the knee, and the men gone for
+food,--four long days' trip! The women of those days, thought Susan,
+carried their share of the load. She had heard the story of the Hatch
+child before, the three-year-old, who, playing about the wagons, at the
+noontime rest on the plains, was suddenly missing! Of the desperate
+hunt, the half-mad mother's frantic searching, her agonies when the
+long-delayed start must be made, her screams when she was driven away
+with her tinier child in her arms, knowing that behind one of those
+thousands of mesquite or cactus bushes, the little yellow head must be
+pillowed on the sand, the little beloved mouth smiling in sleep.
+
+"Mrs. Hatch used to sit for hours, strainin' her eyes back of us,
+toward St. Joe," Mrs. Cortelyou said, sighing. "But there was plenty of
+trouble ahead, for all of us, too! It's a life of sorrow."
+
+"You never said a truer word than that," Mrs. Lancaster agreed
+mournfully. And the talk came about once more to the Harding funeral.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"Good-morning!" said Susan, bravely, when Miss Thornton came into the
+office the next morning. Miss Thornton glanced politely toward her.
+
+"Oh, good-morning, Miss Brown!" said she, civilly, disappearing into
+the coat closet. Susan felt her cheeks burn. But she had been lying
+awake and thinking in the still watches of the night, and she was the
+wiser for it. Susan's appearance was a study in simple neatness this
+morning, a black gown, severe white collar and cuffs, severely braided
+hair. Her table was already piled with bills, and she was working
+busily. Presently she got up, and came down to Miss Thornton's desk.
+
+"Mad at me, Thorny?" she asked penitently. She had to ask it twice.
+
+"Why should I be?" asked Miss Thornton lightly then. "Excuse me--" she
+turned a page, and marked a price. "Excuse me--" This time Susan's hand
+was in the way.
+
+"Ah, Thorny, don't be mad at me," said Susan, childishly.
+
+"I hope I know when I am not wanted," said Miss Thornton stiffly, after
+a silence.
+
+"I don't!" laughed Susan, and stopped. Miss Thornton looked quickly up,
+and the story came out. Thorny was instantly won. She observed with a
+little complacence that she had anticipated just some such event, and
+so had given Peter Coleman no chance to ask HER. "I could see he was
+dying to," said Thorny, "but I know that crowd! Don't you care, Susan,
+what's the difference?" said Thorny, patting her hand affectionately.
+
+So that little trouble was smoothed away. Another episode made the day
+more bearable for Susan.
+
+Mr. Brauer called her into his office at ten o'clock. Peter was at his
+desk, but Susan apparently did not see him.
+
+"Will you hurry this bill, Miss Brown?" said Mr. Brauer, in his careful
+English. "Al-zo, I wished to say how gratifite I am wiz your work,
+before zese las' weeks,--zis monss. You work hardt, and well. I wish
+all could do so hardt, and so well."
+
+"Oh, thank you!" stammered Susan, in honest shame. Had one month's work
+been so noticeable? She made new resolves for the month to come. "Was
+that all, Mr. Brauer?" she asked primly.
+
+"All? Yes."
+
+"What was your rush yesterday?" asked Peter Coleman, turning around.
+
+"Headache," said Susan, mildly, her hand on the door.
+
+"Oh, rot! I bet it didn't ache at all!" he said, with his gay laugh.
+But Susan did not laugh, and there was a pause. Peter's face grew red.
+
+"Did--did Miss Thornton get home all right?" he asked. Susan knew he
+was at a loss for something to say, but answered him seriously.
+
+"Quite, thank you. She was a little--at least I felt that she might be
+a little vexed at my leaving her, but she was very sweet about it."
+
+"She should have come, too!" Peter said, embarrassedly.
+
+Susan did not answer, she eyed him gravely for a few seconds, as one
+waiting for further remarks, then turned and went out, sauntering to
+her desk with the pleasant conviction that hers were the honors of war.
+
+The feeling of having regained her dignity was so exhilarating that
+Susan was careful, during the next few weeks, to preserve it. She bowed
+and smiled to Peter, answered his occasional pleasantries briefly and
+reservedly, and attended strictly to her affairs alone.
+
+Thus Thanksgiving became a memory less humiliating, and on Christmas
+Day joy came gloriously into Susan's heart, to make it memorable among
+all the Christmas Days of her life. Easy to-day to sit for a laughing
+hour with poor Mary Lord, to go to late service, and dream through a
+long sermon, with the odor of incense and spicy evergreen sweet all
+about her, to set tables, to dust the parlor, to be kissed by Loretta's
+little doctor under the mistletoe, to sweep up tissue-paper and red
+ribbon and nutshells and tinsel, to hook Mary Lou's best gown, and
+accompany Virginia to evening service, and to lend Georgie her best
+gloves. Susan had not had many Christmas presents: cologne and
+handkerchiefs and calendars and candy, from various girl friends, five
+dollars from the firm, a silk waist from Auntie, and a handsome
+umbrella from Billy, who gave each one of the cousins exactly the same
+thing.
+
+These, if appreciated, were more or less expected, too. But beside
+them, this year, was a great box of violets,--Susan never forgot the
+delicious wet odor of those violets!--and inside the big box a smaller
+one, holding an old silver chain with a pendant of lapis lazuli, set in
+a curious and lovely design. Susan honestly thought it the handsomest
+thing she had ever seen. And to own it, as a gift from him! Small
+wonder that her heart flew like a leaf in a high wind. The card that
+came with it she had slipped inside her silk blouse, and so wore
+against her heart. "Mr. Peter Webster Coleman," said one side of the
+card. On the other was written, "S.B. from P.--Happy Fourth of July!"
+Susan took it out and read it a hundred times. The "P" indicated a
+friendliness that brought the happy color over and over again to her
+face. She dashed him off a gay little note of thanks; signed it
+"Susan," thought better of that and re-wrote it, to sign it "Susan
+Ralston Brown"; wrote it a third time, and affixed only the initials,
+"S.B." All day long she wondered at intervals if the note had been too
+chilly, and turned cold, or turned rosy wondering if it had been too
+warm.
+
+Mr. Coleman did not come into the office during the following week, and
+one day a newspaper item, under the heading of "The Smart Set," jumped
+at Susan with the familiar name. "Peter Coleman, who is at present the
+guest of Mrs. Rodney Chauncey, at her New Year's house party," it ran,
+"may accompany Mr. Paul Wallace and Miss Isabel Wallace in a short
+visit to Mexico next week." The news made Susan vaguely unhappy.
+
+One January Saturday she was idling along the deck, when he came
+suddenly up behind her, to tell her, with his usual exuberant laughter,
+that he WAS going away for a fortnight with the Wallaces, just a flying
+trip, "in the old man's private car." He expected "a peach of a time."
+
+"You certainly ought to have it!" smiled Susan gallantly, "Isabel
+Wallace looks like a perfect darling!"
+
+"She's a wonder!" he said absently, adding eagerly, "Say, why can't you
+come and help me buy some things this afternoon? Come on, and we'll
+have tea at the club?"
+
+Susan saw no reason against it, they would meet at one.
+
+"I'll be down in J.G.'s office," he said, and Susan went back to her
+desk with fresh joy and fresh pain at her heart.
+
+On Saturdays, because of the early closing, the girls had no lunch
+hour. But they always sent out for a bag of graham crackers, which they
+nibbled as they worked, and, between eleven and one, they took turns at
+disappearing in the direction of the lunch-room, to return with well
+scrubbed hands and powdered noses, fresh collars and carefully arranged
+hair. Best hats were usually worn on Saturdays, and Susan rejoiced that
+she had worn her best to-day. After the twelve o'clock whistle blew,
+she went upstairs.
+
+On the last flight, just below the lunch-room, she suddenly stopped
+short, her heart giving a sick plunge. Somebody up there was
+laughing--crying--making a horrible noise--! Susan ran up the rest of
+the flight.
+
+Thorny was standing by the table. One or two other girls were in the
+room, Miss Sherman was mending a glove, Miss Cashell stood in the roof
+doorway, manicuring her nails with a hairpin. Miss Elsie Kirk sat in
+the corner seat, with her arm about the bowed shoulders of another
+girl, who was crying, with her head on the table.
+
+"If you would mind your own affairs for about five minutes, Miss
+Thornton," Elsie Kirk was saying passionately, as Susan came in, "you'd
+be a good deal better off!"
+
+"I consider what concerns Front Office concerns me!" said Miss Thornton
+loftily.
+
+"Ah, don't!" Miss Sherman murmured pitifully.
+
+"If Violet wasn't such a darn FOOL--" Miss Cashell said lightly, and
+stopped.
+
+"What IS it?" asked Susan.
+
+Her voice died on a dead silence. Miss Thornton, beginning to gather up
+veil and gloves and handbag scattered on the table, pursed her lips
+virtuously. Miss Cashell manicured steadily. Miss Sherman bit off a
+thread.
+
+"It's nothing at all!" said Elsie Kirk, at last. "My sister's got a
+headache, that's all, and she doesn't feel well." She patted the bowed
+shoulders. "And parties who have nothing better to do," she added,
+viciously turning to Miss Thornton, "have butted in about it!"
+
+"I'm all right now," said Violet suddenly, raising a face so terribly
+blotched and swollen from tears that Susan was genuinely horrified.
+Violet's weak eyes were set in puffy rings of unnatural whiteness, her
+loose, weak little mouth sagged, her bosom, in its preposterous,
+transparent white lace shirtwaist, rose and fell convulsively. In her
+voice was some shocking quality of unwomanliness, some lack of pride,
+and reserve, and courage.
+
+"All I wanted was to do like other girls do," said the swollen lips, as
+Violet began to cry again, and to dab her eyes with a soaked rag of a
+handkerchief. "I never meant nothing! 'N' Mamma says she KNOWS it
+wasn't all my fault!" she went on, half maudlin in her abandonment.
+
+Susan gasped. There was a general gasp.
+
+"Don't, Vi!" said her sister tenderly. "It ain't your fault if there
+are skunks in the world like Mr. Phil Hunter," she said, in a reckless
+half-whisper. "If Papa was alive he'd shoot him down like a dog!"
+
+"He ought to be shot down!" cried Susan, firing.
+
+"Well, of course he ought!" Miss Elsie Kirk, strong under opposition,
+softened suddenly under this championship, and began to tremble. "Come
+on, Vi," said she.
+
+"Well, of course he ought," Thorny said, almost with sympathy. "Here,
+let's move the table a little, if you want to get out."
+
+"Well, why do you make such a fuss about it?" Miss Cashell asked
+softly. "You know as well as--as anyone else, that if a man gets a girl
+into trouble, he ought to stand for--"
+
+"Yes, but my sister doesn't take that kind of money!" flashed Elsie
+bitterly.
+
+"Well, of course not!" Miss Cashell said quickly, "but--"
+
+"No, you're doing the dignified thing, Violet," Miss Thornton said,
+with approval, "and you'll feel glad, later on, that you acted this
+way. And, as far as my carrying tales, I never carried one. I DID say
+that I thought I knew why you were leaving, and I don't deny it--Use my
+powder, right there by the mirror--But as far as anything else goes--"
+
+"We're both going," Elsie said. "I wouldn't take another dollar of
+their dirty money if I was starving! Come on, Vi."
+
+And a few minutes later they all said a somewhat subdued and
+embarrassed farewell to the Misses Kirk, who went down the stairs,
+veiled and silent, and out of the world of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's
+forever.
+
+"Will she sue him, Thorny?" asked Susan, awed.
+
+"Sue him? For what? She's not got anything to sue for." Miss Thornton
+examined a finger nail critically. "This isn't the first time this has
+happened down here," she said. "There was a lovely girl here--but she
+wasn't such a fool as Violet is. She kept her mouth shut. Violet went
+down to Phil Hunter's office this morning, and made a perfect scene.
+He's going on East to meet his wife you know; it must have been
+terribly embarrassing for him! Then old J.G. sent for Violet, and told
+her that there'd been a great many errors in the crediting, and showed
+'em to her, too! Poor kid--"
+
+Susan went wondering back to Front Office. The crediting should be
+hers, now, by all rights! But she felt only sorry, and sore, and
+puzzled. "She wanted a good time and pretty things," said Susan to
+herself. Just as Susan herself wanted this delightful afternoon with
+Peter Coleman! "How much money has to do with life!" the girl thought.
+
+But even the morning's events did not cloud the afternoon. She met
+Peter at the door of Mr. Baxter's office, and they went laughing out
+into the clear winter sunshine together.
+
+Where first? To Roos Brothers, for one of the new folding trunks. Quite
+near enough to walk, they decided, joining the released throng of
+office workers who were streaming up to Kearney Street and the theater
+district.
+
+The trunk was found, and a very smart pigskin toilet-case to go in the
+trunk; Susan found a sort of fascination in the ease with which a
+person of Peter's income could add a box of silk socks to his purchase,
+because their color chanced to strike his fancy, could add two or three
+handsome ties. They strolled along Kearney Street and Post Street, and
+Susan selected an enormous bunch of violets at Podesta and Baldocchi's,
+declining the unwholesome-looking orchid that was Peter's choice. They
+bought a camera, which was left that a neat "P.W.C." might be stamped
+upon it, and went into Shreve's, a place always fascinating to Susan,
+to leave Mr. Coleman's watch to be regulated, and look at new
+scarf-pins. And finally they wandered up into "Chinatown," as the
+Chinese quarter was called, laughing all the way, and keenly alert for
+any little odd occurrence in the crowded streets. At Sing Fat's
+gorgeous bazaar, Peter bought a mandarin coat for himself, the smiling
+Oriental bringing its price down from two hundred dollars to less than
+three-quarters of that sum, and Susan taking a great fancy to a little
+howling teakwood god; he bought that, too, and they named it "Claude"
+after much discussion.
+
+"We can't carry all these things to the University Club for tea," said
+Peter then, when it was nearly five o'clock. "So let's go home and have
+tea with Aunt Clara--she'd love it!"
+
+Tea at his own home! Susan's heart raced--
+
+"Oh, I couldn't," she said, in duty bound.
+
+"Couldn't? Why couldn't you?"
+
+"Why, because Auntie mightn't like it. Suppose your aunt is out?"
+
+"Shucks!" he pondered; he wanted his way. "I'll tell you," he said
+suddenly. "We'll drive there, and if Aunt Clara isn't home you needn't
+come in. How's that?"
+
+Susan could find no fault with that. She got into a carriage in great
+spirits.
+
+"Don't you love it when we stop people on the crossings?" she asked
+naively. Peter shouted, but she could see that he was pleased as well
+as amused.
+
+They bumped and rattled out Bush Street, and stopped at the stately
+door of the old Baxter mansion. Mrs. Baxter fortunately was at home,
+and Susan followed Peter into the great square hall, and into the
+magnificent library, built in a day of larger homes and more splendid
+proportions. Here she was introduced to the little, nervous mistress of
+the house, who had been enjoying alone a glorious coal fire.
+
+"Let in a little more light, Peter, you wild, noisy boy, you!" said
+Mrs. Baxter, adding, to Susan, "This was a very sweet thing of you to
+do, my dear, I don't like my little cup of tea alone."
+
+"Little cup--ha!" said Peter, eying the woman with immense
+satisfaction. "You'll see her drink five, Miss Brown!"
+
+"We'll send him upstairs, that's what we'll do," threatened his aunt.
+"Yes, tea, Burns," she added to the butler. "Green tea, dear?
+Orange-Pekoe? I like that best myself. And muffins, Burns, and toast,
+something nice and hot. And jam. Mr. Peter likes jam, and some of the
+almond cakes, if she has them. And please ask Ada to bring me that box
+of candy from my desk. Santa Barbara nougat, Peter, it just came."
+
+"ISN'T this fun!" said Susan, so joyously that Mrs. Baxter patted the
+girl's arm with a veiny, approving little hand, and Peter, eying his
+aunt significantly, said: "Isn't SHE fun?"
+
+It was a perfect hour, and when, at six, Susan said she must go, the
+old lady sent her home in her own carriage. Peter saw her to the door,
+"Shall you be going out to-night, sir?" Susan heard the younger
+man-servant ask respectfully, as they passed. "Not to-night!" said
+Peter, and, so sensitive was Susan now to all that concerned him, she
+was unreasonably glad that he was not engaged to-night, not to see
+other girls and have good times in which she had no share. It seemed to
+make him more her own.
+
+The tea, the firelight, the fragrant dying violets had worked a spell
+upon her. Susan sat back luxuriously in the carriage, dreaming of
+herself as Peter Coleman's wife, of entering that big hall as
+familiarly as he did, of having tea and happy chatter ready for him
+every afternoon before the fire----
+
+There was no one at the windows, unfortunately, to be edified by the
+sight of Susan Brown being driven home in a private carriage, and the
+halls, as she entered, reeked of boiling cabbage and corned beef. She
+groped in the darkness for a match with which to light the hall gas.
+She could hear Loretta Barker's sweet high voice chattering on behind
+closed doors, and, higher up, the deep moaning of Mary Lord, who was
+going through one of her bad times. But she met nobody as she ran up to
+her room.
+
+"Hello, Mary Lou, darling! Where's everyone?" she asked gaily,
+discerning in the darkness a portly form prone on the bed.
+
+"Jinny's lying down, she's been to the oculist. Ma's in the
+kitchen--don't light up, Sue," said the patient, melancholy voice.
+
+"Don't light up!" Susan echoed, amazedly, instantly doing so, the
+better to see her cousin's tear-reddened eyes and pale face. "Why,
+what's the matter?"
+
+"Oh, we've had sad, sad news," faltered Mary Lou, her lips trembling.
+"A telegram from Ferd Eastman. They've lost Robbie!"
+
+"No!" said Susan, genuinely shocked. And to the details she listened
+sympathetically, cheering Mary Lou while she inserted cuff-links into
+her cousin's fresh shirtwaist, and persuaded her to come down to
+dinner. Then Susan must leave her hot soup while she ran up to
+Virginia's room, for Virginia was late.
+
+"Ha! What is it?" said Virginia heavily, rousing herself from sleep.
+Protesting that she was a perfect fright, she kept Susan waiting while
+she arranged her hair.
+
+"And what does Verriker say of your eyes, Jinny?"
+
+"Oh, they may operate, after all!" Virginia sighed. "But don't say
+anything to Ma until we're sure," she said.
+
+Not the congenial atmosphere into which to bring a singing heart! Susan
+sighed. When they went downstairs Mrs. Parker's heavy voice was filling
+the dining-room.
+
+"The world needs good wives and mothers more than it needs nuns, my
+dear! There's nothing selfish about a woman who takes her share of toil
+and care and worry, instead of running away from it. Dear me! many of
+us who married and stayed in the world would be glad enough to change
+places with the placid lives of the Sisters!"
+
+"Then, Mama," Loretta said sweetly and merrily, detecting the
+inconsistency of her mother's argument, as she always did, "if it's
+such a serene, happy life--"
+
+Loretta always carried off the honors of war. Susan used to wonder how
+Mrs. Parker could resist the temptation to slap her pretty, stupid
+little face. Loretta's deep, wise, mysterious smile seemed to imply
+that she, at nineteen, could afford to assume the maternal attitude
+toward her easily confused and disturbed parent.
+
+"No vocation for mine!" said Georgianna, hardily, "I'd always be
+getting my habit mixed up, and coming into chapel without my veil on!"
+
+This, because of its audacity, made everyone laugh, but Loretta fixed
+on Georgie the sweet bright smile in which Susan already perceived the
+nun.
+
+"Are you so sure that you haven't a vocation, Georgie?" she asked
+gently.
+
+"Want to go to a bum show at the 'Central' to-night?" Billy Oliver
+inquired of Susan in an aside. "Bartlett's sister is leading lady, and
+he's handing passes out to everyone."
+
+"Always!" trilled Susan, and at last she had a chance to add, "Wait
+until I tell you what fun I've been having!"
+
+She told him when they were on the car, and he was properly interested,
+but Susan felt that the tea episode somehow fell flat; had no
+significance for William.
+
+"Crime he didn't take you to the University Club," said Billy, "they
+say it's a keen club."
+
+Susan, smiling over happy memories, did not contradict him.
+
+ The evening, in spite of the "bum" show, proved a great success,
+and the two afterwards went to Zinkand's for sardine sandwiches and
+domestic ginger-ale. This modest order was popular with them because of
+the moderateness of its cost.
+
+"But, Bill," said Susan to-night, "wouldn't you like to order once
+without reading the price first and then looking back to see what it
+was? Do you remember the night we nearly fainted with joy when we found
+a ten cent dish at Tech's, and then discovered that it was Chili Sauce!"
+
+They both laughed, Susan giving her usual little bounce of joy as she
+settled into her seat, and the orchestra began a spirited selection.
+"Look there, Bill, what are those people getting?" she asked.
+
+"It's terrapin," said William, and Susan looked it up on the menu.
+
+"Terrapin Parnasse, one-fifty," read Susan, "for seven of them,--Gee!
+Gracious!" "Gracious" followed, because Susan had made up her mind not
+to say "Gee" any more.
+
+"His little supper will stand him in about fifteen dollars," estimated
+Billy, with deep interest. "He's ordering champagne,--it'll stand him
+in thirty. Gosh!"
+
+"What would you order if you could, Bill?" Susan asked. It was all part
+of their usual program.
+
+"Planked steak," answered Billy, readily.
+
+"Planked steak," Susan hunted for it, "would it be three dollars?" she
+asked, awed.
+
+"That's it."
+
+"I'd have breast of hen pheasant with Virginia ham," Susan decided. A
+moment later her roving eye rested on a group at a nearby table, and,
+with the pleased color rushing into her race, she bowed to one of the
+members of the party.
+
+"That's Miss Emily Saunders," said Susan, in a low voice. "Don't look
+now--now you can look. Isn't she sweet?"
+
+Miss Saunders, beautifully gowned, was sitting with an old man, an
+elderly woman, a handsome, very stout woman of perhaps forty, and a
+very young man. She was a pale, rather heavy girl, with prominent eyes
+and smooth skin. Susan thought her very aristocratic looking.
+
+"Me for the fat one," said Billy simply. "Who's she?"
+
+"I don't know. DON'T let them see us looking, Bill!" Susan brought her
+gaze suddenly back to her own table, and began a conversation.
+
+There were some rolls on a plate, between them, but there was no butter
+on the table. Their order had not yet been served.
+
+"We want some butter here," said Billy, as Susan took a roll, broke it
+in two, and laid it down again.
+
+"Oh, don't bother, Bill! I don't honestly want it!" she protested.
+
+"Rot!" said William. "He's got a right to bring it!" In a moment a
+head-waiter was bending over them, his eyes moving rapidly from one to
+the other, under contracted brows.
+
+"Butter, please," said William briskly.
+
+"Beg pardon?"
+
+"BUTTER. We've no butter."
+
+"Oh, certainly!" He was gone in a second, and in another the butter was
+served, and Susan and Billy began on the rolls.
+
+"Here comes Miss---, your friend," said William presently.
+
+Susan whirled. Miss Saunders and the very young man were looking toward
+their table, as they went out. Catching Susan's eye, they came over to
+shake hands.
+
+"How do you do, Miss Brown?" said the young woman easily. "My cousin,
+Mr. Brice. He's nicer than he looks. Mr. Oliver? Were you at the
+Columbia?"
+
+"We were--How do you do? No, we weren't at the Columbia," Susan
+stammered, confused by the other's languid ease of manner, by the
+memory of the playhouse they had attended, and by the arrival of the
+sardines and ginger-ale, which were just now placed on the table.
+
+"I'm coming to take you to lunch with me some day, remember," said Miss
+Saunders, departing. And she smiled another farewell from the door.
+
+"Isn't she sweet?" said Susan.
+
+"And how well she would come along just as our rich and expensive order
+is served!" Billy added, and they both laughed.
+
+"It looks good to ME!" Susan assured him contentedly. "I'll give you
+half that other sandwich if you can tell me what the orchestra is
+playing now."
+
+"The slipper thing, from 'Boheme'," Billy said scornfully. Susan's eyes
+widened with approval and surprise. His appreciation of music was an
+incongruous note in Billy's character.
+
+There was presently a bill to settle, which Susan, as became a lady,
+seemed to ignore. But she could not long ignore her escort's scowling
+scrutiny of it.
+
+"What's that?" demanded Mr. Oliver, scowling at the card. "Twenty cents
+for WHAT?"
+
+"For bread and butter, sir," said the waiter, in a hoarse, confidential
+whisper. "Not served with sandwiches, sir." Susan's heart began to
+thump.
+
+"Billy--" she began.
+
+"Wait a minute," Billy muttered. "Just wait a minute! It doesn't say
+anything about that."
+
+The waiter respectfully indicated a line on the menu card, which Mr.
+Oliver studied fixedly, for what seemed to Susan a long time.
+
+"That's right," he said finally, heavily, laying a silver dollar on the
+check. "Keep it." The waiter did not show much gratitude for his tip.
+Susan and Billy, ruffled and self-conscious, walked, with what dignity
+they could, out into the night.
+
+"Damn him!" said Billy, after a rapidly covered half-block.
+
+"Oh, Billy, don't! What do you care!" Susan said, soothingly.
+
+"I don't care," he snapped. Adding, after another brooding minute, "we
+ought to have better sense than to go into such places!"
+
+"We're as good as anyone else!" Susan asserted, hotly.
+
+"No, we're not. We're not as rich," he answered bitterly.
+
+"Billy, as if MONEY mattered!"
+
+"Oh, of course, money doesn't matter," he said with fine satire. "Not
+at all! But because we haven't got it, those fellows, on thirty per,
+can throw the hooks into us at every turn. And, if we threw enough
+money around, we could be the rottenest man and woman on the face of
+the globe, we could be murderers and thieves, even, and they'd all be
+falling over each other to wait on us!"
+
+"Well, let's murder and thieve, then!" said Susan blithely.
+
+"I may not do that--"
+
+"You mayn't? Oh, Bill, don't commit yourself! You may want to, later."
+
+"I may not do that," repeated Mr. Oliver, gloomily, "but, by George,
+some day I'll have a wad in the bank that'll make me feel that I can
+afford to turn those fellows down! They'll know that I've got it, all
+right."
+
+"Bill, I don't think that's much of an ambition," Susan said, candidly,
+"to want so much money that you aren't afraid of a waiter! Get some
+crisps while we're passing the man, Billy!" she interrupted herself to
+say, urgently, "we can talk on the car!"
+
+He bought them, grinning sheepishly.
+
+"But honestly, Sue, don't you get mad when you think that about the
+only standard of the world is money?" he resumed presently.
+
+"Well, we know that we're BETTER than lots of rich people, Bill."
+
+"How are we better?"
+
+"More refined. Better born. Better ancestry."
+
+"Oh, rot! A lot they care for that! No, people that have money can get
+the best of people who haven't, coming and going. And for that reason,
+Sue," they were on the car now, and Billy was standing on the running
+board, just in front of her, "for that reason, Sue, I'm going to MAKE
+money, and when I have so much that everyone knows it then I'll do as I
+darn please. And I won't please to do the things they do, either!"
+
+"You're very sure of yourself, Bill! How are you going to make it?"
+
+"The way other men make it, by gosh!" Mr. Oliver said seriously. "I'm
+going into blue-printing with Ross, on the side. I've got nearly three
+thousand in Panhandle lots--"
+
+"Oh, you have NOT!"
+
+"Oh, I have, too! Spence put me onto it. They're no good now, but you
+bet your life they will be! And I'm going to stick along at the foundry
+until the old man wakes up some day, and realizes that I'm getting more
+out of my men than any other two foremen in the place. Those boys would
+do anything for me--"
+
+"Because you're a very unusual type of man to be in that sort of place,
+Bill!" Susan interrupted.
+
+"Shucks," he said, in embarrassment. "Well," he resumed, "then some day
+I'm going to the old man and ask him for a year's leave. Then I'll
+visit every big iron-works in the East, and when I come back, I'll take
+a job of casting from my own blue-prints, at not less than a hundred a
+week. Then I'll run up some flats in the Panhandle--"
+
+"Having married the beautiful daughter of the old man himself--" Susan
+interposed. "And won first prize in the Louisiana lottery--"
+
+"Sure," he said gravely. "And meanwhile," he added, with a
+business-like look, "Coleman has got a crush on you, Sue. It'd be a
+dandy marriage for you, and don't you forget it!"
+
+"Well, of all nerve!" Susan said unaffectedly, and with flaming cheeks.
+"There is a little motto, to every nation dear, in English it's
+forget-me-not, in French it's mind your own business, Bill!"
+
+"Well, that may be," he said doggedly, "but you know as well as I do
+that it's up to you--"
+
+"Suppose it is," Susan said, satisfied that he should think so. "That
+doesn't give YOU any right to interfere with my affairs!"
+
+"You're just like Georgie and Mary Lou," he told her, "always bluffing
+yourself. But you've got more brains than they have, Sue, and it'd give
+the whole crowd of them a hand up if you made a marriage like that.
+Don't think I'm trying to butt in," he gave her his winning, apologetic
+smile, "you know I'm as interested as your own brother could be, Sue!
+If you like him, don't keep the matter hanging fire. There's no
+question that he's crazy about you--everybody knows that!"
+
+"No, there's no question about THAT," Susan said, softly.
+
+But what would she not have given for the joy of knowing, in her secret
+heart, that it was true!
+
+Two weeks later, Miss Brown, summoned to Mr. Brauer's office, was asked
+if she thought that she could do the crediting, at forty dollars a
+month. Susan assented gravely, and entered that day upon her new work,
+and upon a new era. She worked hard and silently, now, with only
+occasional flashes of her old silliness. She printed upon a card, and
+hung above her desk, these words:
+
+  "I hold it true, with him who sings
+      To one clear harp in divers tones,
+      That men may rise on stepping-stones
+     Of their dead selves, to higher things."
+
+On stepping-stones of her dead selves, Susan mounted. She wore a
+preoccupied, a responsible air, her voice softened, her manner was
+almost too sweet, too bright and gentle. She began to take cold, or
+almost cold, baths daily, to brush her hair and mend her gloves. She
+began to say "Not really?" instead of "Sat-so?" and "It's of no
+consequence," instead of "Don't matter." She called her long woolen
+coat, familiarly known as her "sweater," her "field-jacket," and
+pronounced her own name "Syusan." Thorny, Georgianna, and Billy had
+separately the pleasure of laughing at Susan in these days.
+
+"They should really have a lift, to take the girls up to the lunch
+room," said Susan to Billy.
+
+"Of course they should," said Billy, "and a sink to bring you down
+again!"
+
+Peter Coleman did not return to San Francisco until the middle of
+March, but Susan had two of the long, ill-written and ill-spelled
+letters that are characteristic of the college graduate. It was a wet
+afternoon in the week before Holy Week when she saw him again. Front
+Office was very busy at three o'clock, and Miss Garvey had been telling
+a story.
+
+"'Don't whistle, Mary, there's a good girl,' the priest says," related
+Miss Garvey. "'I never like to hear a girl whistle,' he says. Well, so
+that night Aggie,"--Aggie was Miss Kelly--"Aggie wrote a question, and
+she put it in the question-box they had at church for questions during
+the Mission. 'Is it a sin to whistle?' she wrote. And that night, when
+he was readin' the questions out from the pulpit, he come to this one,
+and he looked right down at our pew over his glasses, and he says, 'The
+girl that asks this question is here,' he says, 'and I would say to
+her, 'tis no sin to do anything that injures neither God nor your
+neighbor!' Well, I thought Aggie and me would go through the floor!"
+And Miss Kelly and Miss Garvey put their heads down on their desks, and
+laughed until they cried.
+
+Susan, looking up to laugh too, felt a thrill weaken her whole body,
+and her spine grow cold. Peter Coleman, in his gloves and big overcoat,
+with his hat on the back of his head, was in Mr. Brauer's office, and
+the electric light, turned on early this dark afternoon, shone full in
+his handsome, clean-shaven face.
+
+Susan had some bills that she had planned to show to Mr. Brauer this
+afternoon. Six months ago she would have taken them in to him at once,
+and been glad of the excuse. But now she dropped her eyes, and busied
+herself with her work. Her heart beat high, she attacked a particularly
+difficult bill, one she had been avoiding for days, and disposed of it
+in ten minutes.
+
+A little later she glanced at Mr. Brauer's office. Peter was gone, and
+Susan felt a sensation of sickness. She looked down at Mr. Baxter's
+office, and saw him there, spreading kodak pictures over the old man's
+desk, laughing and talking. Presently he was gone again, and she saw
+him no more that day.
+
+The next day, however, she found him at her desk when she came in. They
+had ten minutes of inconsequential banter before Miss Cashell came in.
+
+"How about a fool trip to the Chutes to-morrow night?" Peter asked in a
+low tone, just before departing.
+
+"Lent," Susan said reluctantly.
+
+"Oh, so it is. I suppose Auntie wouldn't stand for a dinner?"
+
+"Pos-i-to-ri-ly NOT!" Susan was hedged with convention.
+
+"Positorily not? Well, let's walk the pup? What? All right, I'll come
+at eight."
+
+"At eight," said Susan, with a dancing heart.
+
+She thought of nothing else until Friday came, slipped away from the
+office a little earlier than usual, and went home planning just the
+gown and hat most suitable. Visitors were in the parlor; Auntie,
+thinking of pan-gravy and hot biscuits, was being visibly driven to
+madness by them. Susan charitably took Mrs. Cobb and Annie and Daisy
+off Mrs. Lancaster's hands, and listened sympathetically to a
+dissertation upon the thanklessness of sons. Mrs. Cobb's sons, leaving
+their mother and their unmarried sisters in a comfortable home, had
+married the women of their own choice, and were not yet forgiven.
+
+"And how's Alfie doing?" Mrs. Cobb asked heavily, departing.
+
+"Pretty well. He's in Portland now, he has another job," Susan said
+cautiously. Alfred was never criticized in his mother's hearing. A
+moment later she closed the hall door upon the callers with a sigh of
+relief, and ran downstairs.
+
+The telephone bell was ringing. Susan answered it.
+
+"Hello Miss Brown! You see I know you in any disguise!" It was Peter
+Coleman's voice.
+
+"Hello!" said Susan, with a chill premonition.
+
+"I'm calling off that party to-night," said Peter. "I'm awfully sorry.
+We'll do it some other night. I'm in Berkeley."
+
+"Oh, very well!" Susan agreed, brightly.
+
+"Can you HEAR me? I say I'm---"
+
+"Yes, I hear perfectly."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I say I can hear!"
+
+"And it's all right? I'm awfully sorry!"
+
+"Oh, certainly!"
+
+"All right. These fellows are making such a racket I can't hear you.
+See you to-morrow!"
+
+Susan hung up the receiver. She sat quite still in the darkness for
+awhile, staring straight ahead of her. When she went into the
+dining-room she was very sober. Mr. Oliver was there; he had taken one
+of his men to a hospital, with a burned arm, too late in the afternoon
+to make a return to the foundry worth while.
+
+"Harkee, Susan wench!" said he, "do 'ee smell asparagus?"
+
+"Aye. It'll be asparagus, Gaffer," said Susan dispiritedly, dropping
+into her chair.
+
+"And I nearly got my dinner out to-night!" Billy said, with a shudder.
+"Say, listen, Susan, can you come over to the Carrolls, Sunday? Going
+to be a bully walk!"
+
+"I don't know, Billy," she said quietly.
+
+"Well, listen what we're all going to do, some Thursday. We're going to
+the theater, and then dawdle over supper at some cheap place, you know,
+and then go down on the docks, at about three, to see the fishing fleet
+come in? Are you on? It's great. They pile the fish up to their waists,
+you know--"
+
+"That sounds lovely!" said Susan, eying him scornfully. "I see Jo and
+Anna Carroll enjoying THAT!"
+
+"Lord, what a grouch you've got!" Billy said, with a sort of awed
+admiration.
+
+Susan began to mold the damp salt in an open glass salt-cellar with the
+handle of a fork. Her eyes blurred with sudden tears.
+
+"What's the matter?" Billy asked in a lowered voice.
+
+She gulped, merely shook her head.
+
+"You're dead, aren't you?" he said repentantly.
+
+"Oh, all in!" It was a relief to ascribe it to that. "I'm awfully
+tired."
+
+"Too tired to go to church with Mary Lou and me, dear?" asked Virginia,
+coming in. "Friday in Passion Week, you know. We're going to St.
+Ignatius. But if you're dead--?"
+
+"Oh, I am. I'm going straight to bed," Susan said. But after dinner,
+when Mary Lou was dressing, she suddenly changed her mind, dragged
+herself up from the couch where she was lying and, being Susan, brushed
+her hair, pinned a rose on her coat lapel, and powdered her nose.
+Walking down the street with her two cousins, Susan, storm-shaken and
+subdued, still felt "good," and liked the feeling. Spring was in the
+air, the early darkness was sweet with the odors of grass and flowers.
+
+When they reached the church, the great edifice was throbbing with the
+notes of the organ, a careless voluntary that stopped short, rambled,
+began again. They were early, and the lights were only lighted here and
+there; women, and now and then a man, drifted up the center aisle.
+Boots cheeped unseen in the arches, sibilant whispers smote the
+silence, pew-doors creaked, and from far corners of the church violent
+coughing sounded with muffled reverberations. Mary Lou would have
+slipped into the very last pew, but Virginia led the way up--up--up--in
+the darkness, nearer and nearer the altar, with its winking red light,
+and genuflected before one of the very first pews. Susan followed her
+into it with a sigh of satisfaction; she liked to see and hear, and all
+the pews were open to-night. They knelt for awhile, then sat back,
+silent, reverential, but not praying, and interested in the arriving
+congregation.
+
+A young woman, seeing Virginia, came to whisper to her in a rasping
+aside. She "had St. Joseph" for Easter, she said, would Virginia help
+her "fix him"? Virginia nodded, she loved to assist those devout young
+women who decorated, with exquisite flowers and hundreds of candles,
+the various side altars of the church.
+
+There was a constant crisping of shoes in the aisle now, the pews were
+filling fast. "Lord, where do all these widows come from?" thought
+Susan. A "Brother," in a soutane, was going about from pillar to
+pillar, lighting the gas. Group after group of the pendent globes
+sprang into a soft, moony glow; the hanging glass prisms jingled
+softly. The altar-boys in red, without surplices, were moving about the
+altar now, lighting the candles. The great crucifix, the
+altar-paintings and the tall candle-sticks were swathed in purple
+cloth, there were no flowers to-night on the High Altar, but it
+twinkled with a thousand candles.
+
+The hour began to have its effect on Susan. She felt herself a little
+girl again, yielding to the spell of the devotion all about her; the
+clicking rosary-beads, the whispered audible prayers, the very
+odors,--odors of close-packed humanity,--that reached her were all a
+part of this old mood. A little woman fluttered up the aisle, and
+squeezed in beside her, panting like a frightened rabbit. Now there was
+not a seat to be seen, even the benches by the confessionals were full.
+
+And now the organ broke softly, miraculously, into enchanting and
+enveloping sound, that seemed to shake the church bodily with its great
+trembling touch, and from a door on the left of the altar the
+procession streamed,--altar-boys and altar-boys and altar-boys,
+followed through the altar-gate by the tall young priest who would "say
+the Stations." Other priests, a score of them, filled the altar-stalls;
+one, seated on the right between two boys, would presently preach.
+
+The procession halted somewhere over in the distant: arches, the organ
+thundered the "Stabat Mater." Susan could only see the candles and the
+boys, but the priest's voice was loud and clear. The congregation knelt
+and rose again, knelt and rose again, turned and swayed to follow the
+slow movement of the procession about the church.
+
+When priest and boys had returned to the altar, a wavering high soprano
+voice floated across the church in an intricate "Veni Creator." Susan
+and Mary Lou sat back in their seats, but Virginia knelt, wrapped in
+prayer, her face buried in her hands, her hat forcing the woman in
+front of her to sit well forward in her place.
+
+The pulpit was pushed across a little track laid in the altar
+enclosure, and the preacher mounted it, shook his lace cuffs into
+place, laid his book and notes to one side, and composedly studied his
+audience.
+
+"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,
+Amen. 'Ask and ye shall receive---'" suddenly the clear voice rang out.
+
+Susan lost the sermon. But she got the text, and pondered it with new
+interest. It was not new to her. She had "asked" all her life long; for
+patience, for truthfulness, for "final perseverance," for help for
+Virginia's eyes and Auntie's business and Alfie's intemperance, for the
+protection of this widow, the conversion of that friend, "the speedy
+recovery or happy death" of some person dangerously ill. Susan had
+never slipped into church at night with Mary Lou, without finding some
+special request to incorporate in her prayers.
+
+To-night, in the solemn pause of Benediction, she asked for Peter
+Coleman's love. Here was a temporal favor, indeed, indicating a lesser
+spiritual degree than utter resignation to the Divine Will. Susan was
+not sure of her right to ask it. But, standing to sing the "Laudate,"
+there came a sudden rush of confidence and hope to her heart. She was
+praying for this gift now, and that fact alone seemed to lift it above
+the level of ordinary, earthly desires. Not entirely unworthy was any
+hope that she could bring to this tribunal, and beg for on her knees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Two weeks later she and Peter Coleman had their evening at the Chutes,
+and a wonderful evening it was; then came a theater trip, and a Sunday
+afternoon that they spent in idly drifting about Golden Gate Park,
+enjoying the spring sunshine, and the holiday crowd, feeding the
+animals and eating peanuts. Susan bowed to Thorny and the faithful
+Wally on this last occasion and was teased by Thorny about Peter
+Coleman the next day, to her secret pleasure. She liked anything that
+made her friendship for Peter seem real, a thing noticed and accepted
+by others, not all the romantic fabric of her own unfounded dreams.
+
+Tangible proof of his affection there was indeed, to display to the
+eyes of her world. But it was for intangible proof that Susan's heart
+longed day after day. In spite of comment and of envy from the office,
+in spite of the flowers and messages and calls upon which Auntie and
+the girls were placing such flattering significance, Susan was far too
+honest with life not to realize that she had not even a thread by which
+to hold Peter Coleman, that he had not given an instant's thought, and
+did not wish to give an instant's thought to her, or to any woman, as a
+possible sweetheart and wife.
+
+She surprised him, she amused him, she was the company he liked best,
+easiest to entertain, most entertaining in turn, this she knew. He
+liked her raptures over pleasures that would only have bored the other
+girls he knew, he liked the ready nonsense that inspired answering
+nonsense in him, the occasional flashes of real wit, the inexhaustible
+originality of Susan's point-of-view. They had their own vocabulary,
+phrases remembered from plays, good and bad, that they had seen
+together, or overheard in the car; they laughed and laughed together at
+a thousand things that Susan could not remember when she was alone, or,
+remembering, found no longer amusing. This was all wonderful, but it
+was not love.
+
+But, perhaps, she consoled herself, courtship, in his class, was not
+the serious affair she had always known it to be in hers. Rich people
+took nothing very seriously, yet they married and made good husbands
+for all that. Susan would blame herself for daring to criticize, even
+in the tiniest particular, the great gift that the gods laid at her
+feet.
+
+One June day, when Susan felt rather ill, and was sitting huddled at
+her desk, with chilled feet and burning cheeks, she was sent for by old
+Mr. Baxter, and found Miss Emily Saunders in his office. The visitor
+was chatting with Peter and the old man, and gaily carried Susan off to
+luncheon, after Peter had regretted his inability to come too. They
+went to the Palace Hotel, and Susan thought everything, Miss Emily
+especially, very wonderful and delightful, and, warmed and sustained by
+a delicious lunch, congratulated herself all during the afternoon that
+she herself had risen to the demand of the occasion, had really been
+"funny" and "nice," had really "made good." She knew Emily had been
+amused and attracted, and suspected that she would hear from that
+fascinating young person again.
+
+A few weeks later a letter came from Miss Saunders asking Susan to
+lunch with the family, in their San Rafael home. Susan admired the
+handsome stationery, the monogram, the bold, dashing hand. Something in
+Mary Lou's and Georgianna's pleasure in this pleasure for her made her
+heart ache as she wrote her acceptance. She was far enough from the
+world of ease and beauty and luxury, but how much further were these
+sweet, uncomplaining, beauty-starved cousins of hers!
+
+Mary Lou went with her to the ferry, when the Sunday came, just for a
+ride on the hot day, and the two, being early, roamed happily over the
+great ferry building, watching German and Italian picnics form and file
+through the gateways, and late-comers rush madly up to the closing
+doors. Susan had been to church at seven o'clock, and had since washed
+her hair, and washed and pressed her best shirtwaist, but she felt
+fresh and gay.
+
+Presently, with a shout of pleasure that drew some attention to their
+group, Peter Coleman came up to them. It appeared that he was to be
+Miss Saunders' guest at luncheon, too, and he took charge of the
+radiant Susan with evident satisfaction, and much laughter.
+
+"Dear me! I wish I was going, too," said Mary Lou mildly, as they
+parted. "But I presume a certain young man is very glad I am not," she
+added, with deep finesse. Peter laughed out, but turned red, and Susan
+wished impatiently that Mary Lou would not feel these embarrassing
+inanities to be either welcome or in good taste.
+
+But no small cloud could long shadow the perfect day. The Saunders'
+home, set in emerald lawns, brightened by gay-striped awnings, fragrant
+with flowers indoors and out, was quite the most beautiful she had ever
+seen. Emily's family was all cordiality; the frail, nervous, richly
+dressed little mother made a visible effort to be gracious to this
+stranger, and Emily's big sister, Ella, in whom Susan recognized the
+very fat young woman of the Zinkand party, was won by Susan's
+irrepressible merriment to abandon her attitude of bored, good-natured
+silence, and entered into the conversation at luncheon with sudden
+zest. The party was completed by Mrs. Saunders' trained nurse, Miss
+Baker, a placid young woman who did not seem, to Susan, to appreciate
+her advantages in this wonderful place, and the son of the house,
+Kenneth, a silent, handsome, pale young man, who confined his remarks
+during luncheon to the single observation, made to Peter, that he was
+"on the wagon."
+
+The guest wondered what dinner would be, if this were luncheon merely.
+Everything was beautifully served, smoking hot or icy cold, garnished
+and seasoned miraculously. Subtle flavors contended with other flavors,
+whipped cream appeared in most unexpected places--on the bouillon, and
+in a rosette that topped the salad--of the hot bread and the various
+chutneys and jellies and spiced fruits and cheeses and olives alone,
+Susan could have made a most satisfactory meal. She delighted in the
+sparkling glass, the heavy linen and silver, the exquisite flowers.
+Together they seemed to form a lulling draught for her senses; Susan
+felt as if undue cold, undue heat, haste and worry and work, the office
+with its pencil-dust and ink-stains and her aunt's house, odorous,
+dreary and dark, were alike a half-forgotten dream.
+
+After luncheon they drove to a bright, wide tennis-court, set in
+glowing gardens, and here Susan was introduced to a score of noisy,
+white-clad young people, and established herself comfortably on a bench
+near the older women, to watch the games. This second social experience
+was far happier than her first, perhaps because Susan resolutely put
+her thoughts on something else than herself to-day, watched and
+laughed, talked when she could, was happily silent when she could not,
+and battled successfully with the thought of neglect whenever it raised
+its head. Bitter as her lesson had been she was grateful for it to-day.
+
+Peter, very lithe, very big, gloriously happy, played in one set, and,
+winning, came to throw himself on the grass at Susan's feet, panting
+and hot. This made Susan the very nucleus of the gathering group, the
+girls strolled up under their lazily twirling parasols, the men ranged
+themselves beside Peter on the lawn. Susan said very little; again she
+found the conversation a difficult one to enter, but to-day she did not
+care; it was a curious, and, as she was to learn later, a
+characteristic conversation, and she analyzed it lazily as she listened.
+
+There was a bright insincerity about everything they said, a languid
+assumption that nothing in the world was worth an instant's
+seriousness, whether it was life or death, tragedy or pathos. Susan had
+seen this before in Peter, she saw him in his element now. He laughed
+incessantly, as they all did. The conversation called for no particular
+effort; it consisted of one or two phrases repeated constantly, and
+with varying inflections, and interspersed by the most trivial and
+casual of statements. To-day the phrase, "Would a nice girl DO that?"
+seemed to have caught the general fancy. Susan also heard the verb to
+love curiously abused.
+
+"Look out, George--your racket!" some girl said vigorously.
+
+"Would a nice girl DO that? I nearly put your eye out, didn't I? I tell
+you all I'm a dangerous character," her neighbor answered laughingly.
+
+"Oh, I love that!" another girl's voice said, adding presently, "Look
+at Louise's coat. Don't you love it?"
+
+"I love it," said several voices. Another languidly added, "I'm crazy
+about it."
+
+"I'm crazy about it," said the wearer modestly, "Aunt Fanny sent it."
+
+"Can a nice girl DO that?" asked Peter, and there was a general shout.
+
+"But I'm crazy about your aunt," some girl asserted, "you know she told
+Mother that I was a perfect little lady--honestly she did! Don't you
+love that?"
+
+"Oh, I LOVE that," Emily Saunders said, as freshly as if coining the
+phrase. "I'm crazy about it!"
+
+"Don't you love it? You've got your aunt's number," they all said. And
+somebody added thoughtfully, "Can a nice girl DO that?"
+
+How sure of themselves they were, how unembarrassed and how marvelously
+poised, thought Susan. How casually these fortunate young women could
+ask what friends they pleased to dinner, could plan for to-day,
+to-morrow, for all the days that were! Nothing to prevent them from
+going where they wanted to go, buying what they fancied, doing as they
+pleased! Susan felt that an impassable barrier stood between their
+lives and hers.
+
+Late in the afternoon Miss Ella, driving in with a gray-haired young
+man in a very smart trap, paid a visit to the tennis court, and was
+rapturously hailed. She was evidently a great favorite.
+
+"See here, Miss Brown," she called out, after a few moments, noticing
+Susan, "don't you want to come for a little spin with me?"
+
+"Very much," Susan said, a little shyly.
+
+"Get down, Jerry," Miss Saunders said, giving her companion a little
+shove with her elbow.
+
+"Look here, who you pushing?" demanded the gray-haired young man,
+without venom.
+
+"I'm pushing you."
+
+"'It's habit. I keep right on loving her!'" quoted Mr. Phillips to the
+bystanders. But he got lazily down, and Susan got up, and they were
+presently spinning away into the quiet of the lovely, warm summer
+afternoon.
+
+Miss Saunders talked rapidly, constantly, and well. Susan was amused
+and interested, and took pains to show it. In great harmony they spent
+perhaps an hour in driving, and were homeward bound when they
+encountered two loaded buckboards, the first of which was driven by
+Peter Coleman.
+
+Miss Saunders stopped the second, to question her sister, who, held on
+the laps of a girl and young man on the front seat, was evidently in
+wild spirits.
+
+"We're only going up to Cameroncourt!" Miss Emily shouted cheerfully.
+"Keep Miss Brown to dinner! Miss Brown, I'll never speak to you again
+if you don't stay!" And Susan heard a jovial echo of "Can a nice girl
+DO that?" as they drove away.
+
+"A noisy, rotten crowd," said Miss Saunders. "Mamma hates Emily to go
+with them, and what my cousins--the Bridges and the Eastenbys of
+Maryland are our cousins, I've just been visiting them--would say to a
+crowd like that I hate to think! That's why I wanted Emily to come out
+in Washington. You know we really have no connections here, and no old
+friends. My uncle, General Botheby Hargrove, has a widowed daughter
+living with him in Baltimore, Mrs. Stephen Kay, she is now,--well, I
+suppose she's really in the most exclusive little set you could find
+anywhere--"
+
+Susan listened interestedly. But when they were home again, and Ella
+was dressing for some dinner party, she very firmly declined the old
+lady's eager invitation to remain. She was a little more touched by
+Emily's rudeness than she would admit, a little afraid to trust herself
+any further to so uncertain a hostess.
+
+She went soberly home, in the summer twilight, soothed in spite of
+herself by the beauty of the quiet bay, and pondering deeply. Had she
+deserved this slight in any way? she wondered. Should she have come
+away directly after luncheon? No, for they had asked her, with great
+warmth, for dinner! Was it something that she should, in all dignity,
+resent? Should Peter be treated a little coolly; Emily's next overture
+declined?
+
+She decided against any display of resentment. It was only the strange
+way of these people, no claim of courtesy was strong enough to offset
+the counter-claim of any random desire. They were too used to taking
+what they wanted, to forgetting what it was not entirely convenient to
+remember. They would think it absurd, even delightfully amusing in her,
+to show the least feeling.
+
+Arriving late, she gave her cousins a glowing account of the day, and
+laughed with Georgie over the account of a call from Loretta's Doctor
+O'Connor. "Loretta's beau having the nerve to call on me!" Georgie
+said, with great amusement.
+
+Almost hourly, in these days when she saw him constantly, Susan tried
+to convince herself that her heart was not quite committed yet to Peter
+Coleman's keeping. But always without success. The big, sweet-tempered,
+laughing fellow, with his generosity, his wealth, his position, had
+become all her world, or rather he had become the reigning personage in
+that other world at whose doorway Susan stood, longing and enraptured.
+
+A year ago, at the prospect of seeing him so often, of feeling so sure
+of his admiration and affection, of calling him "Peter," Susan would
+have felt herself only too fortunate. But these privileges, fully
+realized now, brought her more pain than joy. A restless unhappiness
+clouded their gay times together, and when she was alone Susan spent
+troubled hours in analysis of his tones, his looks, his words. If a
+chance careless phrase of his seemed to indicate a deepening of the
+feeling between them, Susan hugged that phrase to her heart. If Peter,
+on the other hand, eagerly sketched to her plans for a future that had
+no place for her, Susan drooped, and lay wakeful and heartsick long
+into the night. She cared for him truly and deeply, although she never
+said so, even to herself, and she longed with all her ardent young soul
+for the place in the world that awaited his wife. Susan knew that she
+could fill it, that he would never be anything but proud of her; she
+only awaited the word--less than a word!--that should give her the
+right to enter into her kingdom.
+
+By all the conventions of her world these thoughts should not have come
+to her until Peter's attitude was absolutely ascertained. But Susan was
+honest with herself; she must have been curiously lacking in human
+tenderness, indeed, NOT to have yielded her affection to so joyous and
+so winning a claimant.
+
+As the weeks went by she understood his ideals and those of his
+associates more and more clearly, and if Peter lost something of his
+old quality as a god, by the analysis, Susan loved him all the more for
+finding him not quite perfect. She knew that he was young, that his
+head was perhaps a little turned by sudden wealth and popularity, that
+life was sweet to him just as it was; he was not ready yet for
+responsibilities and bonds. He thought Miss Susan Brown was the
+"bulliest" girl he knew, loved to give her good times and resented the
+mere mention of any other man's admiration for her. Of what could she
+complain?
+
+Of course--Susan could imagine him as disposing of the thought
+comfortably--she DIDN'T complain. She took things just as he wanted her
+to, had a glorious time whenever she was with him, and was just as
+happy doing other things when he wasn't about. Peter went for a month
+to Tahoe this summer, and wrote Susan that there wasn't a fellow at the
+hotel that was half as much fun as she was. He told her that if she
+didn't immediately answer that she missed him like Hannibal he would
+jump into the lake.
+
+Susan pondered over the letter. How answer it most effectively? If she
+admitted that she really did miss him terribly--but Susan was afraid of
+the statement, in cold black-and-white. Suppose that she hinted at
+herself as consoled by some newer admirer? The admirer did not exist,
+but Peter would not know that. She discarded this subterfuge as "cheap."
+
+But how did other girls manage it? The papers were full of engagements,
+men WERE proposing matrimony, girls WERE announcing themselves as
+promised, in all happy certainty. Susan decided that, when Peter came
+home, she would allow their friendship to proceed just a little further
+and then suddenly discourage every overture, refuse invitations, and
+generally make herself as unpleasant as possible, on the ground that
+Auntie "didn't like it." This would do one of two things, either stop
+their friendship off short,--it wouldn't do that, she was happily
+confident,--or commence things upon a new and more definite basis.
+
+But when Peter came back he dragged his little aunt all the way up to
+Mr. Brauer's office especially to ask Miss Brown if she would dine with
+them informally that very evening. This was definite enough! Susan
+accepted and planned a flying trip home for a fresh shirtwaist at five
+o'clock. But at five a troublesome bill delayed her, and Susan,
+resisting an impulse to shut it into a desk drawer and run away from
+it, settled down soberly to master it. She was conscious, as she shook
+hands with her hostess two hours later, of soiled cuffs, but old Mr.
+Baxter, hearing her apologies, brought her downstairs a beautifully
+embroidered Turkish robe, in dull pinks and blues, and Susan, feeling
+that virtue sometimes was rewarded, had the satisfaction of knowing
+that she looked like a pretty gipsy during the whole evening, and was
+immensely gratifying her old host as well. To Peter, it was just a
+quiet, happy evening at home, with the pianola and flashlight
+photographs, and a rarebit that wouldn't grow creamy in spite of his
+and Susan's combined efforts. But to Susan it was a glimpse of Paradise.
+
+"Peter loves to have his girl friends dine here," smiled old Mrs.
+Baxter in parting. "You must come again. He has company two or three
+times a week." Susan smiled in response, but the little speech was the
+one blot on a happy evening.
+
+Every happy time seemed to have its one blot. Susan would have her
+hour, would try to keep the tenderness out of her "When do I see you
+again, Peter?" to be met by his cheerful "Well, I don't know. I'm going
+up to the Yellands' for a week, you know. Do you know Clare Yelland?
+She's the dandiest girl you ever saw--nineteen, and a raving beauty!"
+Or, wearing one of Peter's roses on her black office-dress, she would
+have to smile through Thorny's interested speculations as to his
+friendship for this society girl or that. "The Chronicle said yesterday
+that he was supposed to be terribly crushed on that Washington girl,"
+Thorny would report. "Of course, no names, but you could tell who they
+meant!"
+
+Susan began to talk of going away "to work."
+
+"Lord, aren't you working now?" asked William Oliver in healthy scorn.
+
+"Not working as hard as I could!" Susan said. "I can't--can't seem to
+get interested--" Tears thickened her voice, she stopped short.
+
+The two were sitting on the upper step of the second flight of stairs
+in the late evening, just outside the door of the room where Alfred
+Lancaster was tossing and moaning in the grip of a heavy cold and
+fever. Alfred had lost his position, had been drinking again, and now
+had come home to his mother for the fiftieth time to be nursed and
+consoled. Mrs. Lancaster, her good face all mother-love and pity, sat
+at his side. Mary Lou wept steadily and unobtrusively. Susan and Billy
+were waiting for the doctor.
+
+"No," the girl resumed thoughtfully, after a pause, "I feel as if I'd
+gotten all twisted up and I want to go away somewhere and get started
+fresh. I could work like a slave, Bill, in a great clean institution,
+or a newspaper office, or as an actress. But I can't seem to straighten
+things out here. This isn't MY house, I didn't have anything to do with
+the making of it, and I can't feel interested in it. I'd rather do
+things wrong, but do them MY way!"
+
+"It seems to me you're getting industrious all of a sudden, Sue."
+
+"No." She hardly understood herself. "But I want to GET somewhere in
+this life, Bill," she mused. "I don't want to sit back and wait for
+things to come to me. I want to go to them. I want some alternative. So
+that--" her voice sank, "so that, if marriage doesn't come, I can say
+to myself, 'Never mind, I've got my work!'"
+
+"Just as a man would," he submitted thoughtfully.
+
+"Just as a man would," she echoed, eager for his sympathy.
+
+"Well, that's Mrs. Carroll's idea. She says that very often, when a
+girl thinks she wants to get married, what she really wants is
+financial independence and pretty clothes and an interest in life."
+
+"I think that's perfectly true," Susan said, struck. "Isn't she wise?"
+she added.
+
+"Yes, she's a wonder! Wise and strong,--she's doing too much now,
+though. How long since you've been over there, Sue?"
+
+"Oh, ages! I'm ashamed to say. Months. I write to Anna now and then,
+but somehow, on Sundays--"
+
+She did not finish, but his thoughts supplied the reason. Susan was
+always at home on Sundays now, unless she went out with Peter Coleman.
+
+"You ought to take Coleman over there some day, Sue, they used to know
+him when he was a kid. Let's all go over some Sunday."
+
+"That would be fun!" But he knew she did not mean it. The atmosphere of
+the Carrolls' home, their poverty, their hard work, their gallant
+endurance of privation and restriction were not in accord with Susan's
+present mood. "How are all of them?" she presently asked, after an
+interval, in which Alfie's moaning and the hoarse deep voice of Mary
+Lord upstairs had been the only sounds.
+
+"Pretty good. Joe's working now, the little darling!"
+
+"Joe is! What at?"
+
+"She's in an architect's office, Huxley and Huxley. It's a pretty good
+job, I guess."
+
+"But, Billy, doesn't that seem terrible? Joe's so beautiful, and when
+you think how rich their grandfather was! And who's home?"
+
+"Well, Anna gets home from the hospital every other week, and Phil
+comes home with Joe, of course. Jim's still in school, and Betsey helps
+with housework. Betsey has a little job, too. She teaches an infant
+class at that little private school over there."
+
+"Billy, don't those people have a hard time! Is Phil behaving?"
+
+"Better than he did. Yes, I guess he's pretty good now. But there are
+all Jim's typhoid bills to pay. Mrs. Carroll worries a good deal.
+Anna's an angel about everything, but of course Betts is only a kid,
+and she gets awfully mad."
+
+"And Josephine," Susan smiled. "How's she?"
+
+"Honestly, Sue," Mr. Oliver's face assumed the engaging expression
+reserved only for his love affairs, "she is the dearest little darling
+ever! She followed me out to the porch on Sunday, and said 'Don't catch
+cold, and die before your time,'--the little cutie!"
+
+"Oh, Bill, you imbecile! There's nothing to THAT," Susan laughed out
+gaily.
+
+"Aw, well," he began affrontedly, "it was the little way she said it--"
+
+"Sh-sh!" said Mary Lou, white faced, heavy-eyed, at Alfred's door.
+"He's just dropped off... The doctor just came up the steps, Bill, will
+you go down and ask him to come right up? Why don't you go to bed, Sue?"
+
+"How long are you going to wait?" asked Susan.
+
+"Oh, just until after the doctor goes, I guess," Mary Lou sighed.
+
+"Well, then I'll wait for you. I'll run up and see Mary Lord a few
+minutes. You stop in for me when you're ready."
+
+And Susan, blowing her cousin an airy kiss, ran noiselessly up the last
+flight of stairs, and rapped on the door of the big upper front bedroom.
+
+This room had been Mary Lord's world for ten long years. The invalid
+was on a couch just opposite the door, and looked up as Susan entered.
+Her dark, rather heavy face brightened instantly.
+
+"Sue! I was afraid it was poor Mrs. Parker ready to weep about
+Loretta," she said eagerly. "Come in, you nice child! Tell me something
+cheerful!"
+
+"Raw ginger is a drug on the market," said Susan gaily. "Here, I
+brought you some roses."
+
+"And I have eleven guesses who sent them," laughed Miss Lord, drinking
+in the sweetness and beauty of the great pink blossoms hungrily.
+"When'd they come?"
+
+"Just before dinner!" Susan told her. Turning to the invalid's sister
+she said: "Miss Lydia, you're busy, and I'm disturbing you."
+
+"I wish you'd disturb us a little oftener, then," said Lydia Lord,
+affectionately. "I can work all the better for knowing that Mary isn't
+dying to interrupt me."
+
+The older sister, seated at a little table under the gaslight, was deep
+in work.
+
+"She's been doing that every night this week," said Miss Mary angrily,
+"as if she didn't have enough to do!"
+
+"What is it?" asked Susan. Miss Lydia threw down her pen, and stretched
+her cramped fingers.
+
+"Why, Mrs. Lawrence's sister is going to be married," she explained,
+"and the family wants an alphabetic list of friends to send the
+announcements to. This is the old list, and this the new one, and
+here's his list, and some names her mother jotted down,--they're all to
+be put in order. It's quite a job."
+
+"At double pay, of course," Miss Mary said bitterly.
+
+"I should hope so," Susan added.
+
+Miss Lydia merely smiled humorously, benevolently, over her work.
+
+"All in the day's work, Susan."
+
+"All in your grandmother's foot," Susan said, inelegantly. Miss Lydia
+laughed a little reproachfully, but the invalid's rare, hearty laugh
+would have atoned to her for a far more irreverent remark.
+
+"And no 'Halma'?" Susan said, suddenly. For the invalid lived for her
+game, every night. "Why didn't you tell me. I could have come up every
+night--" She got out the board, set up the men, shook Mary's pillows
+and pushed them behind the aching back. "Come on, Macduff," said she.
+
+"Oh, Susan, you angel!" Mary Lord settled herself for an hour of the
+keenest pleasure she ever knew. She reared herself in her pillows, her
+lanky yellow hand hovered over the board, she had no eyes for anything
+but the absurd little red and yellow men.
+
+She was a bony woman, perhaps forty-five, with hair cut across her
+lined forehead in the deep bang that had been popular in her girlhood.
+It was graying now, as were the untidy loops of hair above it, her face
+was yellow, furrowed, and the long neck that disappeared into her
+little flannel bed-sack was lined and yellowed too. She lay, restlessly
+and incessantly shifting herself, in a welter of slipping quilts and
+loose blankets, with her shoulders propped by fancy pillows,--some made
+of cigar-ribbons, one of braided strips of black and red satin, one in
+a shield of rough, coarse knotted lace, and one with a little boy
+printed in color upon it, a boy whose trousers were finished with real
+tin buttons. Mary Lord was always the first person Susan thought of
+when the girls in the office argued, ignorantly and vigorously, for or
+against the law of compensation. Here, in this stuffy boarding-house
+room, the impatient, restless spirit must remain, chained and tortured
+day after day and year after year, her only contact with the outer
+world brought by the little private governess,--her sister--who was
+often so tired and so dispirited when she reached home, that even her
+gallant efforts could not hide her depression from the keen eyes of the
+sick woman. Lydia taught the three small children of one of the city's
+richest women, and she and Mary were happy or were despondent in exact
+accord with young Mrs. Lawrence's mood. If the great lady were
+ungracious, were cold, or dissatisfied, Lydia trembled, for the little
+sum she earned by teaching was more than two-thirds of all that she and
+Mary had. If Mrs. Lawrence were in a happier frame of mind, Lydia
+brightened, and gratefully accepted the occasional flowers or candy,
+that meant to both sisters so much more than mere carnations or mere
+chocolates.
+
+But if Lydia's life was limited, what of Mary, whose brain was so
+active that merely to read of great and successful deeds tortured her
+like a pain? Just to have a little share of the world's work, just to
+dig and water the tiniest garden, just to be able to fill a glass for
+herself with water, or to make a pudding, or to wash up the breakfast
+dishes, would have been to her the most exquisite delight in the world.
+
+As it was she lay still, reading, sometimes writing a letter, or
+copying something for Lydia, always eager for a game of "Halma" or
+"Parchesi," a greater part of the time out of pain, and for a certain
+part of the twenty-four hours tortured by the slow-creeping agonies
+that waited for her like beasts in the darkness of every night.
+Sometimes Susan, rousing from the deep delicious sleep that always
+befriended her, would hear in the early morning, rarely earlier than
+two o'clock or later than four, the hoarse call in the front room,
+"Lyddie! Lyddie!" and the sleepy answer and stumbling feet of the
+younger sister, as she ran for the merciful pill that would send Miss
+Mary, spent with long endurance, into deep and heavenly sleep. Susan
+had two or three times seen the cruel trial of courage that went before
+the pill, the racked and twisting body, the bitten lip, the tortured
+eyes on the clock.
+
+Twice or three times a year Miss Mary had very bad times, and had to
+see her doctor. Perhaps four times a month Miss Lydia beamed at Susan
+across the breakfast table, "No pill last night!" These were the
+variations of the invalid's life.
+
+Susan, while Mary considered her moves to-night, studied the room idly,
+the thousand crowded, useless little possessions so dear to the sick;
+the china statuettes, the picture post-cards, the photographs and
+match-boxes and old calendars, the dried "whispering-grass" and the
+penwipers. Her eyes reached an old photograph; Susan knew it by heart.
+It represented an old-fashioned mansion, set in a sweeping lawn, shaded
+by great trees. Before one wing an open barouche stood, with driver and
+lackey on the box, and behind the carriage a group of perhaps ten or a
+dozen colored girls and men were standing on the steps, in the
+black-and-white of house servants. On the wide main steps of the house
+were a group of people, ladies in spreading ruffled skirts, a bearded,
+magnificent old man, young men with heavy mustaches of the sixties, and
+some small children in stiff white. Susan knew that the heavy big baby
+on a lady's lap was Lydia, and that among the children Mary was to be
+found, with her hair pushed straight back under a round-comb, and
+scallops on the top of her high black boots. The old man was her
+grandfather, and the house the ancestral home of the Lords... Whose
+fault was it that just a little of that ease had not been safely
+guarded for these two lonely women, Susan wondered. What WAS the secret
+of living honestly, with the past, with the present, with those who
+were to come?
+
+"Your play. Wake up. Sue!" laughed Mary. "I have you now, I can yard in
+seven moves!"
+
+"No skill to that," said Susan hardily, "just sheer luck!"
+
+"Oh you wicked story-teller!" Mary laughed delightedly, and they set
+the men for another game.
+
+"No, but you're really the lucky one, Sue," said the older woman
+presently.
+
+"_I_ lucky!" and Susan laughed as she moved her man.
+
+"Well, don't you think you are?"
+
+"I think I'm darned unlucky!" the girl declared seriously.
+
+"Here--here! Descriptive adjectives!" called Lydia, but the others paid
+no heed.
+
+"Sue, how can you say so!"
+
+"Well, I admit, Miss Mary," Susan said with pretty gravity, "that God
+hasn't sent me what he has sent you to bear, for some inscrutable
+reason,--I'd go mad if He had! But I'm poor--"
+
+"Now, look here," Mary said authoritatively. "You're young, aren't you?
+And you're good-looking, aren't you?"
+
+"Don't mince matters, Miss Mary. Say beautiful," giggled Susan.
+
+"I'm in earnest. You're the youngest and prettiest woman in this house.
+You have a good position, and good health, and no encumbrances--"
+
+"I have a husband and three children in the Mission, Miss Mary. I never
+mentioned them--"
+
+"Oh, behave yourself, Sue! Well! And, more than that, you have--we
+won't mention one special friend, because I don't want to make you
+blush, but at least a dozen good friends among the very richest people
+of society. You go to lunch with Miss Emily Saunders, and to Burlingame
+with Miss Ella Saunders, you get all sorts of handsome presents--isn't
+this all true?"
+
+"Absolutely," said Susan so seriously, so sadly, that the invalid laid
+a bony cold one over the smooth brown one arrested on the "Halma" board.
+
+"Why, I wasn't scolding you, dearie!" she said kindly. "I just wanted
+you to appreciate your blessings!"
+
+"I know--I know," Susan answered, smiling with an effort. She went to
+bed a little while later profoundly depressed.
+
+It was all true, it was all true! But, now that she had it, it seemed
+so little! She was beginning to be popular in the Saunders set,--her
+unspoiled freshness appealed to more than one new friend, as it had
+appealed to Peter Coleman and to Emily and Ella Saunders. She was
+carried off for Saturday matinees, she was in demand for one Sunday
+after another. She was always gay, always talkative, she had her value,
+as she herself was beginning to perceive. And, although she met very
+few society men, just now, being called upon to amuse feminine
+luncheons or stay overnight with Emily when nobody else was at home,
+still her social progress seemed miraculously swift to Thorny, to Billy
+and Georgie and Virginia, even sometimes to herself. But she wanted
+more--more--more! She wanted to be one of this group herself, to
+patronize instead of accepting patronage.
+
+Slowly her whole nature changed to meet this new hope. She made use of
+every hour now, discarded certain questionable expressions, read good
+books, struggled gallantly with her natural inclination to
+procrastinate. Her speech improved, the tones of her voice, her
+carriage, she wore quiet colors how, and became fastidious in the
+matter of belts and cuffs, buttons and collars and corsets. She
+diverted Mary Lou by faithfully practicing certain beautifying
+calisthenics at night.
+
+Susan was not deceived by the glittering, prismatic thing known as
+Society. She knew that Peter Coleman's and Emily Saunders' reverence
+for it was quite the weakest thing in their respective characters. She
+knew that Ella's boasted family was no better than her own, and that
+Peter's undeniable egoism was the natural result of Peter's
+up-bringing, and that Emily's bright unselfish interest in her,
+whatever it had now become, had commenced with Emily's simple desire to
+know Peter through Susan, and have an excuse to come frequently to
+Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's when Peter was there.
+
+Still, she could not divest these three of the old glory of her first
+impressions. She liked Emily and Ella none the less because she
+understood them better, and felt that, if Peter had his human
+weaknesses, he was all the nearer her for that.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster would not allow her to dine down-town with him alone.
+Susan laughed at the idea that she could possibly do anything
+questionable, but kept the rule faithfully, and, if she went to the
+theater alone with Peter, never let him take her to supper afterward.
+But they had many a happy tea-hour together, and on Sundays lunched in
+Sausalito, roamed over the lovely country roads, perhaps stopped for
+tea at the Carrolls', or came back to the city and had it at the quiet
+Palace. Twice Peter was asked to dine at Mrs. Lancaster's, but on the
+first occasion he and Susan were begged by old Mrs. Baxter to come and
+amuse her loneliness instead, and on the second Susan telephoned at the
+last moment to say that Alfie was at home and that Auntie wanted to ask
+Peter to come some other time.
+
+Alfie was at home for a dreadful week, during which the devoted women
+suffered agonies of shame and terror. After that he secured, in the
+miraculous way that Alfie always did secure, another position and went
+away again.
+
+"I can stand Alfie," said Susan to Billy in strong disgust. "But it
+does make me sick to have Auntie blaming his employers for firing him,
+and calling him a dear unfortunate boy! She said to me to-day that the
+other clerks were always jealous of Alfie, and tried to lead him
+astray! Did you ever hear such blindness!"
+
+"She's always talked that way," Billy answered, surprised at her
+vehemence. "You used to talk that way yourself. You're the one that has
+changed."
+
+Winter came on rapidly. The mornings were dark and cold now when Susan
+dressed, the office did not grow comfortably warm until ten o'clock,
+and the girls wore their coats loose across their shoulders as they
+worked.
+
+Sometimes at noon Miss Thornton and Susan fared forth into the cold,
+sunny streets, and spent the last half of the lunch-hour in a brisk
+walk. They went into the high-vaulted old Post Street Library for
+books, threaded their way along Kearney Street, where the noontide
+crowd was gaily ebbing and flowing, and loitered at the Flower Market,
+at Lotta's Fountain, drinking in the glory of violets and daffodils,
+under the winter sun. Now and then they lunched uptown at some
+inexpensive restaurant that was still quiet and refined. The big hotels
+were far too costly but there were several pretty lunchrooms, "The Bird
+of Paradise," "The London Tearoom," and, most popular of all, "The
+Ladies Exchange."
+
+The girls always divided a twenty-five-cent entree between them, and
+each selected a ten-cent dessert, leaving a tip for the waitress out of
+their stipulated half-dollar. It was among the unwritten laws that the
+meal must appear to more than satisfy both.
+
+"Thorny, you've got to have the rest of this rice!" Susan would urge,
+gathering the slender remains of "Curried chicken family style" in her
+serving spoon.
+
+"Honestly, Susan, I couldn't! I've got more than I want here," was the
+orthodox response.
+
+"It'll simply go to waste here," Susan always said, but somehow it
+never did. The girls loitered over these meals, watching the other
+tables, and the women who came to the counters to buy embroidered
+baby-sacques, and home-made cakes and jellies.
+
+"Wouldn't you honestly like another piece of plum pie, Sue?" Thorny
+would ask.
+
+"I? Oh, I couldn't! But YOU have one, Thorny--"
+
+"I simply couldn't!" So it was time to ask for the check.
+
+They were better satisfied, if less elegantly surrounded, when they
+went to one of the downtown markets, and had fried oysters for lunch.
+Susan loved the big, echoing places, cool on the hottest day, never too
+cold, lined with long rows of dangling, picked fowls, bright with boxes
+of apples and oranges. The air was pleasantly odorous of cheeses and
+cooked meats, cocks crowed unseen in crates and cages, bare-headed boys
+pushed loaded trucks through the narrow aisles. Susan and Miss Thornton
+would climb a short flight of whitewashed stairs to a little lunch-room
+over one of the oyster stalls. Here they could sit at a small table,
+and look down at the market, the shoppers coming and going, stout
+matrons sampling sausages and cheeses, and Chinese cooks, bareheaded,
+bare-ankled, dressed in dark blue duck, selecting broilers and roasts.
+
+Their tablecloth here was coarse, but clean, and a generous management
+supplied several sauces, a thick china bowl of crackers, a plate heaped
+with bread, salty yellow butter, and saucers of boiled shrimps with
+which guests might occupy themselves until the arrival of the oysters.
+Presently the main dish arrived, some forty small, brown, buttery
+oysters on each smoking hot plate. No pretense was necessary at this
+meal, there was enough, and more than enough. Susan's cheeks would burn
+rosily all afternoon. She and Thorny departing never tailed to remark,
+"How can they do it for twenty-five cents?" and sometimes spent the
+walk back to the office in a careful calculation of exactly what the
+meal had cost the proprietor.
+
+"Did he send you a Christmas present?" asked Thorny one January day,
+when an irregular bill had brought her to Susan's desk.
+
+"Who? Oh, Mr. Coleman?" Susan looked up innocently. "Yes, yes indeed he
+did. A lovely silver bureau set. Auntie was in two minds about letting
+me keep it." She studied the bill. "Well, that's the regular H. B. & H.
+Talcum Powder," she said, "only he's made them a price on a dozen
+gross. Send it back, and have Mr. Phil O. K. it!"
+
+"A silver set! You lucky kid! How many pieces?"
+
+"Oh, everything. Even toilet-water bottles, and a hatpin holder.
+Gorgeous." Susan wrote "Mr. P. Hunter will please O. K." in the margin
+against the questioned sale.
+
+"You take it pretty coolly, Sue," Miss Thornton said, curiously.
+
+"It's cool weather, Thorny dear." Susan smiled, locked her firm young
+hands idly on her ledger, eyed Miss Thornton honestly. "How should I
+take it?" said she.
+
+The silver set had filled all Mrs. Lancaster's house with awed
+admiration on Christmas Day, but Susan could not forget that Peter had
+been out of town on both holidays, and that she had gained her only
+knowledge of his whereabouts from the newspapers. A handsome present
+had been more than enough to satisfy her wildest dreams, the year
+before. It was not enough now.
+
+"S'listen, Susan. You're engaged to him?"
+
+"Honestly,--cross my heart!--I'm not."
+
+"But you will be when he asks you?"
+
+"Thorny, aren't you awful!" Susan laughed; colored brilliantly.
+
+"Well, WOULDN'T you?" the other persisted.
+
+"I don't suppose one thinks of those things until they actually
+happen," Susan said slowly, wrinkling a thoughtful forehead. Thorny
+watched her for a moment with keen interest, then her own face softened
+suddenly.
+
+"No, of course you don't!" she agreed kindly. "Do you mind my asking,
+Sue?"
+
+"No-o-o!" Susan reassured her. As a matter of fact, she was glad when
+any casual onlooker confirmed her own secret hopes as to the
+seriousness of Peter Coleman's intention.
+
+Peter took her to church on Easter Sunday, and afterward they went to
+lunch with his uncle and aunt, spent a delightful rainy afternoon with
+books and the piano, and, in the casual way that only wealth makes
+possible, were taken downtown to dinner by old Mr. Baxter at six
+o'clock. Taking her home at nine o' clock, Peter told her that he was
+planning a short visit to Honolulu with the Harvey Brocks. "Gee, I wish
+you were going along!" he said.
+
+"Wouldn't it be fun!" Susan agreed.
+
+"Well, say! Mrs. Brock would love it--" he began eagerly.
+
+"Oh, Peter, don't talk nonsense!" Susan felt, at a moment like this,
+that she actually disliked him.
+
+"I suppose it couldn't be worked," he said sadly. And no more of it was
+said.
+
+He came into the office but once that week. Late in a summer-like
+afternoon Susan looked down at Mr. Baxter's office to see Peter
+spreading his steamer tickets on the desk. He looked up and laughed at
+her, and later ran up to the deck for a few minutes to say good-bye.
+They said it laughingly, among the hot-water bags and surgical
+accessories, but when Susan went back to her desk the laughter had died
+from her eyes.
+
+It was an unseasonably warm spring day, she was wearing the first
+shirtwaist of the year, and had come downtown that morning through the
+fresh early air on the dummy-front. It was hard to-day to be shut up in
+a stuffy office. Outside, the watercarts were making the season's first
+trip along Front Street and pedestrians chose the shady side to-day.
+Susan thought of the big Oriental liner, the awnings that shaded the
+decks, the exquisitely cool and orderly little cabins, the green water
+rushing alongside. And for her the languorous bright afternoon had lost
+its charm.
+
+She did not see Peter Coleman again for a long time. Summer came, and
+Susan went on quiet little Sunday picnics to the beach with Auntie and
+Mary Lou, or stayed at home and pressed her collars and washed her
+hair. Once or twice she and Billy went over to the Carrolls' Sausalito
+home, to spend a happy, quiet week-end. Susan gossiped with the busy,
+cheerful mother over the dish-pan, played "Parchesi" with
+fifteen-year-old Jim and seventeen-year-old Betsey, reveled in a
+confidential, sisterly attitude with handsome Phil, the oldest of the
+half-dozen, and lay awake deep into the warm nights to talk, and talk,
+and talk with Josephine, who, at her own age, seemed to Susan a much
+finer, stronger and more developed character. If Anna, the lovely
+serious oldest daughter, happened to be at home on one of her rare
+absences from the training-hospital, Susan became her shadow. She loved
+few people in the world as she loved Anna Carroll. But, in a lesser
+degree, she loved them all, and found these hours in the shabby, frugal
+little home among the very happiest of a lonely summer.
+
+About once a month she was carried off by the Saunders, in whose
+perfectly appointed guest-room she was by this time quite at home. The
+Fourth of July fell on a Friday this year, and Mr. Brauer, of his own
+volition, offered Susan the following day as a holiday, too. So that
+Susan, with a heart as light as sunshine itself, was free to go with
+Ella Saunders for a memorable visit to Del Monte and Santa Cruz.
+
+It was one of the perfect experiences only possible to youth and
+irresponsibility. They swam, they went for the Seventeen-Mile Drive,
+they rode horseback. Ella knew every inch of the great hotels, even
+some of the waiters and housekeepers. She had the best rooms, she saw
+that Susan missed nothing. They dressed for dinner, loitered about
+among the roses in the long twilight, and Susan met a young Englishman
+who later wrote her three letters on his way home to Oxfordshire.
+Ella's exquisite gowns had a chapter all to themselves when Susan was
+telling her cousins about it, but Susan herself alternated contentedly
+enough between the brown linen with the daisy-hat and the black net
+with the pearl band in her hair. Miss Saunders' compliments, her
+confidences, half-intoxicated the girl.
+
+It was with a little effort that she came back to sober every-day
+living. She gave a whole evening to Mary Lord, in her eagerness to
+share her pleasure. The sick woman was not interested in gowns, but she
+went fairly wild when Susan spoke of Monterey,--the riotous gardens
+with their walls of white plaster topped with red pipe, the gulls
+wheeling over the little town, the breakers creaming in lazy,
+interlocking curves on the crescent of the beach, and the little old
+plaster church, with its hundred-year-old red altar-cloth, and its
+altar-step worn into grooves from the knees of the faithful.
+
+"Oh, I must see the sea again!" cried Mary.
+
+"Well, don't talk that way! You will," Lydia said cheerfully. But
+Susan, seeing the shadow on the kind, plain face, wished that she had
+held her tongue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+It was late in July that Georgianna Lancaster startled and shocked the
+whole boarding-house out of its mid-summer calm. Susan, chronically
+affected by a wish that "something would happen," had been somewhat
+sobered by the fact that in poor Virginia's case something HAD
+happened. Suddenly Virginia's sight, accepted for years by them all as
+"bad," was very bad indeed. The great eye-doctor was angry that it had
+not been attended to before. "But it wasn't like this before!" Virginia
+protested patiently. She was always very patient after that, so brave
+indeed that the terrible thing that was coming swiftly and inevitably
+down upon her seemed quite impossible for the others to credit. But
+sometimes Susan heard her voice and Mrs. Lancaster's voice rising and
+falling for long, long talks in the night. "I don't believe it!" said
+Susan boldly, finding this attitude the most tenable in regard to
+Virginia's blindness.
+
+Georgie's news, if startling, was not all bad. "Perhaps it'll raise the
+hoodoo from all of us old maids!" said Susan, inelegantly, to Mr.
+Oliver. "O'Connor doesn't look as if he had sense enough to raise
+anything, even the rent!" answered Billy cheerfully.
+
+Susan heard the first of it on a windy, gritty Saturday afternoon, when
+she was glad to get indoors, and to take off the hat that had been
+wrenching her hair about. She came running upstairs to find Virginia
+lying limp upon the big bed, and Mary Lou, red-eyed and pale, sitting
+in the rocking-chair.
+
+"Come in, dear, and shut it," said Mary Lou, sighing. "Sit down, Sue."
+
+"What is it?" said Susan uneasily.
+
+"Oh, Sue---!" began Virginia, and burst into tears.
+
+"Now, now, darling!" Mary Lou patted her sister's hand.
+
+"Auntie--" Susan asked, turning pale.
+
+"No, Ma's all right," Mary Lou reassured her, "and there's nothing
+really wrong, Sue. But Georgie--Georgie, dear, she's married to Joe
+O'Connor! Isn't it DREADFUL?"
+
+"But Ma's going to have it annulled," said Virginia instantly.
+
+"Married!" Susan gasped. "You mean engaged!"
+
+"No, dear, married," Mary Lou repeated, in a sad, musical voice. "They
+were married on Monday night--"
+
+"Tell me!" commanded Susan, her eyes flashing with pleasurable
+excitement.
+
+"We don't know much, Sue dear. Georgie's been acting rather odd and she
+began to cry after breakfast this morning, and Ma got it out of her. I
+thought Ma would faint, and Georgie just SCREAMED. I kept calling out
+to Ma to be calm--" Susan could imagine the scene. "So then Ma took
+Georgie upstairs, and Jinny and I worked around, and came up here and
+made up this room. And just before lunch Ma came up, and--she looked
+chalk-white, didn't she, Jinny?"
+
+"She looked-well, as white as this spread," agreed Virginia.
+
+"Well, but what accounts for it!" gasped Susan. "Is Georgie CRAZY! Joe
+O'Connor! That snip! And hasn't he an awful old mother, or someone, who
+said that she'd never let him come home again if he married?"
+
+"Listen, Sue!--You haven't heard half. It seems that they've been
+engaged for two months--"
+
+"They HAVE!"
+
+"Yes. And on Monday night Joe showed Georgie that he'd gotten the
+license, and they got thinking how long it would be before they could
+be married, what with his mother, and no prospects and all, and they
+simply walked into St. Peter's and were married!"
+
+"Well, he'll have to leave his mother, that's all!" said Susan.
+
+"Oh, my dear, that's just what they quarreled about! He WON'T."
+
+"He--WON'T?"
+
+"No, if you please! And you can imagine how furious that made Georgie!
+And when Ma told us that, she simply set her lips,--you know Ma! And
+then she said that she was going to see Father Birch with Georgie this
+afternoon, to have it annulled at once."
+
+"Without saying a word to Joe!"
+
+"Oh, they went first to Joe's. Oh, no, Joe is perfectly willing. It
+was, as Ma says, a mistake from beginning to end."
+
+"But how can it be annulled, Mary Lou?" Susan asked.
+
+"Well, I don't understand exactly," Mary Lou answered coloring. "I
+think it's because they didn't go on any honeymoon--they didn't set up
+housekeeping, you know, or something like that!"
+
+"Oh," said Susan, hastily, coloring too. "But wouldn't you know that if
+any one of us did get married, it would be annulled!" she said
+disgustedly. The others both began to laugh.
+
+Still, it was all very exciting. When Georgie and her mother got home
+at dinner-time, the bride was pale and red-eyed, excited, breathing
+hard. She barely touched her dinner. Susan could not keep her eyes from
+the familiar hand, with its unfamiliar ring.
+
+"I am very much surprised and disappointed in Father Birch," said Mrs.
+Lancaster, in a family conference in the dining-room just after dinner.
+"He seems to feel that the marriage may hold, which of course is too
+preposterous! If Joe O'Connor has so little appreciation--!"
+
+"Ma!" said Georgie wearily, pleadingly.
+
+"Well, I won't, my dear." Mrs. Lancaster interrupted herself with a
+visible effort. "And if I am disappointed in Joe," she presently
+resumed majestically. "I am doubly disappointed in Georgie. My
+baby--that I always trusted--!"
+
+Young Mrs. O'Connor began silently, bitterly, to cry. Susan went to sit
+beside her, and put a comforting arm about her.
+
+"I have looked forward to my girls' wedding days," said Mrs. Lancaster,
+"with such feelings of joy! How could I anticipate that my own
+daughter, secretly, could contract a marriage with a man whose
+mother--" Her tone, low at first, rose so suddenly and so passionately
+that she was unable to control it. The veins about her forehead swelled.
+
+"Ma!" said Mary Lou, "you only lower yourself to her level!"
+
+"Do you mean that she won't let him bring Georgie there?" asked Susan.
+
+"Whether she would or not," Mrs. Lancaster answered, with admirable
+loftiness, "she will not have a chance to insult my daughter. Joe, I
+pity!" she added majestically. "He fell deeply and passionately in
+love--"
+
+"With Loretta," supplied Susan, innocently.
+
+"He never cared for Loretta!" her aunt said positively. "No. With
+Georgie. And, not being a gentleman, we could hardly expect him to act
+like one! But we'll say no more about it. It will all be over in a few
+days, and then we'll try to forget it!"
+
+Poor Georgie, it was but a sorry romance! Joe telephoned, Joe called,
+Father Birch came, the affair hung fire. Georgie was neither married
+nor free. Dr. O'Connor would not desert his mother, his mother refused
+to accept Georgie. Georgie cried day and night, merely asseverating
+that she hated Joe, and loved Ma, and she wished people would let her
+alone.
+
+These were not very cheerful days in the boarding-house. Billy Oliver
+was worried and depressed, very unlike himself. He had been recently
+promoted to the post of foreman, was beginning to be a power among the
+men who associated with him and, as his natural instinct for leadership
+asserted itself, he found himself attracting some attention from the
+authorities themselves. He was questioned about the men, about their
+attitude toward this regulation or that superintendent. It was hinted
+that the spreading of heresies among the laborers was to be promptly
+discouraged. The men were not to be invited to express themselves as to
+hours, pay and the advantages of unifying. In other words, Mr. William
+Oliver, unless he became a little less interested and less active in
+the wrongs and rights of his fellow-men in the iron-works, might be
+surprised by a request to carry himself and his public sentiments
+elsewhere.
+
+Susan, in her turn, was a little disturbed by the rumor that Front
+Office was soon to be abolished; begun for a whim, it might easily be
+ended for another whim. For herself she did not very much care; a
+certain confidence in the future was characteristic of her, but she
+found herself wondering what would become of the other girls, Miss
+Sherman and Miss Murray and Miss Cottle.
+
+She felt far more deeply the pain that Peter's attitude gave her, a
+pain that gnawed at her heart day and night. He was home from Honolulu
+now, and had sent her several curious gifts from Hawaii, but, except
+for distant glimpses in the office, she had not seen him.
+
+One evening, just before dinner, as she was dressing and thinking sadly
+of the weeks, the months, that had passed since their last happy
+evening together, Lydia Lord came suddenly into the room. The little
+governess looked white and sick, and shared her distress with Susan in
+a few brief sentences. Here was Mrs. Lawrence's check in her hand, and
+here Mrs. Lawrence's note to say that her services, as governess to
+Chrissy and Donald and little Hazel, would be no longer required. The
+blow was almost too great to be realized.
+
+"But I brought it on myself, Sue, yes I did!" said Lydia, with dry
+lips. She sat, a shapeless, shabby figure, on the side of the bed, and
+pressed a veined hand tightly against her knobby temples, "I brought it
+on myself. I want to tell you about it. I haven't given Mary even a
+hint! Chrissy has been ill, her throat--they've had a nurse, but she
+liked me to sit with her now and then. So I was sitting there awhile
+this morning, and Mrs. Lawrence's sister, Miss Bacon, came in, and she
+happened to ask me--oh, if only she HADN'T!--if I knew that they meant
+to let Yates operate on Chrissy's throat. She said she thought it was a
+great pity. Oh, if only I'd held my tongue, fool, fool, FOOL that I
+was!" Miss Lydia took down her hand, and regarded Susan with hot, dry
+eyes. "But, before I thought," she pursued distressedly, "I said yes, I
+thought so too,--I don't know just what words I used, but no more than
+that! Chrissy asked her aunt if it would hurt, and she said, 'No, no,
+dear!' and I began reading. And now, here's this note from Mrs.
+Lawrence saying that she cannot overlook the fact that her conduct was
+criticized and discussed before Christina--! And after five years, Sue!
+Here, read it!"
+
+"Beast!" Susan scowled at the monogrammed sheet, and the dashing hand.
+Miss Lydia clutched her wrist with a hot hand.
+
+"What shall I do, Sue?" she asked, in agony.
+
+"Well, I'd simply--" Susan began boldly enough. But a look at the
+pathetic, gray-haired figure on the bed stopped her short. She came,
+with the glory of her bright hair hanging loose about her face, to sit
+beside Lydia. "Really, I don't know, dear," she said gently. "What do
+YOU think?"
+
+"Sue, I don't know!" And, to Susan's horror, poor Lydia twisted about,
+rested her arm on the foot of the bed, and began to cry.
+
+"Oh, these rich!" raged Susan, attacking her hair with angry sweeps of
+the brush. "Do you wonder they think that the earth was made for them
+and Heaven too! They have everything! They can dash you off a note that
+takes away your whole income, they can saunter in late to church on
+Easter Sunday and rustle into their big empty pews, when the rest of us
+have been standing in the aisles for half an hour; they can call in a
+doctor for a cut finger, when Mary has to fight perfect agonies before
+she dares afford it--Don't mind me," she broke off, penitently, "but
+let's think what's to be done. You couldn't take the public school
+examinations, could you, Miss Lydia? it would be so glorious to simply
+let Mrs. Lawrence slide!"
+
+"I always meant to do that some day," said Lydia, wiping her eyes and
+gulping, "but it would take time. And meanwhile--And there are Mary's
+doctor's bills, and the interest on our Piedmont lot--" For the Lord
+sisters, for patient years, had been paying interest, and an occasional
+installment, on a barren little tract of land nine blocks away from the
+Piedmont trolley.
+
+"You could borrow--" began Susan.
+
+But Lydia was more practical. She dried her eyes, straightened her hair
+and collar, and came, with her own quiet dignity, to the discussion of
+possibilities. She was convinced that Mrs. Lawrence had written in
+haste, and was already regretting it.
+
+"No, she's too proud ever to send for me," she assured Susan, when the
+girl suggested their simply biding their time, "but I know that by
+taking me back at once she would save herself any amount of annoyance
+and time. So I'd better go and see her to-night, for by to-morrow she
+might have committed herself to a change."
+
+"But you hate to go, don't you?" Susan asked, watching her keenly.
+
+"Ah, well, it's unpleasant of course," Lydia said simply. "She may be
+unwilling to accept my apology. She may not even see me. One feels
+so--so humiliated, Sue."
+
+"In that case, I'm going along to buck you up," said Susan, cheerfully.
+
+In spite of Lydia's protests, go she did. They walked to the Lawrence
+home in a night so dark that Susan blinked when they finally entered
+the magnificent, lighted hallway.
+
+The butler obviously disapproved of them. He did not quite attempt to
+shut the door on them, but Susan felt that they intruded.
+
+"Mrs. Lawrence is at dinner, Miss Lord," he reminded Lydia, gravely.
+
+"Yes, I know, but this is rather--important, Hughes," said Lydia,
+clearing her throat nervously.
+
+"You had better see her at the usual time to-morrow," suggested the
+butler, smoothly. Susan's face burned. She longed to snatch one of the
+iron Japanese swords that decorated the hall, and with it prove to
+Hughes that his insolence was appreciated. But more reasonable tactics
+must prevail.
+
+"Will you say that I am here, Hughes?" Miss Lord asked quietly.
+
+"Presently," he answered, impassively.
+
+Susan followed him for a few steps across the hall, spoke to him in a
+low tone.
+
+"Too bad to ask you to interrupt her, Mr. Hughes," said she, in her
+friendly little way, "but you know Miss Lord's sister has been having
+one of her bad times, and of course you understand--?" The blue eyes
+and the pitiful little smile conquered. Hughes became human.
+
+"Certainly, Miss," he said hoarsely, "but Madam is going to the theater
+to-night, and it's no time to see her."
+
+"I know," Susan interposed, sympathetically.
+
+"However, ye may depend upon my taking the best moment," Hughes said,
+before disappearing, and when he came back a few moments later, he was
+almost gracious.
+
+"Mrs. Lawrence says that if you wish to see her you'll kindly wait,
+Miss Lord. Step in here, will you, please? Will ye be seated, ladies?
+Miss Chrissy's been asking for you the whole evening, Miss Lord."
+
+"Is that so?" Lydia asked, brightening. They waited, with fast-beating
+hearts, for what seemed a long time. The great entrance to the
+flower-filled embrasure that led to the dining-room was in full view
+from where they stood, and when Mrs. Lawrence, elegantly emacinated,
+wonderfully gowned and jeweled, suddenly came out into the tempered
+brilliance of the electric lights both girls went to meet her.
+
+Susan's heart burned for Lydia, faltering out her explanation, in the
+hearing of the butler.
+
+"This is hardly the time to discuss this, Miss Lord," Mrs. Lawrence
+said impatiently, "but I confess I am surprised that a woman who
+apparently valued her position in my house should jeopardize it by such
+an extraordinary indiscretion--"
+
+Susan's heart sank. No hope here!
+
+But at this moment some six or seven young people followed Mrs.
+Lawrence out of the dining-room and began hurriedly to assume their
+theater wraps, and Susan, with a leap of her heart, recognized among
+them Peter Coleman, Peter splendid in evening dress, with a light
+overcoat over his arm, and a silk hat in his hand. His face brightened
+when he saw her, he dropped his coat, and came quickly across the hall,
+hands outstretched.
+
+"Henrietta! say that you remember your Percy!" he said joyously, and
+Susan, coloring prettily, said "Oh, hush!" as she gave him her hand. A
+rapid fire of questions followed, he was apparently unconscious of, or
+indifferent to, the curiously watching group.
+
+"Well, you two seem to be great friends," Mrs. Lawrence said
+graciously, turning from her conversation with Miss Lord.
+
+"This is our cue to sing 'For you was once My Wife,' Susan!" Peter
+suggested. Susan did not answer him. She exchanged an amused, indulgent
+look with Mrs. Lawrence. Perhaps the girl's quiet dignity rather
+surprised that lady, for she gave her a keen, appraising look before
+she asked, pleasantly:
+
+"Aren't you going to introduce me to your old friend, Peter?"
+
+"Not old friends," Susan corrected serenely, as they were introduced.
+
+"But vurry, vurry de-ah," supplemented Peter, "aren't we?"
+
+"I hope Mrs. Lawrence knows you well enough to know how foolish you
+are, Peter!" Susan said composedly.
+
+And Mrs. Lawrence said brightly, "Indeed I do! For we ARE very old
+friends, aren't we, Peter?"
+
+But the woman's eyes still showed a little puzzlement. The exact
+position of this girl, with her ready "Peter," her willingness to
+disclaim an old friendship, her pleasant unresponsiveness, was a little
+hard to determine. A lady, obviously, a possible beauty, and entirely
+unknown--
+
+"Well, we must run," Mrs. Lawrence recalled herself to say suddenly.
+"But why won't you and Miss Lord run up to see Chrissy for a few
+moments, Miss Brown? The poor kiddy is frightfully dull. And you'll be
+here in the morning as usual, Miss Lord? That's good. Good-night!"
+
+"You did that, Sue, you darling!" exulted Lydia, as they ran down the
+stone steps an hour later, and locked arms to walk briskly along the
+dark street. "Your knowing Mr. Coleman saved the day!" And, in the
+exuberance of her spirits, she took Susan into a brightly lighted
+little candy-store, and treated her to ice-cream. They carried some
+home in a dripping paper box for Mary, who was duly horrified, agitated
+and rejoiced over the history of the day.
+
+Through Susan's mind, as she lay wakeful in bed that night, one scene
+after another flitted and faded. She saw Mrs. Lawrence, glittering and
+supercilious, saw Peter, glowing and gay, saw the butler, with his
+attempt to be rude, and the little daughter of the house, tossing about
+in the luxurious pillows of her big bed. She thought of Lydia Lord's
+worn gloves, fumbling in her purse for money, of Mary Lord, so
+gratefully eating melting ice-cream from a pink saucer, with a silver
+souvenir spoon!
+
+Two different worlds, and she, Susan, torn between them! How far she
+was from Peter's world, she felt that she had never realized until
+to-night. How little gifts and pleasures signified from a man whose
+life was crowded with nothing else! How helpless she was, standing by
+while his life whirled him further and further away from the dull
+groove in which her own feet were set!
+
+Yet Susan's evening had not been without its little cause for
+satisfaction. She had treated Peter coolly, with dignity, with reserve,
+and she had seen it not only spur him to a sudden eagerness to prove
+his claim to her friendship, but also have its effect upon his hostess.
+This was the clue, at last.
+
+"If ever I have another chance," decided Susan, "he won't have such
+easy sailing! He will have to work for my friendship as if I were the
+heiress, and he a clerk in Front Office."
+
+August was the happiest month Susan had ever known, September even
+better, and by October everybody at Mrs. Lancaster's boarding-house was
+confidently awaiting the news of Susan Brown's engagement to the rich
+Mr. Peter Coleman. Susan herself was fairly dazed with joy. She felt
+herself the most extraordinarily fortunate girl in the world.
+
+Other matters also prospered. Alfred Lancaster had obtained a position
+in the Mission, and seemed mysteriously inclined to hold it, and to
+conquer his besetting weakness. And Georgie's affair was at a peaceful
+standstill. Georgie had her old place in the house, was changed in
+nothing tangible, and, if she cried a good deal, and went about less
+than before, she was not actively unhappy. Dr. O'Connor came once a
+week to see her, an uncomfortable event, during which Georgie's mother
+was with difficulty restrained from going up to the parlor to tell Joe
+what she thought of a man who put his mother before his wife. Virginia
+was bravely enduring the horrors of approaching darkness. Susan
+reproached herself for her old impatience with Jinny's saintliness;
+there was no question of her cousin's courage and faith during this
+test. Mary Lou was agitatedly preparing for a visit to the stricken
+Eastmans, in Nevada, deciding one day that Ma could, and the next that
+Ma couldn't, spare her for the trip.
+
+Susan walked in a golden cloud. No need to hunt through Peter's
+letters, to weigh his words,--she had the man himself now unequivocally
+in the attitude of lover.
+
+Or if, in all honesty, she knew him to be a little less than that, at
+least he was placing himself in that light, before their little world.
+In that world theatre-trips, candy and flowers have their definite
+significance, the mere frequency with which they were seen together
+committed him, surely, to something! They paid dinner-calls together,
+they went together to week-end visits to Emily Saunders, at least two
+evenings out of every week were spent together. At any moment he might
+turn to her with the little, little phrase that would settle this
+uncertainty once and for all! Indeed it occurred to Susan sometimes
+that he might think it already settled, without words. At least once a
+day she flushed, half-delighted, half-distressed,--under teasing
+questions on the subject from the office force, or from the boarders at
+home; all her world, apparently, knew.
+
+One day, in her bureau drawer, she found the little card that had
+accompanied his first Christmas gift, nearly two years before. Why did
+a keen pain stir her heart, as she stood idly twisting it in her
+fingers? Had not the promise of that happy day been a thousand times
+fulfilled?
+
+But the bright, enchanting hope that card had brought had been so
+sickeningly deferred! Two years!--she was twenty-three now.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster, opening the bedroom door a few minutes later, found
+Susan in tears, kneeling by the bed.
+
+"Why, lovey! lovey!" Her aunt patted the bowed head. "What is it, dear?"
+
+"Nothing!" gulped Susan, sitting back on her heels, and drying her eyes.
+
+"Not a quarrel with Peter?"
+
+"Oh, auntie, no!"
+
+"Well," her aunt sighed comfortably, "of course it's an emotional time,
+dear! Leaving the home nest--" Mrs. Lancaster eyed her keenly, but
+Susan did not speak. "Remember, Auntie is to know the first of all!"
+she said playfully. Adding, after a moment's somber thought, "If
+Georgie had told Mama, things would be very different now!"
+
+"Poor Georgie!" Susan smiled, and still kneeling, leaned on her aunt's
+knees, as Mrs. Lancaster sat back in the rocking chair.
+
+"Poor Georgie indeed!" said her mother vexedly. "It's more serious than
+you think, dear. Joe was here last night. It seems that he's going to
+that doctor's convention, at Del Monte a week from next Saturday, and
+he was talking to Georgie about her going, too."
+
+Susan was thunderstruck.
+
+"But, Auntie, aren't they going to be divorced?"
+
+Mrs. Lancaster rubbed her nose violently.
+
+"They are if _I_ have anything to say!" she said, angrily. "But, of
+course, Georgie has gotten herself into this thing, and now Mama isn't
+going to get any help in trying to get her out! Joe was extremely rude
+and inconsiderate about it, and got the poor child crying--!"
+
+"But, Auntie, she certainly doesn't want to go!"
+
+"Certainly she doesn't. And to come home to that dreadful WOMAN, his
+mother? Use your senses, Susan!"
+
+"Why don't you forbid Joe O'Connor the house, Auntie?"
+
+"Because I don't want any little whipper-snapper of a medical graduate
+from the Mission to DARE to think he can come here, in my own home, and
+threaten me with a lawsuit, for alienating his wife's affections!" Mrs.
+Lancaster said forcibly. "I never in my life heard such impudence!"
+
+"Is he mad!" exclaimed Susan, in a low, horrified tone.
+
+"Well, I honestly think he is!" Mrs. Lancaster, gratified by this show
+of indignation, softened. "But I didn't mean to distress you with this,
+dear," said she. "It will all work out, somehow. We mustn't have any
+scandal in the family just now, whatever happens, for your sake!"
+
+Pursuant to her new-formed resolutions, Susan was maintaining what
+dignity she could in her friendship with Peter nowadays. And when, in
+November, Peter stopped her on the "deck" one day to ask her, "How
+about Sunday, Sue? I have a date, but I think I can get out of it?" she
+disgusted him by answering briskly, "Not for me, Peter. I'm positively
+engaged for Sunday."
+
+"Oh, no, you're not!" he assured her, firmly.
+
+"Oh, truly I am!" Susan nodded a good-by, and went humming into the
+office, and that night made William Oliver promise to take her to the
+Carrolls' in Sausalito for the holiday.
+
+So on a hazy, soft November morning they found themselves on the
+cable-car that in those days slipped down the steep streets of Nob
+Hill, through the odorous, filthy gaiety of the Chinese quarter,
+through the warehouse district, and out across the great crescent of
+the water-front. Billy, well-brushed and clean-shaven, looked his best
+to-day, and Susan, in a wide, dashing hat, with fresh linen at wrists
+and collar, enjoyed the innocent tribute of many a passing glance from
+the ceaseless current of men crossing and recrossing the ferry place.
+
+"If they try to keep us for dinner, we'll bashfully remain," said
+Billy, openly enchanted by the prospect of a day with his adored
+Josephine.
+
+But first they were to have a late second breakfast at Sardi's, the
+little ramshackle Sausalito restaurant, whose tables, visible through
+green arches, hung almost directly over the water. It was a cheap meal,
+oily and fried, but Susan was quite happy, hanging over the rail to
+watch the shining surface of the water that was so near. The reflection
+of the sun shifted in a ceaselessly moving bright pattern on the
+white-washed ceiling, the wash of the outgoing steamer surged through
+the piles, and set to rocking all the nearby boats at anchor.
+
+After luncheon, they climbed the long flights of steps that lead
+straight through the village, which hangs on the cliff like a cluster
+of sea-birds' nests. The gardens were bare and brown now, the trees
+sober and shabby.
+
+When the steps stopped, they followed a road that ran like a shelf
+above the bay and waterfront far below, and that gave a wonderful
+aspect of the wide sweep of hills and sky beyond, all steeped in the
+thin, clear autumn haze. Billy pushed open a high gate that had scraped
+the path beyond in a deep circular groove, and they were in a fine,
+old-fashioned garden, filled with trees. Willow and pepper and
+eucalyptus towered over the smaller growth of orange and lemon-verbena
+trees; there were acacia and mock-orange and standard roses, and
+hollyhock stalks, bare and dry. Only the cosmos bushes, tall and
+wavering, were in bloom, with a few chrysanthemums and late asters, the
+air was colder here than it had been out under the bright November sun,
+and the path under the trees was green and slippery.
+
+On a rise of ground stood the plain, comfortable old house, with a
+white curtain blowing here and there at an open window and its front
+door set hospitably ajar. But not a soul was in sight.
+
+Billy and Susan were at home here, however, and went through the
+hallway to open a back door that gave on the kitchen. It was an
+immaculate kitchen, with a fire glowing sleepily behind the shining
+iron grating of the stove, and sunshine lying on the well-scrubbed
+floor. A tall woman was busy with plants in the bright window.
+
+"Well, you nice child!" she exclaimed, her face brightening as Susan
+came into her arms for her motherly kiss. "I was just thinking about
+you! We've been hearing things about you, Sue, and wondering--and
+wondering--! And Billy, too! The girls will be delighted!"
+
+This was the mother of the five Carrolls, a mother to whom it was easy
+to trace some of their beauty, and some of their courage. In the twelve
+long years of her widowhood, from a useless, idle, untrained member of
+a society to which all three adjectives apply, this woman had grown to
+be the broad and brave and smiling creature who was now studying
+Susan's face with the insatiable motherliness that even her household's
+constant claims failed to exhaust. Manager and cook and houseworker,
+seamstress and confidante to her restless, growing brood, still there
+was a certain pure radiance that was never quite missing from her
+smile, and Susan felt a mad impulse to-day to have a long comforting
+cry on the broad shoulder. She thoroughly loved Mrs. Carroll, even if
+she thought the older woman's interest in soups and darning and the
+filling of lamps a masterly affectation, and pitied her for the bitter
+fate that had robbed her of home and husband, wealth and position, at
+the very time when her children needed these things the most.
+
+They two went into the sitting-room now, while Billy raced after the
+young people who had taken their luncheon, it appeared, and were
+walking over the hills to a favorite spot known as "Gioli's" beach.
+
+Susan liked this room, low-ceiled and wide, which ran the length of the
+house. It seemed particularly pleasant to-day, with the uncertain
+sunlight falling through the well-darned, snowy window-curtains, the
+circle of friendly, shabby chairs, the worn old carpet, scrupulously
+brushed, the reading-table with a green-shaded lamp, and the old square
+piano loaded with music. The room was in Sunday order to-day, books,
+shabby with much handling, were ranged neatly on their shelves, not a
+fallen leaf lay under the bowl of late roses on the piano.
+
+Susan had had many a happy hour in this room, for if the Carrolls were
+poor to the point of absurdity, their mother had made a sort of science
+of poverty, and concentrated her splendid mind on the questions of
+meals, clothes, and the amusements of their home evenings. That it had
+been a hard fight, was still a hard fight, Susan knew. Philip, the
+handsome first-born, had the tendencies and temptations natural to his
+six-and-twenty years; Anna, her mother's especial companion, was taking
+a hard course of nursing in a city hospital; Josephine, the family
+beauty, at twenty, was soberly undertaking a course in architecture, in
+addition to her daily work in the offices of Huxley and Huxley; even
+little Betsey was busy, and Jimmy still in school; so that the brunt of
+the planning, of the actual labor, indeed, fell upon their mother. But
+she had carried a so much heavier burden, that these days seemed bright
+and easeful to Mrs. Carroll, and the face she turned to Susan now was
+absolutely unclouded.
+
+"What's all the news, Sue? Auntie's well, and Mary Lou? And what do
+they say now of Jinny? Don't tell me about Georgie until the girls are
+here! And what's this I hear of your throwing down Phil completely, and
+setting up a new young man?"
+
+"Please'm, you never said I wasn'ter," Susan laughed.
+
+"No, indeed I never did! You couldn't do a more sensible thing!"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Jo!" The title was only by courtesy. "I thought you felt that
+every woman ought to have a profession!"
+
+"A means of livelihood, my dear, not a profession necessarily! Yes, to
+be used in case she didn't marry, or when anything went wrong if she
+did," the older woman amended briskly. "But, Sue, marriage first for
+all girls! I won't say," she went on thoughtfully, "that any marriage
+is better than none at all, but I could ALMOST say that I thought that!
+That is, given the average start, I think a sensible woman has nine
+chances out of ten of making a marriage successful, whereas there never
+was a really complete life rounded out by a single woman."
+
+"My young man has what you'll consider one serious fault," said Susan,
+dimpling.
+
+"Dear, dear! And what's that?"
+
+"He's rich."
+
+"Peter Coleman, yes, of course he is!" Mrs. Carroll frowned
+thoughtfully. "Well, that isn't NECESSARILY bad, Susan!"
+
+"Aunt Josephine," Susan said, really shaken out of her nonsense by the
+serious tone, "do you honestly think it's a drawback? Wouldn't you
+honestly rather have Jo, say, marry a rich man than a poor man, other
+things being equal?"
+
+"Honestly no, Sue," said Mrs. Carroll.
+
+"But if the rich man was just as good and brave and honest and true as
+the poor one?" persisted the girl.
+
+"But he couldn't be, Sue, he never is. The fibers of his moral and
+mental nature are too soft. He's had no hardening. No," Mrs. Carroll
+shook her head. "No, I've been rich, and I've been poor. If a man earns
+his money honestly himself, he grows old during the process, and he may
+or may not be a strong and good man. But if he merely inherits it, he
+is pretty sure not to be one."
+
+"But aren't there some exceptions?" asked Susan. Mrs. Carroll laughed
+at her tone.
+
+"There are exceptions to everything! And I really believe Peter Coleman
+is one," she conceded smilingly. "Hark!" for feet were running down the
+path outside.
+
+"There you are, Sue!" said Anna Carroll, putting a glowing face in the
+sitting-room door. "I came back for you! The others said they would go
+slowly, and we can catch them if we hurry!"
+
+She came in, a brilliant, handsome young creature, in rough, well-worn
+walking attire, and a gipsyish hat. Talking steadily, as they always
+did when together, she and Susan went upstairs, and Susan was loaned a
+short skirt, and a cap that made her prettier than ever.
+
+The house was old, there was a hint of sagging here and there, in the
+worn floors, the bedrooms were plainly furnished, almost bare. In the
+atmosphere there lingered, despite the open windows, the faint
+undefinable odor common to old houses in which years of frugal and
+self-denying living have set their mark, an odor vaguely compounded of
+clean linen and old woodwork, hot soapsuds and ammonia. The children's
+old books were preserved in old walnut cases, nothing had been renewed,
+recarpeted, repapered for many years.
+
+Still talking, the girls presently ran downstairs, and briskly followed
+the road that wound up, above the village, to the top of the hill. Anna
+chattered of the hospital, of the superintendent of nurses, who was a
+trial to all the young nurses, "all superintendents are tyrants, I
+think," said Anna, "and we just have to shut our teeth and bear it! But
+it's all so unnecessarily hard, and it's wrong, too, for nursing the
+sick is one thing, and being teased by an irritable woman like that is
+another! However," she concluded cheerfully, "I'll graduate some day,
+and forget her! And meantime, I don't want to worry mother, for Phil's
+just taken a real start, and Bett's doctor's bills are paid, and the
+landlord, by some miracle, has agreed to plaster the kitchen!"
+
+They joined the others just below the top of the hill, and were
+presently fighting the stiff wind that blew straight across the ridge.
+Once over it, however, the wind dropped, the air was deliciously soft
+and fresh and their rapid walking made the day seem warm. There was no
+road; their straggling line followed the little shelving paths beaten
+out of the hillside by the cows.
+
+Far below lay the ocean, only a tone deeper than the pale sky. The line
+of the Cliff House beach was opposite, a vessel under full sail was
+moving in through the Golden Gate. The hills fell sharply away to the
+beach, Gioli's ranch-house, down in the valley, was only one deeper
+brown note among all the browns. Here and there cows were grazing,
+cotton-tails whisked behind the tall, dried thistles.
+
+The Carrolls loved this particular walk, and took it in all weathers.
+Sometimes they had a guest or two,--a stray friend of Philip's, or two
+or three of Anna's girl friends from the hospital. It did not matter,
+for there was no pairing off at the Carroll picnics. Oftener they were
+all alone, or, as to-day, with Susan and Billy, who were like members
+of the family.
+
+To-day Billy, Jimmy and Betsey were racing ahead like frolicking
+puppies; up banks, down banks, shrieking, singing and shouting. Phil
+and Josephine walked together, they were inseparable chums, and Susan
+thought them a pretty study to-day; Josephine so demurely beautiful in
+her middy jacket and tam-o-shanter cap, and Philip so obviously proud
+of her.
+
+She and Anna, their hands sunk in their coat-pockets, their hair
+loosening under the breezes, followed the others rather silently.
+
+And swiftly, subtly, the healing influences of the hour crept into
+Susan's heart. What of these petty little hopes and joys and fears that
+fretted her like a cloud of midges day and night? How small they seemed
+in the wide silence of these brooding hills, with the sunlight lying
+warm on the murmuring ocean below, and the sweet kindly earth underfoot!
+
+"I wish I could live out here, Nance, and never go near to people and
+things again!"
+
+"Oh, DON'T you, Sue!"
+
+There was a delay at the farmhouse for cream. The ranchers' damp
+dooryard had been churned into deep mud by the cows, strong odors,
+delicious to Susan, because they were associated with these happy days,
+drifted about, the dairy reeked of damp earth, wet wood, and scoured
+tinware. The cream, topping the pan like a circle of leather, was
+loosened by a small, sharp stick, and pushed, thick and lumpy, into the
+empty jam jar that Josephine neatly presented. A woman came to the
+ranch-house door with a grinning Portuguese greeting, the air from the
+kitchen behind her was close, and reeked of garlic and onions and other
+odors. Susan and Anna went in to look at the fat baby, a brown cherub
+whose silky black lashes curved back half an inch from his cheeks.
+There were half a dozen small children in the kitchen, cats, even a
+sickly chicken or two.
+
+"Very different from the home life of our dear Queen!" said Susan, when
+they were out in the air again.
+
+The road now ran between marshy places full of whispering reeds,
+occasional crazy fences must be crossed, occasional pools carefully
+skirted. And then they were really crossing the difficult strip of
+sandy dead grasses, and cocoanut shells, and long-dried seaweeds that
+had been tossed up by the sea in a long ridge on the beach, and were
+racing on the smooth sand, where the dangerous looking breakers were
+rolling so harmlessly. They shouted to each other now, above the roar
+of the water, as they gathered drift-wood for their fire, and when the
+blaze was well started, indulged in the fascinating pastime of running
+in long curves so near to the incoming level rush of the waves that
+they were all soon wet enough to feel that no further harm could be
+done by frankly wading in the shallows, posing for Philip's camera on
+half-submerged rocks, and chasing each other through a frantic game of
+beach tag. It was the prudent Josephine,--for Anna was too dreamy and
+unpractical to bring her attention to detail,--who suggested a general
+drying of shoes, as they gathered about the fire for the lunch--toasted
+sandwiches, and roasted potatoes, and large wedges of apple-pie, and
+the tin mugs of delicious coffee that crowned all these feasts. Only
+sea-air accounted for the quantities in which the edibles disappeared;
+the pasteboard boxes and the basket were emptied to the last crumb, and
+the coffee-pot refilled and emptied again.
+
+The meal was not long over, and the stiffened boots were being buttoned
+with the aid of bent hairpins, when the usual horrifying discovery of
+the time was made. Frantic hurrying ensued, the tin cups, dripping salt
+water, were strung on a cord, the cardboard boxes fed the last flicker
+of the fire, the coffee-pot was emptied into the waves.
+
+And they were off again, climbing up--up--up the long rise of the
+hills. The way home always seemed twice the way out, but Susan found it
+a soothing, comforting experience to-day. The sun went behind a cloud;
+cows filed into the ranch gates for milking; a fine fog blew up from
+the sea.
+
+"Wonderful day, Anna!" Susan said. The two were alone together again.
+
+"These walks do make you over," Anna's bright face clouded a little as
+she turned to look down the long road they had come. "It's all so
+beautiful, Sue," she said, slowly, "and the spring is so beautiful, and
+books and music and fires are so beautiful. Why aren't they enough?
+Nobody can take those things away from us!"
+
+"I know," Susan said briefly, comprehending.
+
+"But we set our hearts on some silly thing not worth one of these
+fogs," Anna mused, "and nothing but that one thing seems to count!"
+
+"I know," Susan said again. She thought of Peter Coleman.
+
+"There's a doctor at the hospital," Anna said suddenly. "A German,
+Doctor Hoffman. Of course I'm only one of twenty girls to him, now. But
+I've often thought that if I had pretty gowns, and the sort of
+home,--you know what I mean, Sue! to which one could ask that type of
+really distinguished man---"
+
+"Well, look at my case---" began Susan.
+
+It was almost dark when the seven stormed the home kitchen, tired,
+chilly, happy, ravenous. Here they found Mrs. Carroll, ready to serve
+the big pot-roast and the squares of yellow cornbread, and to have
+Betsey and Billy burn their fingers trying to get baked sweet potatoes
+out of the oven. And here, straddling a kitchen chair, and noisily
+joyous as usual, was Peter Coleman. Susan knew in a happy instant that
+he had gone to find her at her aunt's, and had followed her here, and
+during the meal that followed, she was the maddest of all the mad
+crowd. After dinner they had Josephine's violin, and coaxed Betsey to
+recite, but more appreciated than either was Miss Brown's rendition of
+selections from German and Italian opera, and her impersonation of an
+inexperienced servant from Erin's green isle. Mrs. Carroll laughed
+until the tears ran down her cheeks, as indeed they all did.
+
+The evening ended with songs about the old piano, "Loch Lomond,"
+"Love's Old Sweet Song," and "Asthore." Then Susan and Peter and Billy
+must run for their hats and wraps.
+
+"And Peter thinks there's MONEY in my window-washer!" said Mrs.
+Carroll, when they were all loitering in the doorway, while Betts
+hunted for the new time-table.
+
+"Mother's invention" was a standing joke with the young Carrolls, but
+their mother had a serene belief that some day SOMETHING might be done
+with the little contrivance she had thought of some years ago, by which
+the largest of windows might be washed outside as easily as inside. "I
+believe I really thought of it by seeing poor maids washing fifth-story
+windows by sitting on the sill and tipping out!" she confessed one day
+to Susan. Now she had been deeply pleased by Peter's casual interest in
+it.
+
+"Peter says that there's NO reason---" she began.
+
+"Oh, Mother!" Josephine laughed indulgently, as she stood with her arm
+about her mother's waist, and her bright cheek against her mother's
+shoulder, "you've NOT been taking Peter seriously!"
+
+"Jo, when I ask you to take me seriously, it'll be time for you to get
+so fresh!" said Peter neatly.
+
+"Your mother is the Lady Edison of the Pacific Coast, and don't you
+forget it! I'm going to talk to some men at the shop about this
+thing---"
+
+"Say, if you do, I'll make some blue prints," Billy volunteered.
+
+"You're on!" agreed Mr. Coleman.
+
+"You wouldn't want to market this yourself, Mrs. Carroll?"
+
+"Well--no, I don't think so. No, I'm sure I wouldn't! I'd rather sell
+it for a lump sum---"
+
+"To be not less than three dollars," laughed Phil.
+
+"Less than three hundred, you mean!" said the interested Peter.
+
+"Three hundred!" Mrs. Carroll exclaimed. "Do you SUPPOSE so?"
+
+"Why, I don't know--but I can find out"
+
+The trio, running for their boat, left the little family rather
+excited, for the first time, over the window-cleaner.
+
+"But, Peter, is there really something in it?" asked Susan, on the boat.
+
+"Well,--there might be. Anyway, it seemed a good chance to give them a
+lift, don't you know?" he said, with his ingenuous blush. Susan loved
+him for the generous impulse. She had sometimes fancied him a little
+indifferent to the sufferings of the less fortunate, proof of the
+contrary warmed her to the very heart! She had been distressed one day
+to hear him gaily telling George Banks, the salesman who was coughing
+himself to death despite the frantic care of his wife, a story of a
+consumptive, and, on another occasion, when a shawled, shabby woman had
+come up to them in the street, with the whined story of five little
+hungry children, Susan had been shocked to hear Peter say, with his
+irrepressible gaiety, "Well, here! Here's five cents; that's a cent
+apiece! Now mind you don't waste it!"
+
+She told herself to-night that these things proved no more than want of
+thought. There was nothing wrong with the heart that could plan so
+tactfully for Mrs. Carroll.
+
+On the following Saturday Susan had the unexpected experience of
+shopping with Mrs. Lancaster and Georgie for the latter's trousseau. It
+was unlike any shopping that they had ever done before, inasmuch as the
+doctor's unclaimed bride had received from her lord the sum of three
+hundred dollars for the purpose. Georgie denied firmly that she was
+going to start with her husband for the convention at Del Monte that
+evening, but she went shopping nevertheless. Perhaps she could not
+really resist the lure of the shining heap of gold pieces. She became
+deeply excited and charmed over the buying of the pretty tailor-made,
+the silk house dresses, the hat and shoes and linen. Georgie began to
+play the bride, was prettily indignant with clerks, pouted at silks and
+velvets. Susan did not miss her cousin's bright blush when certain
+things, a linen suit, underlinen, a waist or two, were taken from the
+mass of things to be sent, and put into Georgie's suitcase.
+
+"And you're to have a silk waist, Ma, I INSIST."
+
+"Now, Baby love, this is YOUR shopping. And, more than that, I really
+need a pair of good corsets before I try on waists!"
+
+"Then you'll have both!" Mrs. Lancaster laughed helplessly as the bride
+carried her point.
+
+At six o'clock the three met the doctor at the Vienna Bakery, for tea,
+and Georgie, quite lofty in her attitude when only her mother and
+cousin were to be impressed, seemed suddenly to lose her powers of
+speech. She answered the doctor's outline of his plans only by
+monosyllables. "Yes," "All right," "That's nice, Joe." Her face was
+burning red.
+
+"But Ma--Ma and I--and Sue, too, don't you, Sue?" she stammered
+presently. "We think--and don't you think it would be as well,
+yourself, Joe, if I went back with Ma to-night---"
+
+Susan, anxiously looking toward the doctor, at this, felt a little
+thrill run over her whole body at the sudden glimpse of the confident
+male she had in his reply,--or rather, lack of reply. For, after a
+vague, absent glance at Georgie, he took a time-table out of his
+pocket, and addressed his mother-in-law.
+
+"We'll be back next Sunday, Mrs. Lancaster. But don't worry if you
+don't hear from Georgie that day, for we may be late, and Mother won't
+naturally want us to run off the moment we get home. But on Monday
+Georgie can go over, if she wants to. Perhaps I'll drive her over, if I
+can."
+
+"He was the coolest---!" Susan said, half-annoyed, half-admiring, to
+Mary Lou, late that night. The boarding-house had been pleasantly
+fluttered by the departure of the bride, Mrs. Lancaster, in spite of
+herself, had enjoyed the little distinction of being that personage's
+mother.
+
+"Well, she'll be back again in a week!" Virginia, missing her sister,
+sighed.
+
+"Back, yes," Mrs. Lancaster admitted, "but not quite the same, dear!"
+Georgie, whatever her husband, whatever the circumstances of her
+marriage, was nearer her mother than any of the others now. As a wife,
+she was admitted to the company of wives.
+
+Susan spent the evening in innocently amorous dreams, over her game of
+patience. What a wonderful thing, if one loved a man, to fare forth
+into the world with him as his wife!----
+
+"I have about as much chance with Joe Carroll as a dead rat," said
+Billy suddenly. He was busied with his draughting board and the little
+box of draughts-man's instruments that Susan always found fascinating,
+and had been scowling and puffing over his work.
+
+"Why?" Susan asked, laughing outright. "Oh, she's so darn busy!" Billy
+said, and returned to his work.
+
+Susan pondered it. She wished she were so "darned" busy that Peter
+Coleman might have to scheme and plan to see her.
+
+"That's why men's love affairs are considered so comparatively
+unimportant, I suppose," she submitted presently. "Men are so busy!"
+
+Billy paid no attention to the generality, and Susan pursued it no
+further.
+
+But after awhile she interrupted him again, this time in rather an odd
+tone.
+
+"Billy, I want to ask you something---"
+
+"Ask away," said Billy, giving her one somewhat startled glance.
+
+Susan did not speak immediately, and he did not hurry her. A few silent
+minutes passed before she laid a card carefully in place, studied it
+with her head on one side, and said casually, in rather a husky voice:
+
+"Billy, if a man takes a girl everywhere, and gives her things, and
+seems to want to be with her all the time, he's in love with her, isn't
+he?"
+
+Billy, apparently absorbed in what he was doing, cleared his throat
+before he answered carelessly:
+
+"Well, it might depend, Sue. When a man in my position does it, a girl
+knows gosh darn well that if I spend my good hard money on her I mean
+business!"
+
+"But--it mightn't be so--with a rich man?" hazarded Susan bravely.
+
+"Why, I don't know, Sue." An embarrassed red had crept into William's
+cheeks. "Of course, if a fellow kissed her---"
+
+"Oh, heavens!" cried Susan, scarlet in turn, "he never did anything
+like THAT!"
+
+"Didn't, hey?" William looked blank.
+
+"Oh, never!" Susan said, meeting his look bravely. "He's--he's too much
+of a gentleman, Bill!"
+
+"Perhaps that's being a gentleman, and perhaps it's not," said Billy,
+scowling. "He--but he--he makes love to you, doesn't he?" The crude
+phrase was the best he could master in this delicate matter.
+
+"I don't--I don't know!" said Susan, laughing, but with flaming cheeks.
+"That's it! He--he isn't sentimental. I don't believe he ever would be,
+it's not his nature. He doesn't take anything very seriously, you know.
+We talk all the time, but not about really serious things." It sounded
+a little lame. Susan halted.
+
+"Of course, Coleman's a perfectly decent fellow---" Billy began, with
+brotherly uneasiness.
+
+"Oh, absolutely!" Susan could laugh, in her perfect confidence. "He
+acts exactly as if I were his sister, or another boy. He never
+even--put his arm about me," she explained, "and I--I don't know just
+what he DOES mean---"
+
+"Sure," said Billy, thoughtfully.
+
+"Of course, there's no reason why a man and a girl can't be good
+friends just as two men would," Susan said, more lightly, after a pause.
+
+"Oh, yes there is! Don't you fool yourself!" Billy said, gloomily.
+"That's all rot!"
+
+"Well, a girl can't stay moping in the house until a man comes along
+and says, 'If I take you to the theater it means I want to marry you!'"
+Susan declared with spirit. "I--I can't very well turn to Peter now and
+say, 'This ends everything, unless you are in earnest!'"
+
+Her distress, her earnestness, her eagerness for his opinion, had
+carried her quite out of herself. She rested her face in her hands, and
+fixed her anxious eyes upon him.
+
+"Well, here's the way I figure it out," Billy said, deliberately,
+drawing his pencil slowly along the edge of his T-square, and squinting
+at it absorbedly, "Coleman has a crush on you, all right, and he'd
+rather be with you than anyone else---"
+
+"Yes," nodded Susan. "I know that, because---"
+
+"Well. But you see you're so fixed that you can't entertain him here,
+Sue, and you don't run in his crowd, so when he wants to see you he has
+to go out of his way to do it. So his rushing you doesn't mean as much
+as it otherwise would."
+
+"I suppose that's true," Susan said, with a sinking heart.
+
+"The chances are that he doesn't want to get married at all yet,"
+pursued Billy, mercilessly, "and he thinks that if he gives you a good
+time, and doesn't--doesn't go any further, that he's playing fair."
+
+"That's what I think," Susan said, fighting a sensation of sickness.
+Her heart was a cold weight, she hoped that she was not going to cry.
+
+"But all the same, Sue," Billy resumed more briskly, "You can see that
+it wouldn't take much to bring an affair like that to a finish.
+Coleman's rich, he can marry if he pleases, and he wants what he
+wants---You couldn't just stop short, I suppose? You couldn't simply
+turn down all his invitations, and refuse everything?" he broke off to
+ask.
+
+"Billy, how could I? Right in the next office!"
+
+"Well, that's an advantage, in a way. It keeps the things in his mind.
+Either way, you're no worse off for stopping everything now, Sue. If
+he's in earnest, he'll not be put off by that, and if he's not, you
+save yourself from--from perhaps beginning to care."
+
+Susan could have kissed the top of Billy's rumpled head for the tactful
+close. She had thrown her pride to the winds to-night, but she loved
+him for remembering it.
+
+"But he would think that I cared!" she objected.
+
+"Let him! That won't hurt you. Simply say that your aunt disapproves of
+your being so much with him, and stop short."
+
+Billy went on working, and Susan shuffled her pack for a new game.
+
+"Thank you, Bill," she said at last, gratefully. "I'm glad I told you."
+
+"Oh, that's all right!" said William, gruffly.
+
+There was a silence until Mary Lou came in, to rip up her old velvet
+hat, and speculate upon the clangers of a trip to Virginia City.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Life presented itself in a new aspect to Susan Brown. A hundred little
+events and influences combining had made it seem to her less a
+grab-bag, from which one drew good or bad at haphazard, and more a
+rational problem, to be worked out with arbitrarily supplied materials.
+She might not make herself either rich or famous, but she COULD,--she
+began dimly to perceive,--eliminate certain things from her life and
+put others in their places. The race was not to the swift, but to the
+faithful. What other people had done, she, by following the old
+copybook rules of the honest policy, the early rising, the power of
+knowledge, the infinite capacity of taking pains that was genius, could
+do, too. She had been the toy of chance too long. She would grasp
+chance, now, and make it serve her. The perseverance that Anna brought
+to her hospital work, that Josephine exercised in her studies, Susan,
+lacking a gift, lacking special training, would seriously devote to the
+business of getting married. Girls DID marry. She would presumably
+marry some day, and Peter Coleman would marry. Why not, having advanced
+a long way in this direction, to each other?
+
+There was, in fact, no alternative in her case. She knew no other
+eligible man half as well. If Peter Coleman went out of her life, what
+remained? A somewhat insecure position in a wholesale drug-house, at
+forty dollars a month, and half a third-story bedroom in a
+boarding-house.
+
+Susan was not a calculating person. She knew that Peter Coleman liked
+her immensely, and that he could love her deeply, too. She knew that
+her feeling for him was only held from an extreme by an inherited
+feminine instinct of self-preservation. Marriage, and especially this
+marriage, meant to her a great many pleasant things, a splendid,
+lovable man with whom to share life, a big home to manage and delight
+in, a conspicuous place in society, and one that she knew that she
+could fill gracefully and well. Marriage meant children, dear little
+white-clad sons, with sturdy bare knees, and tiny daughters
+half-smothered in lace and ribbons; it meant power, power to do good,
+to develop her own gifts; it meant, above all, a solution of the
+problems of her youth. No more speculations, no more vagaries, safely
+anchored, happily absorbed in normal cares and pleasures, Susan could
+rest on her laurels, and look about her in placid content!
+
+No more serious thought assailed her. Other thoughts than these were
+not "nice." Susan safe-guarded her wandering fancies as sternly as she
+did herself, would as quickly have let Peter, or any other man, kiss
+her, as to have dreamed of the fundamental and essential elements of
+marriage. These, said Auntie, "came later." Susan was quite content to
+ignore them. That the questions that "came later" might ruin her life
+or unmake her compact, she did not know. At this point it might have
+made no difference in her attitude. Her affection for Peter was quite
+as fresh and pure as her feeling for a particularly beloved brother
+would have been.
+
+"You're dated three-deep for Thursday night, I presume?"
+
+"Peter--how you do creep up behind one!" Susan turned, on the deck, to
+face him laughingly. "What did you say?"
+
+"I said--but where are you going?"
+
+"Upstairs to lunch. Where did you think?" Susan exhibited the little
+package in her hand. "Do I look like a person about to go to a Browning
+Cotillion, or to take a dip in the Pacific?"
+
+"No," gurgled Peter, "but I was wishing we could lunch together.
+However, I'm dated with Hunter. But what about Thursday night?"
+
+"Thursday." Susan reflected. "Peter, I can't!"
+
+"All foolishness. You can."
+
+"No, honestly! Georgie and Joe are coming. The first time."
+
+"Oh, but you don't have to be there!"
+
+"Oh, but yes I do!"
+
+"Well---" Mr. Coleman picked a limp rubber bathing cap from the top of
+a case, and distended it on two well-groomed hands. "Well, Evangeline,
+how's Sat.? The great American pay-day!"
+
+"Busy Saturday, too. Too bad. I'm sorry, Peter."
+
+"Woman, you lie!"
+
+"Of course you can insult me, sir. I'm only a working girl!"
+
+"No, but who have you got a date with?" Peter said curiously. "You're
+blushing like mad! You're not engaged at all!"
+
+"Yes, I am. Truly. Lydia Lord is taking the civil service examinations;
+she wants to get a position in the public library. And I promised that
+I'd take Mary's dinner up and sit with her."
+
+"Oh, shucks! You could get out of that! However----I'll tell you what,
+Susan. I was going off with Russ on Sunday, but I'll get out of it, and
+we'll go see guard mount at the Presidio, and have tea with Aunt Clara,
+what?"
+
+"I don't believe they have guard mount on Sundays."
+
+"Well, then we'll go feed the gold-fish in the Japanese gardens,--they
+eat on Sundays, the poor things! Nobody ever converted them."
+
+"Honestly, Peter---"
+
+"Look here, Susan!" he exclaimed, suddenly aroused. "Are you trying to
+throw me down? Well, of all gall!"
+
+Susan's heart began to thump.
+
+"No, of course I'm not!"
+
+"Well, then, shall I get tickets for Monday night?"
+
+"Not Monday."
+
+"Look here, Susan! Somebody's been stuffing you, I can see it! Was it
+Auntie? Come on, now, what's the matter, all of a sudden?"
+
+"There's nothing sudden about it," Susan said, with dignity, "but
+Auntie does think that I go about with you a good deal---"
+
+Peter was silent. Susan, stealing a glance at his face, saw that it was
+very red.
+
+"Oh, I love that! I'm crazy about it!" he said, grinning. Then, with
+sudden masterfulness, "That's all ROT! I'm coming for you on Sunday,
+and we'll go feed the fishes!"
+
+And he was gone. Susan ate her lunch very thoughtfully, satisfied on
+the whole with the first application of the new plan.
+
+On Sunday afternoon Mr. Coleman duly presented himself at the
+boarding-house, but he was accompanied by Miss Fox, to whom Susan, who
+saw her occasionally at the Saunders', had taken a vague dislike, and
+by a Mr. Horace Carter, fat, sleepy, and slightly bald at twenty-six.
+
+"I brought 'em along to pacify Auntie," said Peter on the car.
+
+Susan made a little grimace.
+
+"You don't like Con? Oh, she's loads of sport!" he assured her. "And
+you'll like Carter, too, he's loads of fun!"
+
+But Susan liked nobody and nothing that day. It was a failure from
+beginning to end. The sky was overcast, gloomy. Not a leaf stirred on
+the dripping trees, in the silent Park, fog filled all the little
+canons. There were very few children on the merry-go-rounds, or in the
+swings, and very few pleasure-seekers in the museum and the
+conservatories. Miss Fox was quite comfortable in white furs, but Susan
+felt chilly. She tried to strike a human spark from Mr. Carter, but
+failed. Attempts at a general conversation also fell flat.
+
+They listened to the band for a little while, but it was too cold to
+sit still very long, and when Peter proposed tea at the Occidental,
+Susan visibly brightened. But the shamed color rose in her face when
+Miss Fox languidly assured him that if he wanted her mother to scalp
+her, well and good; if not, he would please not mention tea downtown.
+
+She added that Mama was having a tea herself to-day, or she would ask
+them all to come home with her. This put Susan in an uncomfortable
+position of which she had to make the best.
+
+"If it wasn't for an assorted bunch of boarders," said Susan, "I would
+ask you all to our house."
+
+Miss Fox eyed her curiously a moment, then spoke to Peter.
+
+"Well, do let's do something, Peter! Let's go to the Japanese garden."
+
+To the Japanese garden they went, for a most unsatisfactory tea. Miss
+Fox, it appeared, had been to Japan,--"with Dolly Ripley, Peter," said
+she, carelessly mentioning the greatest of California's heiresses, and
+she delighted the little bowing, smiling tea-woman with a few words in
+her native tongue. Susan admired this accomplishment, with the others,
+as she drank the tasteless fluid from tiny bowls.
+
+Only four o'clock! What an endless afternoon it had been!
+
+Peter took her home, and they chatted on the steps gaily enough, in the
+winter twilight. But Susan cried herself to sleep that night. This
+first departure from her rule had proven humiliating and disastrous;
+she determined not to depart from it again.
+
+Georgie and the doctor came to the house for the one o'clock Christmas
+dinner, the doctor instantly antagonizing his wife's family by the
+remark that his mother always had her Christmas dinner at night, and
+had "consented" to their coming, on condition that they come home again
+early in the afternoon. However, it was delightful to have Georgie back
+again, and the cousins talked and laughed together for an hour, in Mary
+Lou's room. Almost the first question from the bride was of Susan's
+love-affair, and what Peter's Christmas gift had been.
+
+"It hasn't come yet, so I don't know myself!" Susan said readily. But
+that evening, when Georgie was gone and her aunt and cousins were at
+church, she sat down to write to Peter.
+
+  MY DEAR PETER (wrote Susan):
+
+ This is a perfectly exquisite pin, and you are a dear to have
+  remembered my admiring a pearl crescent months ago. I
+  never saw a pin that I liked better, but it's far too handsome
+  a gift for me to keep. I haven't even dared show it to Auntie
+  and the girls! I am sending it back to you, though I hate to
+  let it go, and thank you a thousand times.
+
+                      Always affectionately yours,
+
+                                         SUSAN BROWN.
+
+Peter answered immediately from the country house where he was spending
+the holidays. Susan read his letter in the office, two days after
+Christmas.
+
+ DEAR PANSY IRENE:
+
+ I see Auntie's fine Italian hand in this! You wait till your
+  father gets home, I'll learn you to sass back! Tell Mrs. Lancaster
+  that it's an imitation and came in a box of lemon drops,
+  and put it on this instant! The more you wear the better, this
+  cold weather!
+
+ I've got the bulliest terrier ever, from George. Show him
+  to you next week.                      PETER.
+
+Frowning thoughtfully, her eyes still on the scribbled half-sheet,
+Susan sat down at her desk, and reached for paper and pen. She wrote
+readily, and sent the letter out at once by the office boy.
+
+ DEAR PETER:
+
+ Please don't make any more fuss about the pin. I can't
+  accept it, and that's all there is to it. The candy was quite
+  enough--I thought you were going to send me books. Hadn't
+  you better change your mind and send me a book? As ever,
+                                        S. B.
+
+To which Peter, after a week's interval, answered briefly:
+
+ DEAR SUSAN:
+
+ This fuss about the pin gives me a pain. I gave a dozen
+  gifts handsomer than that, and nobody else seems to be kicking.
+
+
+ Be a good girl, and Love the Giver.                PETER.
+
+This ended the correspondence. Susan put the pin away in the back of
+her bureau-drawer, and tried not to think about the matter.
+
+January was cold and dark. Life seemed to be made to match. Susan
+caught cold from a worn-out overshoe, and spent an afternoon and a day
+in bed, enjoying the rest from her aching head to her tired feet, but
+protesting against each one of the twenty trips that Mary Lou made up
+and downstairs for her comfort. She went back to the office on the
+third day, but felt sick and miserable for a long time and gained
+strength slowly.
+
+One rainy day, when Peter Coleman was alone in Mr. Brauer's office, she
+took the little jeweler's box in and laid it beside him on the desk.
+
+"This is all darn foolishness!" Peter said, really annoyed.
+
+"Well---" Susan shrugged wearily, "it's the way I feel about it."
+
+"I thought you were more of a sport!" he said impatiently, holding the
+box as if he did not quite know what to do with it.
+
+"Perhaps I'm not," Susan said quietly. She felt as if the world were
+slowly, dismally coming to an end, but she stood her ground.
+
+An awkward silence ensued. Peter slipped the little box into his
+pocket. They were both standing at his high desk, resting their elbows
+upon it, and half-turned, so that they faced each other.
+
+"Well," he said, discontentedly, "I've got to give you something or
+other for Christmas. What'll it be?"
+
+"Nothing at all, Peter," Susan protested, "just don't say anything more
+about it!"
+
+He meditated, scowling.
+
+"Are you dated for to-morrow night?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," Susan said simply. The absence of explanation was extremely
+significant.
+
+"So you're not going out with me any more?" he asked, after a pause.
+
+"Not--for awhile," Susan agreed, with a little difficulty. She felt a
+horrible inclination to cry.
+
+"Well, gosh, I hope somebody is pleased at the trouble she has made!"
+Peter burst out angrily.
+
+"If you mean Auntie, Peter," indignation dried Susan's tears, "you are
+quite mistaken! Anyway, she would be quite right not to want me to
+accept expensive gifts from a man whose position is so different from
+my own---"
+
+"Rot!" said Peter, flushing, "that sounds like servants' talk!"
+
+"Well, of course I know it is nonsense---" Susan began. And, despite
+her utmost effort, two tears slipped down her cheeks.
+
+"And if we were engaged it would be all right, is that it?" Peter said,
+after an embarrassed pause.
+
+"Yes, but I don't want you to think for one instant---" Susan began,
+with flaming cheeks.
+
+"I wish to the Lord people would mind their own business," Peter said
+vexedly. There was a pause. Then he added, cheerfully, "Tell 'em we're
+engaged then, that'll shut 'em up!"
+
+The world rocked for Susan.
+
+"Oh, but Peter, we can't--it wouldn't be true!"
+
+"Why wouldn't it be true?" he demanded, perversely.
+
+"Because we aren't!" persisted Susan, rubbing an old blot on the desk
+with a damp forefinger.
+
+"I thought one day we said that when I was forty-five and you were
+forty-one we were going to get married?" Peter presently reminded her,
+half in earnest, half irritated.
+
+"D-d-did we?" stammered Susan, smiling up at him through a mist of
+tears.
+
+"Sure we did. We said we were going to start a stock-ranch, and raise
+racers, don't you remember?"
+
+A faint recollection of the old joke came to her.
+
+"Well, then, are we to let people know that in twenty years we intend
+to be married?" she asked, laughing uncertainly.
+
+Peter gave his delighted shout of amusement. The conversation had
+returned to familiar channels.
+
+"Lord, don't tell anyone! WE'LL know it, that's enough!" he said.
+
+That was all. There was no chance for sentiment, they could not even
+clasp hands, here in the office. Susan, back at her desk, tried to
+remember exactly what HAD been said and implied.
+
+"Peter, I'll have to tell Auntie!" she had exclaimed.
+
+Peter had not objected, had not answered indeed.
+
+"I'll have to take my time about telling MY aunt," he had said, "but
+there's time enough! See here, Susan, I'm dated with Barney White in
+Berkeley to-night--is that all right?"
+
+"Surely!" Susan had assured him laughingly.
+
+"You see," Peter had explained, "it'll be a very deuce of a time before
+we'll want everyone to know. There's any number of things to do. So
+perhaps it's just as well if people don't suspect---"
+
+"Peter, how extremely like you not to care what people think as long as
+we're not engaged, and not to want them to suspect it when we are!"
+Susan could say, smiling above the deep hurt in her heart.
+
+And Peter laughed cheerfully again.
+
+Then Mr. Brauer came in, and Susan went back to her desk, brain and
+heart in a whirl. But presently one fact disengaged itself from a mist
+of doubts and misgivings, hopes and terrors. She and Peter were engaged
+to be married! What if vows and protestations, plans and confidences
+were still all to come, what if the very first kiss was still to come?
+The essential thing remained; they were engaged, the question was
+settled at last.
+
+Peter was not, at this time, quite the ideal lover. But in what was he
+ever conventional; when did he ever do the expected thing? No; she
+would gain so much more than any other woman ever had gained by her
+marriage, she would so soon enter on a life that would make these days
+seem only a troubled dream, that she could well afford to dispense with
+some of the things her romantic nature half expected now. It might not
+be quite comprehensible in him, but it was certainly a convenience for
+her that he seemed to so dread an announcement just now. She must have
+some gowns for the entertainments that would be given them; she must
+have some money saved for trousseau; she must arrange a little tea at
+home, when, the boarders being eliminated, Peter could come to meet a
+few of the very special old friends. These things took time. Susan
+spent the dreamy, happy afternoon in desultory planning.
+
+Peter went out at three o'clock with Barney White, looking in to nod
+Susan a smiling good-by. Susan returned to her dreams, determined that
+she would find the new bond as easy or as heavy as he chose to make it.
+She had only to wait, and fate would bring this wonderful thing her
+way; it would be quite like Peter to want to do the thing suddenly,
+before long, summon his aunt and uncle, her aunt and cousins, and
+announce the wedding and engagement to the world at once.
+
+Lost in happy dreams, she did not see Thorny watching her, or catch the
+intense, wistful look with which Mr. Brauer so often followed her.
+
+Susan had a large share of the young German's own dreams just now, a
+demure little Susan in a checked gingham apron, tasting jelly on a
+vine-shaded porch, or basting a chicken in a sunny kitchen, or pouring
+her lord's coffee from a shining pot. The dream Susan's hair was
+irreproachably neat, she wore shining little house-slippers, and she
+always laughed out,--the ringing peal of bells that Henry Brauer had
+once heard in the real Susan's laugh,--when her husband teased her
+about her old fancy for Peter Coleman. And the dream Susan was the
+happy mother of at least five little girls--all girls!--a little Susan
+that was called "Sanna," and an Adelaide for the gross-mutter in the
+old country, and a Henrietta for himself----
+
+Clean and strong and good, well-born and ambitious, gentle, and full of
+the love of books and music and flowers and children, here was a mate
+at whose side Susan might have climbed to the very summit of her
+dreams. But she never fairly looked at Mr. Brauer, and after a few
+years his plump dark little dumpling of a Cousin Linda came from Bremen
+to teach music in the Western city, and to adore clever Cousin
+Heinrich, and then it was time to hunt for the sunny kitchen and buy
+the shining coffee-pot and change little Sanna's name to Linchen.
+
+For Susan was engaged to Peter Coleman! She went home on this
+particular evening to find a great box of American Beauty roses waiting
+for her, and a smaller box with them--the pearl crescent again! What
+could the happy Susan do but pin on a rose with the crescent, her own
+cheeks two roses, and go singing down to dinner?
+
+"Lovey, Auntie doesn't like to see you wearing a pin like that!" Mrs.
+Lancaster said, noticing it with troubled eyes. "Didn't Peter send it
+to you?"
+
+"Yes'm," said Susan, dimpling, as she kissed the older woman.
+
+"Don't you know that a man has no respect for a girl who doesn't keep
+him a little at a distance, dear?"
+
+"Oh,--is--that--so!" Susan spun her aunt about, in a mad reel.
+
+"Susan!" gasped Mrs. Lancaster. Her voice changed, she caught the girl
+by the shoulders, and looked into the radiant face. "Susan?" she asked.
+"My child---!"
+
+And Susan strangled her with a hug, and whispered, "Yes--yes--yes! But
+don't you dare tell anyone!"
+
+Poor Mrs. Lancaster was quite unable to tell anyone anything for a few
+moments. She sat down in her place, mechanically returning the evening
+greetings of her guests. Her handsome, florid face was quite pale. The
+soup came on and she roused herself to serve it; dinner went its usual
+way.
+
+But going upstairs after dinner, Mary Lou, informed of the great event
+in some mysterious way, gave Susan's waist a girlish squeeze and said
+joyously, "Ma had to tell me, Sue! I AM so glad!" and Virginia, sitting
+with bandaged eyes in a darkened room, held out both hands to her
+cousin, later in the evening, and said, "God bless our dear little
+girl!" Billy knew it too, for the next morning he gave Susan one of his
+shattering hand-grasps and muttered that he was "darned glad, and
+Coleman was darned lucky," and Georgie, who was feeling a little better
+than usual, though still pale and limp, came in to rejoice and exclaim
+later in the day, a Sunday.
+
+All of this made Susan vaguely uneasy. It was true, of course, and yet
+somehow it was all too new, too strange to be taken quite happily as a
+matter of course. She could only smile when Mary Lou assured her that
+she must keep a little carriage; when Virginia sighed, "To think of the
+good that you can do"; when Georgie warned her against living with the
+old people.
+
+"It's awful, take my word for it!" said Georgie, her hat laid aside,
+her coat loosened, very much enjoying a cup of tea in the dining-room.
+Young Mrs. O'Connor did not grow any closer to her husband's mother.
+But it was to be noticed that toward her husband himself her attitude
+was changed. Joe was altogether too smart to be cooped up there in the
+Mission, it appeared; Joe was working much too hard, and yet he carried
+her breakfast upstairs to her every morning; Joe was an angel with his
+mother.
+
+"I wish--of course you can explain to Peter now--but I wish that I
+could give you a little engagement tea," said Georgie, very much the
+matron.
+
+"Oh, surely!" Susan hastened to reassure her. Nothing could have been
+less to her liking than any festivity involving the O'Connors just now.
+Susan had dined at the gloomy Mission Street house once, and retained a
+depressing memory of the dark, long parlor, with only one shutter
+opened in the bay window, the grim elderly hostess, in mourning, who
+watched Georgie incessantly, the hard-faced elderly maid, so obviously
+in league with her mistress against the new-comer, and the dinner that
+progressed from a thick, sad-looking soup to a firm, cold apple pie.
+There had been an altercation between the doctor and his mother on the
+occasion of Susan's visit because there had been no fire laid in
+Georgie's big, cold, upstairs bedroom. Susan, remembering all this,
+could very readily excuse Georgie from the exercise of any hospitality
+whatever.
+
+"Don't give it another thought, Georgie!" said she.
+
+"There'll be entertaining enough, soon!" said Mary Lou.
+
+"But we aren't going to announce it for ever so long!" Susan said.
+
+"Please, PLEASE don't tell anyone else, Auntie!" she besought over and
+over again.
+
+"My darling, not for the world! I can perfectly appreciate the delicacy
+of feeling that makes you wish to leave all that to Peter! And who
+knows? Only ourselves, and Billy, who is as close to you as a dear
+brother could be, and Joe---"
+
+"Oh, is Georgie going to tell Joe?" Susan asked, dismayed.
+
+"Well, now, perhaps she won't," Mrs. Lancaster said soothingly. "And I
+think you will find that a certain young gentleman is only too anxious
+to tell his friends what a lovely girl he has won!" finished Auntie
+archly.
+
+Susan was somehow wretchedly certain that she would find nothing of the
+kind. As a matter of fact, it chanced to be a week when she had no
+engagements made with Peter, and two days went by--three--and still she
+did not hear from him.
+
+By Thursday she was acutely miserable. He was evidently purposely
+avoiding her. Susan had been sleeping badly for several nights, she
+felt feverish with anxiety and uncertainty. On Thursday, when the girls
+filed out of the office at noon, she kept her seat, for Peter was in
+the small office and she felt as if she must have a talk with him or
+die. She heard him come into Front Office the moment she was alone, and
+began to fuss with her desk without raising her eyes.
+
+"Hello!" said Peter, sitting on a corner of the desk. "I've been
+terribly busy with the Gerald theatricals, and that's why you haven't
+seen me. I promised Mary Gerald two months ago that I'd be in 'em, but
+by George! she's leaving the whole darn thing to me! How are you?"
+
+So gay, so big, so infinitely dear! Susan's doubts melted like mist.
+She only wanted not to make him angry.
+
+"I've been wondering where you were," she said mildly.
+
+"And a little bit mad in spots?" queried Peter.
+
+"Well---" Susan took firm grip of her courage. "After our little talk
+on Saturday," she reminded him, smilingly.
+
+"Sure," said Peter. And after a moment, thoughtfully staring down at
+the desk, he added again rather heavily, "Sure."
+
+"I told my aunt--I had to," said Susan then.
+
+"Well, that's all right," Peter responded, after a perceptible pause.
+"Nobody else knows?"
+
+"Oh, nobody!" Susan answered, her heart fluttering nervously at his
+tone, and her courage suddenly failing.
+
+"And Auntie will keep mum, of course," he said thoughtfully. "It would
+be so deuced awkward, Susan," he began.
+
+"Oh, I know it!" she said eagerly. It seemed so much, after the unhappy
+apprehensions of the few days past, to have him acknowledge the
+engagement, to have him only concerned that it should not be
+prematurely made known!
+
+"Can't we have dinner together this evening, Sue? And go see that man
+at the Orpheum,--they say he's a wonder!"
+
+"Why, yes, we could. Peter,---" Susan made a brave resolution. "Peter,
+couldn't you dine with us, at Auntie's, I mean?"
+
+"Why, yes, I could," he said hesitatingly. But the moment had given
+Susan time to reconsider the impulsively given invitation. For a dozen
+reasons she did not want to take Peter home with her to-night. The
+single one that the girls and Auntie would be quite unable to conceal
+the fact that they knew of her engagement was enough. So when Peter
+said regretfully, "But I thought we'd have more fun alone! Telephone
+your aunt and ask her if we can't have a pious little dinner at the
+Palace, or at the Occidental--we'll not see anybody there!" Susan was
+only too glad to agree.
+
+Auntie of course consented, a little lenience was permissible now.
+
+"... But not supper afterwards, dear," said Auntie. "If Peter teases,
+tell him that he will have you to himself soon enough! And Sue," she
+added, with a hint of reproach in her voice, "remember that we expect
+to see Peter out here very soon. Of course it's not as if your mother
+was alive, dear, I know that! Still, even an old auntie has some claim!"
+
+"Well, Auntie, darling," said Susan, very low, "I asked him to dinner
+to-night. And then it occurred to me, don't you know?---that it might
+be better---"
+
+"Gracious me, don't think of bringing him out here that way!"
+ejaculated Mrs. Lancaster. "No, indeed. You're quite right. But arrange
+it for very soon, Sue."
+
+"Oh, surely I will!" Susan said, relievedly.
+
+After an afternoon of happy anticipation it was a little disappointing
+to find that she and Peter were not to be alone, a gentle, pretty Miss
+Hall and her very charming brother were added to the party when Peter
+met Susan at six o'clock.
+
+"Friends of Aunt Clara's," Peter explained to Susan. "I had to!"
+
+Susan, liking the Halls, sensibly made the best of them. She let Miss
+Katharine monopolize Peter, and did her best to amuse Sam. She was in
+high spirits at dinner, laughed, and kept the others laughing, during
+the play,--for the plan had been changed for these guests, and
+afterwards was so amusing and gay at the little supper party that Peter
+was his most admiring self all the way home. But Susan went to bed with
+a baffled aching in her heart. This was not being engaged,--something
+was wrong.
+
+She did not see Peter on Friday; caught only a glimpse of him on
+Saturday, and on Sunday learned, from one of the newspapers, that "Mr.
+Peter Coleman, who was to have a prominent part in the theatricals to
+take place at Mrs. Newton Gerald's home next week, would probably
+accompany Mr. Forrest Gerald on a trip to the Orient in February, to be
+gone for some months."
+
+Susan folded the paper, and sat staring blankly ahead of her for a long
+time. Then she went to the telephone, and, half stunned by the violent
+beating of her heart, called for the Baxter residence.
+
+Burns answered. Mr. Coleman had gone out about an hour ago with Mr.
+White. Burns did not know where. Mr. Coleman would be back for a seven
+o'clock dinner. Certainly, Burns would ask him to telephone at once to
+Miss Brown.
+
+Excited, troubled, and yet not definitely apprehensive, Susan dressed
+herself very prettily, and went out into the clear, crisp sunshine. She
+decided suddenly to go and see Georgie. She would come home early, hear
+from Peter, perhaps dine with him and his uncle and aunt. And, when she
+saw him, she would tell him, in the jolliest and sweetest way, that he
+must make his plans to have their engagement announced at once. Any
+other course was unfair to her, to him, to his friends.
+
+If Peter objected, Susan would assume an offended air. That would
+subdue him instantly. Or, if it did not, they might quarrel, and Susan
+liked the definiteness of a quarrel. She must force this thing to a
+conclusion one way or the other now, her own dignity demanded it. As
+for Peter, his own choice was as limited as hers. He must agree to the
+announcement,--and after all, why shouldn't he agree to it?--or he must
+give Susan up, once and for all. Susan smiled. He wouldn't do that!
+
+It was a delightful day. The cars were filled with holiday-makers, and
+through the pleasant sunshine of the streets young parents were guiding
+white-coated toddlers, and beautifully dressed little girls were
+wheeling dolls.
+
+Susan found Georgie moping alone in the big, dark, ugly house; Aggie
+was out, and Dr. O'Connor and his mother were making their annual
+pilgrimage to the grave of their husband and father. The cousins
+prepared supper together, in Aggie's exquisitely neat kitchen, not that
+this was really necessary, but because the kitchen was so warm and
+pleasant. The kettle was ticking on the back of the range, a scoured
+empty milk-pan awaited the milk-man. Susan contrasted her bright
+prospects with her cousin's dull lot, even while she cheerfully scolded
+Georgie for being so depressed and lachrymose.
+
+They fell to talking of marriage, Georgie's recent one, Susan's
+approaching one. The wife gave delicate hints, the wife-to-be revealed
+far more of her secret soul than she had ever dreamed of revealing.
+Georgie sat, idly clasping the hands on which the wedding-ring had
+grown loose, Susan turned and reversed the wheels of a Dover egg-beater.
+
+"Marriage is such a mystery, before you're into it," Georgie said. "But
+once you're married, why, you feel as if you could attract any man in
+the world. No more bashfulness, Sue, no more uncertainty. You treat men
+exactly as you would girls, and of course they like it!"
+
+Susan pondered this going home. She thought she knew how to apply it to
+her attitude toward Peter.
+
+Peter had not telephoned. Susan, quietly determined to treat him, or
+attempt to treat him, with at least the frank protest she would have
+shown to another girl, telephoned to the Baxter house at once. Mr.
+Coleman was not yet at home.
+
+Some of her resolution crumbled. It was very hard to settle down, after
+supper, to an evening of solitaire. In these quiet hours, Susan felt
+less confident of Peter's attitude when she announced her ultimatum;
+felt that she must not jeopardize their friendship now, must run no
+risks.
+
+She had worked herself into a despondent and discouraged frame of mind
+when the telephone rang, at ten o'clock. It was Peter.
+
+"Hello, Sue!" said Peter gaily. "I'm just in. Burns said that you
+telephoned."
+
+"Burns said no more than the truth," said Susan. It was the old note of
+levity, anything but natural to to-night's mood and the matter in hand.
+But it was what Peter expected and liked. She heard him laugh with his
+usual gaiety.
+
+"Yes, he's a truthful little soul. He takes after me. What was it?"
+
+Susan made a wry mouth in the dark.
+
+"Nothing at all," she said, "I just telephoned--I thought we might go
+out somewhere together."
+
+"GREAT HEAVEN, WE'RE ENGAGED!" she reminded her sinking heart, fiercely.
+
+"Oh, too bad! I was at the Gerald's, at one of those darn rehearsals."
+
+A silence.
+
+"Oh, all right!" said Susan. A writhing sickness of spirit threatened
+to engulf her, but her voice was quiet.
+
+"I'm sorry, Sue," Peter said quickly in a lower tone, "I couldn't very
+well get out of it without having them all suspect. You can see that!"
+
+Susan knew him so well! He had never had to do anything against his
+will. He couldn't understand that his engagement entailed any
+obligations. He merely wanted always to be happy and popular, and have
+everyone else happy and popular, too.
+
+"And what about this trip to Japan with Mr. Gerald?" she asked.
+
+There was another silence. Then Peter said, in an annoyed tone:
+
+"Oh, Lord, that would probably be for a MONTH, or six weeks at the
+outside!"
+
+"I see," said Susan tonelessly.
+
+"I've got Forrest here with me to-night," said Peter, apropos of
+nothing.
+
+"Oh, then I won't keep you!" Susan said.
+
+"Well," he laughed, "don't be so polite about it!--I'll see you
+to-morrow?"
+
+"Surely," Susan said. "Good-night."
+
+"Over the reservoir!" he said, and she hung up her receiver.
+
+She did not sleep that night. Excitement, anger, shame kept her wakeful
+and tossing, hour after hour. Susan's head ached, her face burned, her
+thoughts were in a mad whirl. What to do--what to do--what to do----!
+How to get out of this tangle; where to go to begin again, away from
+these people who knew her and loved her, and would drive her mad with
+their sympathy and curiosity!
+
+The clock struck three--four--five. At five o'clock Susan, suddenly
+realizing her own loneliness and loss, burst into bitter crying and
+after that she slept.
+
+The next day, from the office, she wrote to Peter Coleman:
+
+ MY DEAR PETER:
+
+ I am beginning to think that our little talk in the office a
+  week ago was a mistake, and that you think so. I don't say
+  anything of my own feelings; you know them. I want to ask
+  you honestly to tell me of yours. Things cannot go on this
+  way.                     Affectionately,
+                                     SUSAN.
+
+This was on Monday. On Tuesday the papers recorded everywhere Mr. Peter
+Coleman's remarkable success in Mrs. Newton Gerald's private
+theatricals. On Wednesday Susan found a letter from him on her desk, in
+the early afternoon, scribbled on the handsome stationery of his club.
+
+ MY DEAR SUSAN:
+
+ I shall always think that you are the bulliest girl I ever knew,
+  and if you throw me down on that arrangement for our old
+  age I shall certainly slap you on the wrist. But I know you
+  will think better of it before you are forty-one! What you
+  mean by "things" I don't know. I hope you're not calling ME
+  a thing!
+
+ Forrest is pulling my arm off. See you soon.
+                               Yours as ever,
+                                         PETER.
+
+The reading of it gave Susan a sensation of physical illness. She felt
+chilled and weak. How false and selfish and shallow it seemed; had
+Peter always been that? And what was she to do now, to-morrow and the
+next day and the next? What was she to do this moment, indeed? She felt
+as if thundering agonies had trampled the very life out of her heart;
+yet somehow she must look up, somehow face the office, and the curious
+eyes of the girls.
+
+"Love-letter, Sue?" said Thorny, sauntering up with a bill in her hand.
+"Valentine's Day, you know!"
+
+"No, darling; a bill," answered Susan, shutting it in a drawer.
+
+She snapped up her light, opened her ledger, and dipped a pen in the
+ink.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+Wealth
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The days that followed were so many separate agonies, composed of an
+infinite number of lesser agonies, for Susan. Her only consolation,
+which weakened or strengthened with her moods, was that, inasmuch as
+this state of affairs was unbearable she would not be expected to bear
+it. Something must happen. Or, if nothing happened, she would simply
+disappear,--go on the stage, accept a position as a traveling governess
+or companion, run away to one of the big eastern cities where, under an
+assumed name, she might begin life all over again.
+
+Hour after hour shame and hurt had their way with her. Susan had to
+face the office, to hide her heart from Thorny and the other girls, to
+be reminded by the empty desk in Mr. Brauer's office, and by every
+glimpse she had of old Mr. Baxter, of the happy dreams she had once
+dreamed here in this same place.
+
+But it was harder far at home. Mrs. Lancaster alternated between tender
+moods, when she discussed the whole matter mournfully from beginning to
+end, and moods of violent rebellion, when everyone but Susan was blamed
+for the bitter disappointment of all their hopes. Mary Lou compared
+Peter to Ferd Eastman, to Peter's disadvantage. Virginia recommended
+quiet, patient endurance of whatever might be the will of Providence.
+Susan hardly knew which attitude humiliated and distressed her most.
+All her thoughts led her into bitterness now, and she could be
+distracted only for a brief moment or two from the memories that
+pressed so close about her heart. Ah, if she only had a little money,
+enough to make possible her running away, or a profession into which
+she could plunge, and in which she could distinguish herself, or a
+great talent, or a father who would stand by her and take care of
+her----
+
+And the bright head would go down on her hands, and the tears have
+their way.
+
+"Headache?" Thorny would ask, full of sympathy.
+
+"Oh, splitting!" And Susan would openly dry her eyes, and manage to
+smile.
+
+Sometimes, in a softer mood, her busy brain straightened the whole
+matter out. Peter, returning from Japan, would rush to her with a full
+explanation. Of course he cared for her--he had never thought of
+anything else--of course he considered that they were engaged! And
+Susan, after keeping him in suspense for a period that even Auntie
+thought too long, would find herself talking to him, scolding,
+softening, finally laughing, and at last--and for the first time!--in
+his arms.
+
+Only a lovers' quarrel; one heard of them continually. Something to
+laugh about and to forget!
+
+She took up the old feminine occupation of watching the post, weak with
+sudden hope when Mary Lou called up to her, "Letter for you on the
+mantel, Sue!" and sick with disappointment over and over again. Peter
+did not write.
+
+Outwardly the girl went her usual round, perhaps a little thinner and
+with less laughter, but not noticeably changed. She basted cuffs into
+her office suit, and cleaned it with benzine, caught up her lunch and
+umbrella and ran for her car. She lunched and gossiped with Thorny and
+the others, walked uptown at noon to pay a gas-bill, took Virginia to
+the Park on Sundays to hear the music, or visited the Carrolls in
+Sausalito.
+
+But inwardly her thoughts were like whirling web. And in its very
+center was Peter Coleman. Everything that Susan did began and ended
+with the thought of him. She never entered the office without the hope
+that a fat envelope, covered with his dashing scrawl, lay on the desk.
+She never thought herself looking well without wishing that she might
+meet Peter that day, or looking ill that she did not fear it. She
+answered the telephone with a thrilling heart; it might be he! And she
+browsed over the social columns of the Sunday papers, longing and
+fearing to find his name. All day long and far into the night, her
+brain was busy with a reconciliation,--excuses, explanations,
+forgiveness. "Perhaps to-day," she said in the foggy mornings.
+"To-morrow," said her undaunted heart at night.
+
+The hope was all that sustained her, and how bitterly it failed her at
+times only Susan knew. Before the world she kept a brave face, evading
+discussion of Peter when she could, quietly enduring it when Mrs.
+Lancaster's wrath boiled over. But as the weeks went by, and the full
+wretchedness of the situation impressed itself upon her with quiet
+force, she sank under an overwhelming sense of wrong and loss. Nothing
+amazing was going to happen. She--who had seemed so free, so
+independent!--was really as fettered and as helpless as Virginia and
+Mary Lou. Susan felt sometimes as if she should go mad with suppressed
+feeling. She grew thin, dyspeptic, irritable, working hard, and finding
+her only relief in work, and reading in bed in the evening.
+
+The days slowly pushed her further and further from those happy times
+when she and Peter had been such good friends, had gone about so
+joyfully together. It was a shock to Susan to realize that she had not
+seen him nor heard from him for a month--for two months--for three.
+Emily Saunders was in the hospital for some serious operation, would be
+there for weeks; Ella was abroad. Susan felt as if her little glimpse
+of their world and Peter's had been a curious dream.
+
+Billy played a brother's part toward her now, always ready to take her
+about with him when he was free, and quite the only person who could
+spur her to anything like her old vigorous interest in life. They went
+very often to the Carrolls, and there, in the shabby old sitting-room,
+Susan felt happier than she did anywhere else. Everybody loved her,
+loved to have her there, and although they knew, and she knew that they
+knew, that something had gone very wrong with her, nobody asked
+questions, and Susan felt herself safe and sheltered. There was a shout
+of joy when she came in with Phil and Jo from the ferryboat. "Mother!
+here's Sue!" Betsey would follow the older girls upstairs to chatter
+while they washed their hands and brushed their hair, and, going down
+again, Susan would get the motherly kiss that followed Jo's. Later,
+when the lamp was lit, while Betsey and Jim wrangled amicably over
+their game, and Philip and Jo toiled with piano and violin, Susan sat
+next to Mrs. Carroll, and while they sewed, or between snatches of
+reading, they had long, and to the girl at least, memorable talks.
+
+It was all sweet and wholesome and happy. Susan used to wonder just
+what made this house different from all other houses, and why she liked
+to come here so much, to eat the simplest of meals, to wash dishes and
+brush floors, to rise in the early morning and cross the bay before the
+time she usually came downstairs at home. Of course, they loved her,
+they laughed at her jokes, they wanted this thing repeated and that
+repeated, they never said good-by to her without begging her to come
+again and thought no special occasion complete without her. That
+affected her, perhaps. Or perhaps the Carrolls were a little nicer than
+most people; when Susan reached this point in her thoughts she never
+failed to regret the loss of their money and position. If they had done
+this in spite of poverty and obscurity, what MIGHTN'T they have done
+with half a chance!
+
+In one of the lamplight talks Peter was mentioned, in connection with
+the patent window-washer, and Susan learned for the first time that he
+really had been instrumental in selling the patent for Mrs. Carroll for
+the astonishing sum of five hundred dollars!
+
+"I BEGGED him to tell me if that wasn't partly from the washer and
+partly from Peter Coleman," smiled Mrs. Carroll, "and he gave me his
+word of honor that he had really sold it for that! So--there went my
+doctor's bill, and a comfortable margin in the bank!"
+
+She admitted Susan into the secret of all her little economies; the
+roast that, cleverly alternated with one or two small meats, was served
+from Sunday until Saturday night, and no one any the worse! Susan began
+to watch the game that Mrs. Carroll made of her cooking; filling soups
+for the night that the meat was short, no sweet when the garden
+supplied a salad, or when Susan herself brought over a box of candy.
+She grew to love the labor that lay behind the touch of the thin,
+darned linen, the windows that shone with soapsuds, the crisp snowy
+ruffles of curtains and beds. She and Betts liked to keep the house
+vases filled with what they could find in the storm-battered garden,
+lifted the flattened chrysanthemums with reverent fingers, hunted out
+the wet violets. Susan abandoned her old idea of the enviable life of a
+lonely orphan, and began to long for a sister, a tumble-headed brother,
+for a mother above all. She loved to be included by the young Carrolls
+when they protested, "Just ourselves, Mother, nobody but the family!"
+and if Phil or Jimmy came to her when a coat-button was loose or a
+sleeve-lining needed a stitch, she was quite pathetically touched. She
+loved the constant happy noise and confusion in the house, Phil and
+Billy Oliver tussling in the stair-closet among the overshoes, Betts
+trilling over her bed-making, Mrs. Carroll and Jim replanting primroses
+with great calling and conference, and she and Josephine talking, as
+they swept the porches, as if they had never had a chance to talk
+before.
+
+Sometimes, walking at Anna's side to the beach on Sunday, a certain
+peace and content crept into Susan's heart, and the deep ache lifted
+like a curtain, and seemed to show a saner, wider, sweeter region
+beyond. Sometimes, tramping the wet hills, her whole being thrilled to
+some new note, Susan could think serenely of the future, could even be
+glad of all the past. It was as if Life, into whose cold, stern face
+she had been staring wistfully, had softened to the glimmer of a smile,
+had laid a hand, so lately used to strike, upon her shoulder in token
+of good-fellowship.
+
+With the good salt air in their faces, and the gray March sky pressing
+close above the silent circle of the hills about them, she and Anna
+walked many a bracing, tiring mile. Now and then they turned and smiled
+at each other, both young faces brightening.
+
+"Noisy, aren't we, Sue?"
+
+"Well, the others are making noise enough!"
+
+Poverty stopped them at every turn, these Carrolls. Susan saw it
+perhaps more clearly than they did. A hundred delightful and hospitable
+plans came into Mrs. Carroll's mind, only to be dismissed because of
+the expense involved. She would have liked to entertain, to keep her
+pretty daughters becomingly and richly dressed; she confided to Susan
+rather wistfully, that she was sorry not to be able to end the evenings
+with little chafing-dish suppers; "that sort of thing makes home so
+attractive to growing boys." Susan knew what Anna's own personal
+grievance was. "These are the best years of my life," Anna said,
+bitterly, one night, "and every cent of spending money I have is the
+fifty dollars a year the hospital pays. And even out of that they take
+breakage, in the laboratory or the wards!" Josephine made no secret of
+her detestation of their necessary economies.
+
+"Did you know I was asked to the Juniors this year?" she said to Susan
+one night.
+
+"The Juniors! You weren't!" Susan echoed incredulously. For the "Junior
+Cotillion" was quite the most exclusive and desirable of the city's
+winter dances for the younger set.
+
+"Oh, yes, I was. Mrs. Wallace probably did it," Josephine assured her,
+sighing. "They asked Anna last year," she said bitterly, "and I suppose
+next year they'll ask Betts, and then perhaps they'll stop."
+
+"Oh, but Jo-why couldn't you go! When so many girls are just CRAZY to
+be asked!"
+
+"Money," Josephine answered briefly.
+
+"But not much!" Susan lamented. The "Juniors" were not to be estimated
+in mere money.
+
+"Twenty-five for the ticket, and ten for the chaperone, and a gown, of
+course, and slippers and a wrap--Mother felt badly about it," Josephine
+said composedly. And suddenly she burst into tears, and threw herself
+down on the bed. "Don't let Mother hear, and don't think I'm an idiot!"
+she sobbed, as Susan came to kneel beside her and comfort her,
+"but--but I hate so to drudge away day after day, when I know I could
+be having GORGEOUS times, and making friends---!"
+
+Betts' troubles were more simple in that they were indefinite. Betts
+wanted to do everything, regardless of cost, suitability or season, and
+was quite as cross over the fact that they could not go camping in the
+Humboldt woods in midwinter, as she was at having to give up her ideas
+of a new hat or a theater trip. And the boys never complained
+specifically of poverty. Philip, won by deep plotting that he could not
+see to settle down quietly at home after dinner, was the gayest and
+best of company, and Jim's only allusions to a golden future were made
+when he rubbed his affectionate little rough head against his mother,
+pony-fashion, and promised her every luxury in the world as soon as he
+"got started."
+
+When Peter Coleman returned from the Orient, early in April, all the
+newspapers chronicled the fact that a large number of intimate friends
+met him at the dock. He was instantly swept into the social currents
+again; dinners everywhere were given for Mr. Coleman, box-parties and
+house-parties followed one another, the club claimed him, and the
+approaching opening of the season found him giving special attention to
+his yacht. Small wonder that Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's caught only
+occasional glimpses of him. Susan, somberly pursuing his name from
+paper to paper, felt that she was beginning to dislike him. She managed
+never to catch his eye, when he was in Mr. Brauer's office, and took
+great pains not to meet him.
+
+However, in the lingering sweet twilight of a certain soft spring
+evening, when she had left the office, and was beginning the long walk
+home, she heard sudden steps behind her, and turned to see Peter.
+
+"Aren't you the little seven-leagued booter! Wait a minute, Susan!
+C'est moi! How are you?"
+
+"How do you do, Peter?" Susan said pleasantly and evenly. She put her
+hand in the big gloved hand, and raised her eyes to the smiling eyes.
+
+"What car are you making for?" he asked, falling in step.
+
+"I'm walking," Susan said. "Too nice to ride this evening."
+
+"You're right," he said, laughing. "I wish I hadn't a date, I'd like
+nothing better than to walk it, too! However, I can go a block or two."
+
+He walked with her to Montgomery Street, and they talked of Japan and
+the Carrolls and of Emily Saunders. Then Peter said he must catch a
+California Street car, and they shook hands again and parted.
+
+It all seemed rather flat. Susan felt as if the little episode did not
+belong in the stormy history of their friendship at all, or as if she
+were long dead and were watching her earthly self from a distance with
+wise and weary eyes. What should she be feeling now? What would a
+stronger woman have done? Given him the cut direct, perhaps, or forced
+the situation to a point when something dramatic--satisfying--must
+follow.
+
+"I am weak," said Susan ashamedly to herself; "I was afraid he would
+think I cared,--would see that I cared!" And she walked on busy with
+self-contemptuous and humiliated thoughts. She had made it easy for him
+to take advantage of her. She had assumed for his convenience that she
+had suffered no more than he through their parting, and that all was
+again serene and pleasant between them. After to-night's casual,
+friendly conversation, no radical attitude would be possible on her
+part; he could congratulate himself that he still retained Susan's
+friendship, and could be careful--she knew he would be careful!--never
+to go too far again.
+
+Susan's estimate of Peter Coleman was no longer a particularly
+idealized one. But she had long ago come to the conclusion that his
+faults were the faults of his type and his class, excusable and
+understandable now, and to be easily conquered when a great emotion
+should sweep him once and for all away from the thought of himself. As
+he was absorbed in the thought of his own comfort, so, she knew, he
+could become absorbed in the thought of what was due his wife, the
+wider viewpoint would quickly become second nature with him; young Mrs.
+Peter Coleman would be among the most indulged and carefully considered
+of women. He would be as anxious that the relationship between his wife
+and himself should be harmonious and happy, as he was now to feel when
+he met her that he had no reason to avoid or to dread meeting Miss
+Susan Brown.
+
+If Susan would have preferred a little different attitude on his part,
+she could find no fault with this one. She had for so many months
+thought of Peter as the personification of all that she desired in life
+that she could not readily dismiss him as unworthy. Was he not still
+sweet and big and clean, rich and handsome and popular, socially
+prominent and suitable in age and faith and nationality?
+
+Susan had often heard her aunt and her aunt's friends remark that life
+was more dramatic than any book, and that their own lives on the stage
+would eclipse in sensational quality any play ever presented. But, for
+herself, life seemed deplorably, maddeningly undramatic. In any book,
+in any play, the situation between her and Peter must have been
+heightened to a definite crisis long before this. The mildest of little
+ingenues, as she came across a dimly lighted stage, in demure white and
+silver, could have handled this situation far more skillfully than
+Susan did; the most youthful of heroines would have met Peter to some
+purpose,--while surrounded by other admirers at a dance, or while
+galloping across a moor on her spirited pony.
+
+What would either of these ladies have done, she wondered, at meeting
+the offender when he appeared particularly well-groomed, prosperous and
+happy, while she herself was tired from a long office day, conscious of
+shabby gloves, of a shapeless winter hat? What could she do, except
+appear friendly and responsive? Susan consoled herself with the thought
+that her only alternative, an icy repulse of his friendly advances,
+would have either convinced him that she was too entirely common and
+childish to be worth another thought, or would have amused him hugely.
+She could fancy him telling his friends of his experience of the cut
+direct from a little girl in Front Office,--no names named--and hear
+him saying that "he loved it--he was crazy about it!"
+
+"You believe in the law of compensation, don't you, Aunt Jo?" asked
+Susan, on a wonderful April afternoon, when she had gone straight from
+the office to Sausalito. The two women were in the Carroll kitchen,
+Susan sitting at one end of the table, her thoughtful face propped in
+her hands, Mrs. Carroll busy making ginger cakes,--cutting out the flat
+little circles with an inverted wine-glass, transferring them to the
+pans with the tip of her flat knife, rolling the smooth dough, and
+spilling the hot cakes, as they came back from the oven, into a deep
+tin strainer to cool. Susan liked to watch her doing this, liked the
+pretty precision of every movement, the brisk yet unhurried repetition
+of events, her strong clever hands, the absorbed expression of her
+face, her fine, broad figure hidden by a stiffly-starched gown of faded
+blue cotton and a stiff white apron.
+
+Beyond the open window an exquisite day dropped to its close. It was
+the time of fruit-blossoms and feathery acacia, languid, perfumed
+breezes, lengthening twilights, opening roses and swaying plumes of
+lilac. Sausalito was like a little park, every garden ran over with
+sweetness and color, every walk was fringed with flowers, and hedged
+with the new green of young trees and blossoming hedges. Susan felt a
+delicious relaxation run through her blood; winter seemed really
+routed; to-day for the first time one could confidently prophesy that
+there would be summer presently, thin gowns and ocean bathing and
+splendid moons.
+
+"Yes, I believe in the law of compensation, to a great extent," the
+older woman answered thoughtfully, "or perhaps I should call it the law
+of solution. I truly believe that to every one of us on this earth is
+given the materials for a useful and a happy life; some people use them
+and some don't. But the chance is given alike."
+
+"Useful, yes," Susan conceded, "but usefulness isn't happiness."
+
+"Isn't it? I really think it is."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Jo," the girl burst out impatiently, "I don't mean for
+saints! I dare say there ARE some girls who wouldn't mind being poor
+and shabby and lonesome and living in a boarding-house, and who would
+be glad they weren't hump-backed, or blind, or Siberian prisoners! But
+you CAN'T say you think that a girl in my position has had a fair start
+with a girl who is just as young, and rich and pretty and clever, and
+has a father and mother and everything else in the world! And if you do
+say so," pursued Susan, with feeling, "you certainly can't MEAN so---"
+
+"But wait a minute, Sue! What girl, for instance?"
+
+"Oh, thousands of girls!" Susan said, vaguely. "Emily Saunders, Alice
+Chauncey---"
+
+"Emily Saunders! SUSAN! In the hospital for an operation every other
+month or two!" Mrs. Carroll reminded her.
+
+"Well, but---" Susan said eagerly. "She isn't really ill. She just
+likes the excitement and having them fuss over her. She loves the
+hospital."
+
+"Still, I wouldn't envy anyone whose home life wasn't preferable to the
+hospital, Sue."
+
+"Well, Emily is queer, Aunt Jo. But in her place I wouldn't necessarily
+be queer."
+
+"At the same time, considering her brother Kenneth's rather checkered
+career, and the fact that her big sister neglects and ignores her, and
+that her health is really very delicate, I don't consider Emily a happy
+choice for your argument, Sue."
+
+"Well, there's Peggy Brock. She's a perfect beauty---"
+
+"She's a Wellington, Sue. You know that stock. How many of them are
+already in institutions?"
+
+"Oh, but Aunt Jo!" Susan said impatiently, "there are dozens of girls
+in society whose health is good, and whose family ISN'T insane,--I
+don't know why I chose those two! There are the Chickerings---"
+
+"Whose father took his own life, Sue."
+
+"Well, they couldn't help THAT. They're lovely girls. It was some money
+trouble, it wasn't insanity or drink."
+
+"But think a moment, Sue. Wouldn't it haunt you for a long, long time,
+if you felt that your own father, coming home to that gorgeous house
+night after night, had been slowly driven to the taking of his own
+life?"
+
+Susan looked thoughtful.
+
+"I never thought of that," she admitted. Presently she added brightly,
+"There are the Ward girls, Aunt Jo, and Isabel Wallace. You couldn't
+find three prettier or richer or nicer girls! Say what you will," Susan
+returned undauntedly to her first argument, "life IS easier for those
+girls than for the rest of us!"
+
+"Well, I want to call your attention to those three," Mrs. Carroll
+said, after a moment. "Both Mr. Wallace and Mr. Ward made their own
+money, started in with nothing and built up their own fortunes. Phil
+may do that, or Billy may do that--we can't tell. Mrs. Ward and Mrs.
+Wallace are both nice, simple women, not spoiled yet by money, not
+inflated on the subject of family and position, bringing up their
+families as they were brought up. I don't know Mrs. Ward personally,
+but Mrs. Wallace came from my own town, and she likes to remember the
+time when her husband was only a mining engineer, and she did her own
+work. You may not see it, Sue, but there's a great difference there.
+Such people are happy and useful, and they hand happiness on. Peter
+Coleman's another, he's so exceptionally nice because he's only one
+generation removed from working people. If Isabel Wallace,--and she's
+very young; life may be unhappy enough for her yet, poor
+child!--marries a man like her father, well and good. But if she
+marries a man like--well, say Kenneth Saunders or young Gerald, she
+simply enters into the ranks of the idle and useless and unhappy,
+that's all."
+
+"She's beautiful, and she's smart too," Susan pursued, disconsolately,
+"Emily and I lunched there one day and she was simply sweet to the
+maids, and to her mother. And German! I wish you could hear her. She
+may not be of any very remarkable family but she certainly is an
+exceptional girl!"
+
+"Exceptional, just because she ISN'T descended from some dead, old,
+useless stock," amended Mrs. Carroll. "There is red blood in her veins,
+ambition and effort and self-denial, all handed down to her. But marry
+that pampered little girl to some young millionaire, Sue, and what will
+her children inherit? And what will theirs, in time?--Peel these, will
+you?" went on Mrs. Carroll, interrupting her work to put a bowl of
+apples in Susan's hands. "No," she went on presently, "I married a
+millionaire, Sue. I was one of the 'lucky' ones!"
+
+"I never knew it was as much as that!" Susan said impressed.
+
+"Yes," Mrs. Carroll laughed wholesomely at some memory. "Yes; I began
+my married life in the very handsomest home in our little town with the
+prettiest presents and the most elaborate wardrobe--the papers were
+full of Miss Josie van Trent's extravagances. I had four house
+servants, and when Anna came everybody in town knew that her little
+layette had come all the way from Paris!"
+
+"But,--good heavens, what happened?"
+
+"Nothing, for awhile. Mr. Carroll, who was very young, had inherited a
+half-interest in what was then the biggest shoe-factory in that part of
+the world. My father was his partner. Philip--dear me! it seems like a
+lifetime ago!--came to visit us, and I came home from an Eastern
+finishing school. Sue, those were silly, happy, heavenly days! Well! we
+were married, as I said. Little Phil came, Anna came. Still we went on
+spending money. Phil and I took the children to Paris,--Italy. Then my
+father died, and things began to go badly at the works. Phil discharged
+his foreman, borrowed money to tide over a bad winter, and said that he
+would be his own superintendent. Of course he knew nothing about it. We
+borrowed more money. Jo was the baby then, and I remember one ugly
+episode was that the workmen, who wanted more money, accused Phil of
+getting his children's clothes abroad because his wife didn't think
+American things were good enough for them."
+
+"YOU!" Susan said, incredulously.
+
+"It doesn't sound like me now, does it? Well; Phil put another foreman
+in, and he was a bad man--in league with some rival factory, in fact.
+Money was lost that way, contracts broken---"
+
+"BEAST!" said Susan.
+
+"Wicked enough," the other woman conceded, "but not at all an uncommon
+thing, Sue, where people don't know their own business. So we borrowed
+more money, borrowed enough for a last, desperate fight, and lost it.
+The day that Jim was three years old, we signed the business away to
+the other people, and Phil took a position under them, in his own
+factory."
+
+"Oo-oo!" Susan winced.
+
+"Yes, it was hard. I did what I could for my poor old boy, but it was
+very hard. We lived very quietly; I had begun to come to my senses
+then; we had but one maid. But, even then, Sue, Philip wasn't capable
+of holding a job of that sort. How could he manage what he didn't
+understand? Poor Phil---" Mrs. Carroll's bright eyes brimmed with
+tears, and her mouth quivered. "However, we had some happy times
+together with the babies," she said cheerfully, "and when he went away
+from us, four years later, with his better salary we were just
+beginning to see our way clear. So that left me, with my five, Sue,
+without a cent in the world. An old cousin of my father owned this
+house, and she wrote that she would give us all a home, and out we
+came,--Aunt Betty's little income was barely enough for her, so I sold
+books and taught music and French, and finally taught in a little
+school, and put up preserves for people, and packed their houses up for
+the winter---"
+
+"How did you DO it!"
+
+"Sue, I don't know! Anna stood by me,--my darling!" The last two words
+came in a passionate undertone. "But of course there were bad times.
+Sometimes we lived on porridges and milk for days, and many a night
+Anna and Phil and I have gone out, after dark, to hunt for dead
+branches in the woods for my kitchen stove!" And Mrs. Carroll,
+unexpectedly stirred by the pitiful memory, broke suddenly into tears,
+the more terrible to Susan because she had never seen her falter before.
+
+It was only for a moment. Then Mrs. Carroll dried her eyes and said
+cheerfully:
+
+"Well, those times only make these seem brighter! Anna is well started
+now, we've paid off the last of the mortgage, Phil is more of a comfort
+than he's ever been--no mother could ask a better boy!--and Jo is
+beginning to take a real interest in her work. So everything is coming
+out better than even my prayers."
+
+"Still," smiled Susan, "lots of people have things comfortable, WITHOUT
+such a terrible struggle!"
+
+"And lots of people haven't five fine children, Sue, and a home in a
+big garden. And lots of mothers don't have the joy and the comfort and
+the intimacy with their children in a year that I have every day. No,
+I'm only too happy now, Sue. I don't ask anything better than this. And
+if, in time, they go to homes of their own, and we have some more
+babies in the family--it's all LIVING, Sue, it's being a part of the
+world!"
+
+Mrs. Carroll carried away her cakes to the big stone jar in the pantry.
+Susan, pensively nibbling a peeled slice of apple, had a question ready
+for her when she came back.
+
+"But suppose you're one of those persons who get into a groove, and
+simply can't live? I want to work, and do heroic things, and grow to BE
+something, and how can I? Unless---" her color rose, but her glance did
+not fall, "unless somebody marries me, of course."
+
+"Choose what you want to do, Sue, and do it. That's all."
+
+"Oh, that SOUNDS simple! But I don't want to do any of the things you
+mean. I want to work into an interesting life, somehow. I'll--I'll
+never marry," said Susan.
+
+"You won't? Well; of course that makes it easier, because you can go
+into your work with heart and soul. But perhaps you'll change your
+mind, Sue. I hope you will, just as I hope all the girls will marry.
+I'm not sure," said Mrs. Carroll, suddenly smiling, "but what the very
+quickest way for a woman to marry off her girls is to put them into
+business. In the first place, a man who wants them has to be in
+earnest, and in the second, they meet the very men whose interests are
+the same as theirs. So don't be too sure you won't. However, I'm not
+laughing at you, Sue. I think you ought to seriously select some work
+for yourself, unless of course you are quite satisfied where you are."
+
+"I'm not," said Susan. "I'll never get more than forty where I am. And
+more than that, Thorny heard that Front Office is going to be closed up
+any day."
+
+"But you could get another position, dear."
+
+"Well, I don't know. You see, it's a special sort of bookkeeping. It
+wouldn't help any of us much elsewhere."
+
+"True. And what would you like best to do, Sue?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I think the stage. Or something with lots
+of traveling in it." Susan laughed, a little ashamed of her vagueness.
+
+"Why not take a magazine agency, then? There's a lot of money---"
+
+"Oh, no!" Susan shuddered. "You're joking!"
+
+"Indeed I'm not. You're just the sort of person who would make a fine
+living selling things. The stage--I don't know. But if you really mean
+it, I don't see why you shouldn't get a little start somewhere."
+
+"Aunt Jo, they say that Broadway in New York is simply LINED with girls
+trying---"
+
+"New York! Well, very likely. But you try here. Go to the manager of
+the Alcazar, recite for him---"
+
+"He wouldn't let me," Susan asserted, "and besides, I don't really know
+anything."
+
+"Well, learn something. Ask him, when next some manager wants to make
+up a little road company---"
+
+"A road company! Two nights in Stockton, two nights in
+Marysville--horrors!" said Susan.
+
+"But that wouldn't be for long, Sue. Perhaps two years. Then five or
+six years in stock somewhere---"
+
+"Aunt Jo, I'd be past thirty!" Susan laughed and colored charmingly.
+"I--honestly, I couldn't give up my whole life for ten years on the
+chance of making a hit," she confessed.
+
+"Well, but what then, Sue?"
+
+"Now, I'll tell you what I've often wanted to do," Susan said, after a
+thoughtful interval.
+
+"Ah, now we're coming to it!" Mrs. Carroll said, with satisfaction.
+They had left the kitchen now, and were sitting on the top step of the
+side porch, reveling in the lovely panorama of hillside and waterfront,
+and the smooth and shining stretch of bay below them.
+
+"I've often thought I'd like to be the matron of some very smart school
+for girls," said Susan, "and live either in or near some big Eastern
+city, and take the girls to concerts and lectures and walking in the
+parks, and have a lovely room full of books and pictures, where they
+would come and tell me things, and go to Europe now and then for a
+vacation!"
+
+"That would be a lovely life, Sue. Why not work for that?"
+
+"Why, I don't know how. I don't know of any such school."
+
+"Well, now let us suppose the head of such a school wants a matron,"
+Mrs. Carroll said, "she naturally looks for a lady and a linguist, and
+a person of experience---"
+
+"There you are! I've had no experience!" Susan said, instantly
+depressed. "I could rub up on French and German, and read up the
+treatment for toothache and burns--but experience!"
+
+"But see how things work together, Sue!" Mrs. Carroll exclaimed, with a
+suddenly bright face.
+
+"Here's Miss Berrat, who has the little school over here, simply CRAZY
+to find someone to help her out. She has eight--or nine, I forget--day
+scholars, and four or five boarders. And such a dear little cottage!
+Miss Pitcher is leaving her, to go to Miss North's school in Berkeley,
+and she wants someone at once!"
+
+"But, Aunt Jo, what does she pay?"
+
+"Let me see---" Mrs. Carroll wrinkled a thoughtful brow. "Not much, I
+know. You live at the school, of course. Five or ten dollars a month, I
+think."
+
+"But I COULDN'T live on that!" Susan exclaimed.
+
+"You'd be near us, Sue, for one thing. And you'd have a nice bright
+sunny room. And Miss Berrat would help you with your French and German.
+It would be a good beginning."
+
+"But I simply COULDN'T--" Susan stopped short. "Would you advise it,
+Aunt Jo?" she asked simply.
+
+Mrs. Carroll studied the bright face soberly for a moment.
+
+"Yes, I'd advise it, Sue," she said then gravely. "I don't think that
+the atmosphere where you are is the best in the world for you just now.
+It would be a fine change. It would be good for those worries of yours."
+
+"Then I'll do it!" Susan said suddenly, the unexplained tears springing
+to her eyes.
+
+"I think I would. I'll go and see Miss Berrat next week," Mrs. Carroll
+said. "There's the boat making the slip, Sue," she added, "let's get
+the table set out here on the porch while they're climbing the hill!"
+
+Up the hill came Philip and Josephine, just home from the city,
+escorted by Betsey and Jim who had met them at the boat. Susan received
+a strangling welcome from Betts, and Josephine, who looked a little
+pale and tired after this first enervating, warm spring day, really
+brightened perceptibly when she went upstairs with Susan to slip into a
+dress that was comfortably low-necked and short-sleeved.
+
+Presently they all gathered on the porch for dinner, with the sweet
+twilighted garden just below them and anchor lights beginning to prick,
+one by one, through the soft dusky gloom of the bay.
+
+"Well, 'mid pleasures and palaces---" Philip smiled at his mother.
+
+"Charades to-night!" shrilled Betts, from the kitchen where she was
+drying lettuce.
+
+"Oh, but a walk first!" Susan protested. For their aimless strolls
+through the dark, flower-scented lanes were a delight to her.
+
+"And Billy's coming over to-morrow to walk to Gioli's," Josephine added
+contentedly.
+
+That evening and the next day Susan always remembered as terminating a
+certain phase of her life, although for perhaps a week the days went on
+just as usual. But one morning she found confusion reigning, when she
+arrived at Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's. Front Office was to be
+immediately abolished, its work was over, its staff already dispersing.
+
+Workmen, when she arrived, were moving out cases and chairs, and Mr.
+Brauer, eagerly falling upon her, begged her to clean out her desk, and
+to help him assort the papers in some of the other desks and cabinets.
+Susan, filled with pleasant excitement, pinned on her paper cuffs, and
+put her heart and soul into the work. No bills this morning! The
+office-boy did not even bring them up.
+
+"Now, here's a soap order that must have been specially priced," said
+Susan, at her own desk, "I couldn't make anything of it yesterday---"
+
+"Let it go--let it go!" Mr. Brauer said. "It iss all ofer!"
+
+As the other girls came in they were pressed into service, papers and
+papers and papers, the drift of years, were tossed out of drawers and
+cubby-holes. Much excited laughter and chatter went on. Probably not
+one girl among them felt anything but pleasure and relief at the
+unexpected holiday, and a sense of utter confidence in the future.
+
+Mr. Philip, fussily entering the disordered room at ten o'clock,
+announced his regret at the suddenness of the change; the young ladies
+would be paid their salaries for the uncompleted month--a murmur of
+satisfaction arose--and, in short, the firm hoped that their
+association had been as pleasant to them as it had been to his partners
+and himself.
+
+"They had a directors' meeting on Saturday," Thorny said, later, "and
+if you ask me my frank opinion, I think Henry Brauer is at the bottom
+of all this. What do you know about his having been at that meeting on
+Saturday, and his going to have the office right next to J. G.'s--isn't
+that the extension of the limit? He's as good as in the firm now."
+
+"I've always said that he knew something that made it very well worth
+while for this firm to keep his mouth shut," said Miss Cashell, darkly.
+
+"I'll bet you there's something in that," Miss Cottle agreed.
+
+"H. B. & H. is losing money hand over fist," Thorny stated, gloomily,
+with that intimate knowledge of an employer's affairs always displayed
+by an obscure clerk.
+
+"Brauer asked me if I would like to go into the big office, but I don't
+believe I could do the work," Susan said.
+
+"Yes; I'm going into the main office, too," Thorny stated. "Don't you
+be afraid, Susan. It's as easy as pie."
+
+"Mr. Brauer said I could try it," Miss Sherman shyly contributed. But
+no other girl had been thus complimented. Miss Kelly and Miss Garvey,
+both engaged to be married now, Miss Kelly to Miss Garvey's brother,
+Miss Garvey to Miss Kelly's cousin, were rather congratulating
+themselves upon the turn of events; the other girls speculated as to
+the wisest step to take next, some talking vaguely of post-office or
+hospital work; Miss Cashell, as Miss Thornton later said to Susan,
+hopelessly proving herself no lady by announcing that she could get
+better money as a coat model, and meant to get into that line of work
+if she could.
+
+"Are we going to have lunch to-day?" somebody asked. Miss Thornton
+thoughtfully drew a piece of paper toward her, and wet her pencil in
+her mouth.
+
+"Best thing we can do, I guess," she said.
+
+"Let's put ten cents each in," Susan suggested, "and make it a real
+party."
+
+Thorny accordingly expanded her list to include sausages and a pie,
+cheese and rolls, besides the usual tea and stewed tomatoes. The girls
+ate the little meal with their hats and wraps on, a sense of change
+filled the air, and they were all a little pensive, even with an
+unexpected half-holiday before them.
+
+Then came good-bys. The girls separated with many affectionate
+promises. All but the selected three were not to return. Susan and Miss
+Sherman and Thorny would come back to find their desks waiting for them
+in the main office next day.
+
+Susan walked thoughtfully uptown, and when she got home, wrote a formal
+application for the position open in her school to little Miss Berrat
+in Sausalito.
+
+It was a delightful, sunshiny afternoon. Mary Lou, Mrs. Lancaster and
+Virginia were making a mournful trip to the great institution for the
+blind in Berkeley, where Virginia's physician wanted to place her for
+special watching and treatment. Susan found two or three empty hours on
+her hands, and started out for a round of calls.
+
+She called on her aunt's old friends, the Langs, and upon the bony,
+cold Throckmorton sisters, rich, nervous, maiden ladies, shivering
+themselves slowly to death in their barn of a house, and finally, and
+unexpectedly, upon Mrs. Baxter.
+
+Susan had planned a call on Georgie, to finish the afternoon, for her
+cousin, slowly dragging her way up the last of the long road that ends
+in motherhood, was really in need of cheering society.
+
+But the Throckmorton house chanced to be directly opposite the old
+Baxter mansion, and Susan, seeing Peter's home, suddenly decided to
+spend a few moments with the old lady.
+
+After all, why should she not call? She had had no open break with
+Peter, and on every occasion his aunt had begged her to take pity on an
+old woman's loneliness. Susan was always longing, in her secret heart,
+for that accident that should reopen the old friendship; knowing Peter,
+she knew that the merest chance would suddenly bring him to her side
+again; his whole life was spent in following the inclination of the
+moment. And today, in her pretty new hat and spring suit, she was
+looking her best.
+
+Peter would not be at home, of course. But his aunt would tell him that
+that pretty, happy Miss Brown was here, and that she was going to leave
+Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's for something not specified. And then Peter,
+realizing that Susan had entirely risen above any foolish old memory----
+
+Susan crossed the street and rang the bell. When the butler told her,
+with an impassive face, that he would find out if Mrs. Baxter were in,
+Susan hoped, in a panic, that she was not. The big, gloomy, handsome
+hall rather awed her. She watched Burns's retreating back fearfully,
+hoping that Mrs. Baxter really was out, or that Burns would be
+instructed to say so.
+
+But he came back, expressionless, placid, noiseless of step, to say in
+a hushed, confidential tone that Mrs. Baxter would be down in a moment.
+He lighted the reception room brilliantly for Susan, and retired
+decorously. Susan sat nervously on the edge of a chair. Suddenly her
+call seemed a very bold and intrusive thing to do, even an indelicate
+thing, everything considered. Suppose Peter should come in; what could
+he think but that she was clinging to the association with which he had
+so clearly indicated that he was done?
+
+What if she got up and went silently, swiftly out? Burns was not in
+sight, the great hall was empty. She had really nothing to say to Mrs.
+Baxter, and she could assume that she had misunderstood his message if
+the butler followed her----
+
+Mrs. Baxter, a little figure in rustling silk, came quickly down the
+stairway. Susan met her in the doorway of the reception room, with a
+smile.
+
+"How do you do, how do you do?" Mrs. Baxter said nervously. She did not
+sit down, but stood close to Susan, peering up at her shortsightedly,
+and crumpling the card she held in her hand. "It's about the office,
+isn't it?" she said quickly. "Yes, I see. Mr. Baxter told me that it
+was to be closed. I'm sorry, but I never interfere in those
+things,--never. I really don't know ANYTHING about it! I'm sorry. But
+it would hardly be my place to interfere in business, when I don't know
+anything about it, would it? Mr. Baxter always prides himself on the
+fact that I don't interfere. So I don't really see what I could do."
+
+A wave of some supreme emotion, not all anger, nor all contempt, nor
+all shame, but a composite of the three, rose in Susan's heart. She had
+not come to ask a favor of this more fortunate woman, but--the thought
+flashed through her mind--suppose she had? She looked down at the
+little silk-dressed figure, the blinking eyes, the veiny little hand,
+and the small mouth, that, after sixty years, was composed of nothing
+but conservative and close-shut lines. Pity won the day over her hurt
+girlish feeling and the pride that claimed vindication, and Susan
+smiled kindly.
+
+"Oh, I didn't come about Front Office, Mrs. Baxter! I just happened to
+be in the neighborhood---" Two burning spots came into the older
+woman's face, not of shame, but of anger that she had misunderstood,
+had placed herself for an instant at a disadvantage.
+
+"Oh," she said vaguely. "Won't you sit down? Peter---" she paused.
+
+"Peter is in Santa Barbara, isn't he?" asked Susan, who knew he was not.
+
+"I declare I don't know where he is half the time," Mrs. Baxter said,
+with her little, cracked laugh. They both sat down. "He has SUCH a good
+time!" pursued his aunt, complacently.
+
+"Doesn't he?" Susan said pleasantly.
+
+"Only I tell the girls they mustn't take Peter too seriously," cackled
+the sweet, old voice. "Dreadful boy!"
+
+"I think they understand him." Susan looked at her hostess
+solicitously. "You look well," she said resolutely. "No more neuritis,
+Mrs. Baxter?"
+
+Mrs. Baxter was instantly diverted. She told Susan of her new
+treatment, her new doctor, the devotion of her old maid; Emma, the
+servant of her early married life, was her close companion now, and
+although Mrs. Baxter always thought of her as a servant, Emma was
+really the one intimate friend she had.
+
+Susan remained a brief quarter of an hour, chatting easily, but burning
+with inward shame. Never, never, never in her life would she pay
+another call like this one! Tea was not suggested, and when the girl
+said good-by, Mrs. Baxter did not leave the reception room. But just as
+Burns opened the street-door for her Susan saw a beautiful little coupe
+stop at the curb, and Miss Ella Saunders, beautifully gowned, got out
+of it and came up the steps with a slowness that became her enormous
+size.
+
+"Hello, Susan Brown!" said Miss Saunders, imprisoning Susan's hand
+between two snowy gloves. "Where've you been?"
+
+"Where've YOU been?" Susan laughed. "Italy and Russia and Holland!"
+
+"Don't be an utter little hypocrite, child, and try to make talk with a
+woman of my years I I've been home two weeks, anyway."
+
+"Emily home?"
+
+Miss Saunders nodded slowly, bit her lip, and stared at Susan in a
+rather mystifying and very pronounced way.
+
+"Emily is home, indeed," she said absently. Then abruptly she added:
+"Can you lunch with me to-morrow--no, Wednesday--at the Town and
+Country, infant?"
+
+"Why, I'd love to!" Susan answered, dimpling.
+
+"Well; at one? Then we can talk. Tell me," Miss Saunders lowered her
+voice, "is Mrs. Baxter in? Oh, damn!" she added cheerfully, as Susan
+nodded. Susan glanced back, before the door closed, and saw her meet
+the old lady in the hall and give her an impulsive kiss.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The little Town and Country Club, occupying two charmingly-furnished,
+crowded floors of what had once been a small apartment house on Post
+Street, next door to the old library, was a small but remarkable
+institution, whose members were the wealthiest and most prominent women
+of the fashionable colonies of Burlingame and San Mateo, Ross Valley
+and San Rafael. Presumably only the simplest and least formal of
+associations, it was really the most important of all the city's social
+institutions, and no woman was many weeks in San Francisco society
+without realizing that the various country clubs, and the Junior
+Cotillions were as dust and ashes, and that her chances of achieving a
+card to the Browning dances were very slim if she could not somehow
+push her name at least as far as the waiting list of the Town and
+Country Club.
+
+The members pretended, to a woman, to be entirely unconscious of their
+social altitude. They couldn't understand how such ideas ever got
+about, it was "delicious"; it was "too absurd!" Why, the club was just
+the quietest place in the world, a place where a woman could run in to
+brush her hair and wash her hands, and change her library book, and
+have a cup of tea. A few of them had formed it years ago, just half a
+dozen of them, at a luncheon; it was like a little family circle, one
+knew everybody there, and one felt at home there. But, as for being
+exclusive and conservative, that was all nonsense! And besides, what
+did other women see in it to make them want to come in! Let them form
+another club, exactly like it, wouldn't that be the wiser thing?
+
+Other women, thus advised and reassured, smiled, instead of gnashing
+their teeth, and said gallantly that after all they themselves were too
+busy to join any club just now, merely happened to speak of the Town
+and Country. And after that they said hateful and lofty and insulting
+things about the club whenever they found listeners.
+
+But the Town and Country Club flourished on unconcernedly, buzzing six
+days a week with well-dressed women, echoing to Christian names and
+intimate chatter, sheltering the smartest of pigskin suitcases and
+gold-headed umbrellas and rustling raincoats in its tiny closets,
+resisting the constant demand of the younger element for modern club
+conveniences and more room.
+
+No; the old members clung to its very inconveniences, to the gas-lights
+over the dressing-tables, and the narrow halls, and the view of ugly
+roofs and buildings from its back windows. They liked to see the
+notices written in the secretary's angular hand and pinned on the
+library door with a white-headed pin. The catalogue numbers of books
+were written by hand, too--the ink blurred into the shiny linen bands.
+At tea-time a little maid quite openly cut and buttered bread in a
+corner of the dining-room; it was permissible to call gaily, "More
+bread here, Rosie! I'm afraid we're a very hungry crowd to-day!"
+
+Susan enormously enjoyed the club; she had been there more than once
+with Miss Saunders, and found her way without trouble to-day to a big
+chair in a window arch, where she could enjoy the passing show without
+being herself conspicuous. A constant little stream of women came and
+went, handsome, awkward school-girls, in town for the dentist or to be
+fitted to shoes, or for the matinee; debutantes, in their exquisite
+linens and summer silks, all joyous chatter and laughter; and
+plainly-gowned, well-groomed, middle-aged women, escorting or
+chaperoning, and pausing here for greetings and the interchange of news.
+
+Miss Saunders, magnificent, handsome, wonderfully gowned, was
+surrounded by friends the moment she came majestically upstairs. Susan
+thought her very attractive, with her ready flow of conversation, her
+familiar, big-sisterly attitude with the young girls, her positiveness
+when there was the slightest excuse for her advice or opinions being
+expressed. She had a rich, full voice, and a drawling speech. She had
+to decline ten pressing invitations in as many minutes.
+
+"Ella, why can't you come home with me this afternoon?--I'm not
+speaking to you, Ella Saunders, you've not been near us since you got
+back!--Mama's so anxious to see you, Miss Ella!--Listen, Ella, you've
+got to go with us to Tahoe; Perry will have a fit if you don't!"
+
+"Mama's not well, and the kid is just home," Miss Saunders told them
+all good-naturedly, in excuse. She carried Susan off to the lunch-room,
+announcing herself to be starving, and ordered a lavish luncheon. Ella
+Saunders really liked this pretty, jolly, little book-keeper from
+Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's. Susan amused her, and she liked still better
+the evidence that she amused Susan. Her indifferent, not to say
+irreverent, air toward the sacred traditions and institutions of her
+class made Susan want to laugh and gasp at once.
+
+"But this is a business matter," said Miss Saunders, when they had
+reached the salad, "and here we are talking! Mama and Baby and I have
+talked this thing all over, Susan," she added casually, "and we want to
+know what you'd think of coming to live with us?"
+
+Susan fixed her eyes upon her as one astounded, not a muscle of her
+face moved. She never was quite natural with Ella; above the sudden
+rush of elation and excitement came the quick intuition that Ella would
+like a sensational reception of her offer. Her look expressed the
+stunned amazement of one who cannot credit her ears. Ella's laugh
+showed an amused pleasure.
+
+"Don't look so aghast, child. You don't have to do it!" she said.
+
+Again Susan did the dramatic and acceptable thing, typical of what she
+must give the Saunders throughout their relationship. Instead of the
+natural "What on earth are you talking about?" she said slowly,
+dazedly, her bewildered eyes on Ella's face:
+
+"You're joking---"
+
+"Joking! You'll find the Saunders family no joke, I can promise you
+that!" Ella said, humorously. And again Susan laughed.
+
+"No, but you see Emily's come home from Fowler's a perfect nervous
+wreck," explained Miss Ella, "and; she can't be left alone for
+awhile,--partly because her heart's not good, partly because she gets
+blue, and partly because, if she hasn't anyone to drive and walk and
+play tennis with, and so on, she simply mopes from morning until night.
+She hates Mama's nurse; Mama needs Miss Baker herself anyway, and we've
+been wondering and wondering how we could get hold of the right person
+to fill the bill. You'd have a pretty easy time in one way, of course,
+and do everything the Kid does, and I'll stand right behind you. But
+don't think it's any snap!"
+
+"Snap!" echoed Susan, starry-eyed, crimson-cheeked. "---But you don't
+mean that you want ME?"
+
+"I wish you could have seen her; she turned quite pale," Miss Saunders
+told her mother and sister later. "Really, she was overcome. She said
+she'd speak to her aunt to-night; I don't imagine there'll be any
+trouble. She's a nice child. I don't see the use of delay, so I said
+Monday."
+
+"You were a sweet to think of it," Emily said, gratefully, from the
+downy wide couch where she was spending the evening.
+
+"Not at all, Kid," Ella answered politely. She yawned, and stared at
+the alabaster globe of the lamp above Emily's head. A silence fell. The
+two sisters never had much to talk about, and Mrs. Saunders, dutifully
+sitting with the invalid, was heavy from dinner, and nearly asleep.
+Ella yawned again.
+
+"Want some chocolates?" she finally asked.
+
+"Oh, thank you, Ella!"
+
+"I'll send Fannie in with 'em!" Miss Ella stood up, bent her head to
+study at close range an engraving on the wall, loitered off to her own
+room. She was rarely at home in the evening and did not know quite what
+to do with herself.
+
+Susan, meanwhile, walked upon air. She tasted complete happiness for
+almost the first time in her life; awakened in the morning to blissful
+reality, instead of the old dreary round, and went to sleep at night
+smiling at her own happy thoughts. It was all like a pleasant dream!
+
+She resigned from her new position at Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's exactly
+as she resigned in imagination a hundred times. No more drudgery over
+bills, no more mornings spent in icy, wet shoes, and afternoons heavy
+with headache. Susan was almost too excited to thank Mr. Brauer for his
+compliments and regrets.
+
+Parting with Thorny was harder; Susan and she had been through many a
+hard hour together, had shared a thousand likes and dislikes, had loved
+and quarreled and been reconciled.
+
+"You're doing an awfully foolish thing, Susan. You'll wish you were
+back here inside of a month," Thorny prophesied when the last moment
+came. "Aw, don't you do it, Susan!" she pleaded, with a little real
+emotion. "Come on into Main Office, and sit next to me. We'll have
+loads of sport."
+
+"Oh, I've promised!" Susan held out her hand. "Don't forget me!" she
+said, trying to laugh. Miss Thornton's handsome eyes glistened with
+tears. With a sudden little impulse they kissed each other for the
+first time.
+
+Then Susan, a full hour before closing, went down from the lunch-room,
+and past all the familiar offices; the sadness of change tugging at her
+heart-strings. She had been here a long time, she had smelled this same
+odor of scorching rubber, and oils and powders through so many slow
+afternoons, in gay moods and sad, in moods of rebellion and distaste.
+She left a part of her girlhood here. The cashier, to whom she went for
+her check, was all kindly interest, and the young clerks and salesmen
+stopped to offer her their good wishes. Susan passed the time-clock
+without punching her number for the first time in three years, and out
+into the sunny, unfamiliar emptiness of the streets.
+
+At the corner her heart suddenly failed her. She felt as if she could
+not really go away from these familiar places and people. The
+warehouses and wholesale houses, the wholesale liquor house with a live
+eagle magnificently caged in one window, the big stove establishment,
+with its window full of ranges in shining steel and nickel-plate; these
+had been her world for so long!
+
+But she kept on her way uptown, and by the time she reached the old
+library, where Mary Lou, very handsome in her well-brushed suit and
+dotted veil, with white gloves still odorous of benzine, was waiting,
+she was almost sure that she was not making a mistake.
+
+Mary Lou was a famous shopper, capable of exhausting any saleswoman for
+a ten-cent purchase, and proportionately effective when, as to-day, a
+really considerable sum was to be spent. She regretfully would decline
+a dozen varieties in handkerchiefs or ribbons, saying with pleasant
+plaintiveness to the saleswoman: "Perhaps I am hard to please. My
+mother is an old Southern lady--the Ralstons, you know?--and her linen
+is, of course, like nothing one can get nowadays! No; I wouldn't care
+to show my mother this.
+
+"My cousin, of course, only wants this for a little hack hat," she
+added to Susan's modest suggestion of price to the milliner, and in the
+White House she consented to Susan's selections with a consoling
+reminder, "It isn't as if you didn't have your lovely French underwear
+at home, Sue! These will do very nicely for your rough camping trip!"
+
+Compared to Mary Lou, Susan was a very poor shopper. She was always
+anxious to please the saleswoman, to buy after a certain amount of
+looking had been done, for no other reason than that she had caused
+most of the stock to be displayed.
+
+"I like this, Mary Lou," Susan would murmur nervously. And, as the
+pompadoured saleswoman turned to take down still another heap of
+petticoats, Susan would repeat noiselessly, with an urgent nod, "This
+will do!"
+
+"Wait, now, dear," Mary Lou would return, unperturbed, arresting
+Susan's hand with a white, well-filled glove. "Wait, dear. If we can't
+get it here we can get it somewhere else. Yes, let me see those you
+have there---"
+
+"Thank you, just the same," Susan always murmured uncomfortably,
+averting her eyes from the saleswoman, as they went away. But the
+saleswoman, busily rearranging her stock, rarely responded.
+
+To-day they bought, besides the fascinating white things, some tan
+shoes, and a rough straw hat covered with roses, and two linen skirts,
+and three linen blouses, and a little dress of dotted lavender lawn.
+Everything was of the simplest, but Susan had never had so many new
+things in the course of her life before, and was elated beyond words as
+one purchase was made after another.
+
+She carried home nearly ten dollars, planning to keep it until the
+first month's salary should be paid, but Auntie was found, upon their
+return in the very act of dissuading the dark powers known as the
+"sewing-machine men" from removing that convenience, and Susan, only
+too thankful to be in time, gladly let seven dollars fall into the oily
+palm of the carrier in charge.
+
+"Mary Lou," said she, over her fascinating packages, just before
+dinner, "here's a funny thing! If I had gone bad, you know, so that I
+could keep buying nice, pretty, simple things like this, as fast as I
+needed them, I'd feel better--I mean truly cleaner and more moral--than
+when I was good!"
+
+"Susan! Why, SUSAN!" Her cousin turned a shocked face from the window
+where she was carefully pasting newly-washed handkerchiefs, to dry in
+the night. "Do you remember who you ARE, dear, and don't say dreadful
+things like that!"
+
+In the next few days Susan pressed her one suit, laundered a score of
+little ruffles and collars, cleaned her gloves, sewed on buttons and
+strings generally, and washed her hair. Late on Sunday came the joyful
+necessity of packing. Mary Lou folded and refolded patiently, Georgie
+came in with a little hand-embroidered handkerchief-case for Susan's
+bureau, Susan herself rushed about like a mad-woman, doing almost
+nothing.
+
+"You'll be back inside the month," said Billy that evening, looking up
+from Carlyle's "Revolution," to where Susan and Mary Lou were busy with
+last stitches, at the other side of the dining-room table. "You can't
+live with the rotten rich any more than I could!"
+
+"Billy, you don't know how awfully conceited you sound when you say a
+thing like that!"
+
+"Conceited? Oh, all right!" Mr. Oliver accompanied the words with a
+sound only to be described as a snort, and returned, offended, to his
+book.
+
+"Conceited, well, maybe I am," he resumed with deadly calm, a moment
+later. "But there's no conceit in my saying that people like the
+Saunders can't buffalo ME!"
+
+"You may not see it, but there IS!" persisted Susan.
+
+"You give me a pain, Sue! Do you honestly think they are any better
+than you are?"
+
+"Of course they're not better," Susan said, heatedly, "if it comes
+right down to morals and the Commandments! But if I prefer to spend my
+life among people who have had several generations of culture and
+refinement and travel and education behind them, it's my own affair! I
+like nice people, and rich people ARE more refined than poor, and
+nobody denies it! I may feel sorry for a girl who marries a man on
+forty a week, and brings up four or five little kids on it, but that
+doesn't mean I want to do it myself! And I think a man has his nerve to
+expect it!"
+
+"I didn't make you an offer, you know, Susan," said William pleasantly.
+
+"I didn't mean you!" Susan answered angrily. Then with sudden calm and
+sweetness, she resumed, busily tearing up and assorting old letters the
+while, "But now you're trying to make me mad, Billy, and you don't care
+what you say. The trouble with you," she went on, with sisterly
+kindness and frankness, "is that you think you are the only person who
+really ought to get on in the world. You know so much, and study so
+hard, that you DESERVE to be rich, so that you can pension off every
+old stupid German laborer at the works who still wants a job when they
+can get a boy of ten to do his work better than he can! You mope away
+over there at those cottages, Bill, until you think the only important
+thing in the world is the price of sausages in proportion to wages. And
+for all that you pretend to despise people who use decent English, and
+don't think a bath-tub is a place to store potatoes; I notice that you
+are pretty anxious to study languages and hear good music and keep up
+in your reading, yourself! And if that's not cultivation---"
+
+"I never said a word about cultivation!" Billy, who had been apparently
+deep in his book, looked up to snap angrily. Any allusion to his
+efforts at self-improvement always touched him in a very sensitive
+place.
+
+"Why, you did TOO! You said---"
+
+"Oh, I did not! If you're going to talk so much, Sue, you ought to have
+some faint idea what you're talking about!"
+
+"Very well," Susan said loftily, "if you can't address me like a
+gentleman, we won't discuss it. I'm not anxious for your opinion,
+anyway."
+
+A silence. Mr. Oliver read with passionate attention. Susan sighed,
+sorted her letters, sighed again.
+
+"Billy, do you love me?" she asked winningly, after a pause.
+
+Another silence. Mr. Oliver turned a page.
+
+"Are you sure you've read every word on that page, Bill,--every little
+word?"
+
+Silence again.
+
+"You know, you began this, Bill," Susan said presently, with childish
+sweet reproach. "Don't say anything, Bill; I can't ask that! But if you
+still love me, just smile!"
+
+By some miracle, Billy preserved his scowl.
+
+"Not even a glimmer!" Susan said, despondently. "I'll tell you, Bill,"
+she added, gushingly. "Just turn a page, and I'll take it for a sign of
+love!" She clasped her hands, and watched him breathlessly.
+
+Mr. Oliver reached the point where the page must be turned. He moved
+his eyes stealthily upward.
+
+"Oh, no you don't! No going back!" exulted Susan. She jumped up,
+grabbed the book, encircled his head with her arms, kissed her own hand
+vivaciously and made a mad rush for the stairs. Mr. Oliver caught her
+half-way up the flight, with more energy than dignity, and got his book
+back by doubling her little finger over with an increasing pressure
+until Susan managed to drop the volume to the hall below.
+
+"Bill, you beast! You've broken my finger!" Susan, breathless and
+dishevelled, sat beside him on the narrow stair, and tenderly worked
+the injured member, "It hurts!"
+
+"Let Papa tiss it!"
+
+"You try it once!"
+
+"Sh-sh! Ma says not so much noise!" hissed Mary Lou, from the floor
+above, where she had been summoned some hours ago, "Alfie's just
+dropped off!"
+
+On Monday a new life began for Susan Brown. She stepped from the dingy
+boarding-house in Fulton Street straight into one of the most beautiful
+homes in the state, and, so full were the first weeks, that she had no
+time for homesickness, no time for letters, no time for anything but
+the briefest of scribbled notes to the devoted women she left behind
+her.
+
+Emily Saunders herself met the newcomer at the station, looking very
+unlike an invalid,--looking indeed particularly well and happy, if
+rather pale, as she was always pale, and a little too fat after the
+idle and carefully-fed experience in the hospital. Susan peeped into
+Miss Ella's big room, as they went upstairs. Ella was stretched
+comfortably on a wide, flowery couch, reading as her maid rubbed her
+loosened hair with some fragrant toilet water, and munching chocolates.
+
+"Hello, Susan Brown!" she called out. "Come in and see me some time
+before dinner,--I'm going out!"
+
+Ella's room was on the second floor, where were also Mrs. Saunders'
+room, various guest-rooms, an upstairs music-room and a sitting-room.
+But Emily's apartment, as well as her brother's, were on the third
+floor, and Susan's delightful room opened from Emily's. The girls had a
+bathroom as large as a small bedroom, and a splendid deep balcony
+shaded by gay awnings was accessible only to them. Potted geraniums
+made this big outdoor room gay, a thick Indian rug was on the floor,
+there were deep wicker chairs, and two beds, in day-covers of green
+linen, with thick brightly colored Pueblo blankets folded across them.
+The girls were to spend all their days in the open air, and sleep out
+here whenever possible for Emily's sake.
+
+While Emily bathed, before dinner, Susan hung over the balcony rail,
+feeling deliciously fresh and rested, after her own bath, and eager not
+to miss a moment of the lovely summer afternoon. Just below her, the
+garden was full of roses. There were other flowers, too, carnations and
+velvety Shasta daisies, there were snowballs that tumbled in great
+heaps of white on the smooth lawn, and syringas and wall-flowers and
+corn-flowers, far over by the vine-embroidered stone wall, and late
+Persian lilacs, and hydrangeas, in every lovely tone between pink and
+lavender, filled a long line of great wooden Japanese tubs, leading, by
+a walk of sunken stones, to the black wooden gates of the Japanese
+garden. But the roses reigned supreme--beautiful standard roses, with
+not a shriveled leaf to mar the perfection of blossoms and foliage; San
+Rafael roses, flinging out wherever they could find a support, great
+sprays of pinkish-yellow and yellowish-pink, and gold and cream and
+apricot-colored blossoms. There were moss roses, sheathed in dark-green
+film, glowing Jacqueminot and Papagontier and La France roses, white
+roses, and yellow roses,--Susan felt as if she could intoxicate herself
+upon the sweetness and the beauty of them all.
+
+The carriage road swept in a great curve from the gate, its smooth
+pebbled surface crossed sharply at regular intervals by the clean-cut
+shadows of the elm trees. Here and there on the lawns a sprinkler flung
+out its whirling circles of spray, and while Susan watched a gardener
+came into view, picked up a few fallen leaves from the roadway and
+crushed them together in his hand.
+
+On the newly-watered stretch of road that showed beyond the wide gates,
+carriages and carts, and an occasional motor-car were passing, flinging
+wheeling shadows beside them on the road, and driven by girls in light
+gowns and wide hats or by grooms in livery. Presently one very smart,
+high English cart stopped, and Mr. Kenneth Saunders got down from it,
+and stood whipping his riding-boot with his crap and chatting with the
+young woman who had driven him home. Susan thought him a very
+attractive young man, with his quiet, almost melancholy expression, and
+his air of knowing exactly the correct thing to do, whenever he cared
+to exert himself at all.
+
+She watched him now with interest, not afraid of detection, for a small
+head, on a third story balcony, would be quite lost among the details
+of the immense facade of the house. He walked toward the stable, and
+whistled what was evidently a signal, for three romping collies came
+running to meet him, and were leaping and tumbling about him as he went
+around the curve of the drive and out of sight. Then Susan went back to
+her watching and dreaming, finding something new to admire and delight
+in every moment. The details confused her, but she found the whole
+charming.
+
+Indeed, she had been in San Rafael for several weeks before she found
+the view of the big house from the garden anything but bewildering.
+With its wings and ells, its flowered balconies and French windows, its
+tiled pergola and flower-lined Spanish court, it stood a monument to
+the extraordinary powers of the modern architect; nothing was
+incongruous, nothing offended. Susan liked to decide into which room
+this casement window fitted, or why she never noticed that particular
+angle of wall from the inside. It was always a disappointment to
+discover that some of the quaintest of the windows lighted only
+linen-closets or perhaps useless little spaces under a sharp angle of
+roof, and that many of the most attractive lines outside were so cut
+and divided as to be unrecognizable within.
+
+It was a modern house, with beautifully-appointed closets tucked in
+wherever there was an inch to spare, with sheets of mirror set in the
+bedroom doors, with every conceivable convenience in nickel-plate
+glittering in its bathrooms, and wall-telephones everywhere.
+
+The girl's adjectives were exhausted long before she had seen half of
+it. She tried to make her own personal choice between the dull, soft,
+dark colors and carved Circassian walnut furniture in the dining-room,
+and the sharp contrast of the reception hall, where the sunlight
+flooded a rosy-latticed paper, an old white Colonial mantel and
+fiddle-backed chairs, and struck dazzling gleams from the brass
+fire-dogs and irons. The drawing-room had its own charm; the largest
+room in the house, it had French windows on three sides, each one
+giving a separate and exquisite glimpse of lawns and garden beyond.
+Upon its dark and shining floor were stretched a score of silky Persian
+rugs, roses mirrored themselves in polished mahogany, and here and
+there were priceless bits of carved ivory, wonderful strips of
+embroidered Chinese silks, miniatures, and exquisite books. Four or
+five great lamps glowing under mosaic shades made the place lovely at
+night, but in the heat of a summer day, shaded, empty, deliciously airy
+and cool, Susan thought it at its loveliest. At night heavy brocaded
+curtains were drawn across the windows, and a wood fire crackled in the
+fireplace, in a setting of creamy tiles. There was a small grand-piano
+in this room, a larger piano in the big, empty reception room on the
+other side of the house, Susan and Emily had a small upright for their
+own use, and there were one or two more in other parts of the house.
+
+Everywhere was exquisite order, exquisite peace. Lightfooted maids came
+and went noiselessly, to brush up a fallen daisy petal, or straighten a
+rug. Not the faintest streak of dust ever lay across the shining
+surface of the piano, not the tiniest cloud ever filmed the clear
+depths of the mirrors. A slim Chinese houseboy, in plum-color and pale
+blue, with his queue neatly coiled, and his handsome, smooth young face
+always smiling, padded softly to and fro all day long, in his
+thick-soled straw slippers, with letters and magazines, parcels and
+messages and telegrams.
+
+"Lizzie-Carrie--one of you girls take some sweet-peas up to my room,"
+Ella would say at breakfasttime, hardly glancing up from her mail. And
+an hour later Susan, looking into Miss Saunders' apartment to see if
+she still expected Emily to accompany her to the Holmes wedding, or to
+say that Mrs. Saunders wanted to see her eldest daughter, would notice
+a bowl of the delicately-tinted blossoms on the desk, and another on
+the table.
+
+The girls' beds were always made, when they went upstairs to freshen
+themselves for luncheon; tumbled linen and used towels had been
+spirited away, fresh blotters were on the desk, fresh flowers
+everywhere, windows open, books back on their shelves, clothes
+stretched on hangers in the closets; everything immaculately clean and
+crisp.
+
+It was apparently impossible to interrupt the quiet running of the
+domestic machinery. If Susan and Emily left wet skirts and umbrellas
+and muddy overshoes in one of the side hallways, on returning from a
+walk, it was only a question of a few hours, before the skirts, dried
+and brushed and pressed, the umbrellas neatly furled, and the
+overshoes, as shining as ever, were back in their places. If the girls
+wanted tea at five o'clock, sandwiches of every known, and frequently
+of new types, little cakes and big, hot bouillons, or a salad, or even
+a broiled bird were to be had for the asking. It was no trouble, the
+tray simply appeared and Chow Yew or Carrie served them as if it were a
+real pleasure to do so.
+
+Whoever ordered for the Saunders kitchen--Susan suspected that it was a
+large amiable person in black whom she sometimes met in the halls, a
+person easily mistaken for a caller or a visiting aunt, but respectful
+in manner, and with a habit of running her tongue over her teeth when
+not speaking that vaguely suggested immense capability--did it on a
+very large scale indeed. It was not, as in poor Auntie's case, a
+question of selecting stewed tomatoes as a suitable vegetable for
+dinner, and penciling on a list, under "five pounds round steak,"
+"three cans tomatoes." In the Saunders' house there was always to be
+had whatever choicest was in season,--crabs or ducks, broilers or
+trout, asparagus an inch in diameter, forced strawberries and peaches,
+even pomegranates and alligator pears and icy, enormous grapefruit--new
+in those days--and melons and nectarines. There were crocks and boxes
+of cakes, a whole ice-chest just for cream and milk, another for
+cheeses and olives and pickles and salad-dressings. Susan had seen the
+cook's great store-room, lined with jars and pots and crocks, tins and
+glasses and boxes of delicious things to eat, brought from all over the
+world for the moment when some member of the Saunders family fancied
+Russian caviar, or Chinese ginger, or Italian cheese.
+
+Other people's brains and bodies were constantly and pleasantly at work
+to spare the Saunders any effort whatever, and as Susan, taken in by
+the family, and made to feel absolutely one of them, soon found herself
+taking hourly service quite as a matter of course, as though it was
+nothing new to her luxury-loving little person. If she hunted for a
+book, in a dark corner of the library, she did not turn her head to see
+which maid touched the button that caused a group of lights, just above
+her, to spring suddenly into soft bloom, although her "Thank you!"
+never failed; and when she and Emily came in late for tea in the
+drawing-room, she piled her wraps into some attendant's arms without so
+much as a glance. Yet Susan personally knew and liked all the maids,
+and they liked her, perhaps because her unaffected enjoyment of this
+new life and her constant allusions to the deprivations of the old days
+made them feel her a little akin to themselves.
+
+With Emily and her mother Susan was soon quite at home; with Ella her
+shyness lasted longer; and toward a friendship with Kenneth Saunders
+she seemed to make no progress whatever. Kenneth addressed a few
+kindly, unsmiling remarks to his mother during the course of the few
+meals he had at home; he was always gentle with her, and deeply
+resented anything like a lack of respect toward her on the others'
+parts. He entirely ignored Emily, and if he held any conversation at
+all with the spirited Ella, it was very apt to take the form of a
+controversy, Ella trying to persuade him to attend some dance or
+dinner, or Kenneth holding up some especial friend of hers for scornful
+criticism. Sometimes he spoke to Miss Baker, but not often. Kenneth's
+friendships were mysteries; his family had not the most remote idea
+where he went when he went out every evening, or where he was when he
+did not come home. Sometimes he spoke out in sudden, half-amused praise
+of some debutante, she was a "funny little devil," or "she was the
+decentest kid in this year's crop," and perhaps he would follow up this
+remark with a call or two upon the admired young girl, and Ella would
+begin to tease him about her. But the debutante and her mother
+immediately lost their heads at this point, called on the Saunders,
+gushed at Ella and Emily, and tried to lure Kenneth into coming to
+little home dinners or small theater parties. This always ended matters
+abruptly, and Kenneth returned to his old ways.
+
+His valet, a mournful, silent fellow named Mycroft, led rather a
+curious life, reporting at his master's room in the morning not before
+ten, and usually not in bed before two or three o'clock the next
+morning. About once a fortnight, sometimes oftener, as Susan had known
+for a long time, a subtle change came over Kenneth. His mother saw it
+and grieved; Ella saw it and scolded everyone but him. It cast a
+darkness over the whole house. Kenneth, always influenced more or less
+by what he drank, was going down, down, down, through one dark stage
+after another, into the terrible state whose horrors he dreaded with
+the rest of them. He was moping for a day or two, absent from meals,
+understood to be "not well, and in bed." Then Mycroft would agitatedly
+report that Mr. Kenneth was gone; there would be tears and Ella's
+sharpest voice in Mrs. Saunders' room, pallor and ill-temper on Emily's
+part, hushed distress all about until Kenneth was brought home from
+some place unknown by Mycroft, in a cab, and gotten noisily upstairs
+and visited three times a day by the doctor. The doctor would come
+downstairs to reassure Mrs. Saunders; Mycroft would run up and down a
+hundred times a day to wait upon the invalid. Perhaps once during his
+convalescence his mother would go up to see him for a little while, to
+sit, constrained and tender and unhappy, beside his bed, wishing
+perhaps that there was one thing in the wide world in which she and her
+son had a common interest.
+
+She was a lonesome, nervous little lady, and at these times only a
+little more fidgety than ever. Sometimes she cried because of Kenneth,
+in her room at night, and Ella braced her with kindly, unsympathetic,
+well-meant, uncomprehending remarks, and made very light of his
+weakness; but Emily walked her own room nervously, raging at Ken for
+being such a beast, and Mama for being such a fool.
+
+Susan, coming downstairs in the morning sunlight, after an evening of
+horror and strain, when the lamps had burned for four hours in an empty
+drawing-room, and she and Emily, early in their rooms, had listened
+alternately to the shouting and thumping that went on in Kenneth's room
+and the consoling murmur of Ella's voice downstairs, could hardly
+believe that life was being so placidly continued; that silence and
+sweetness still held sway downstairs; that Ella, in a foamy robe of
+lace and ribbon, at the head of the table, could be so cheerfully
+absorbed in the day's news and the Maryland biscuit, and that Mrs.
+Saunders, pottering over her begonias, could show so radiant a face
+over the blossoming of the double white, that Emily, at the telephone
+could laugh and joke.
+
+She was a great favorite with them all now, this sunny, pretty Susan;
+even Miss Baker, the mouse-like little trained nurse, beamed for her,
+and congratulated her upon her influence over every separate member of
+the family. Miss Baker had held her place for ten years and cherished
+no illusions concerning the Saunders.
+
+Susan had lost some few illusions herself, but not many. She was too
+happy to be critical, and it was her nature to like people for no
+better reason than that they liked her.
+
+Emily Saunders, with whom she had most to do, who was indeed her daily
+and hourly companion, was at this time about twenty-six years old, and
+so two years older than Susan, although hers was a smooth-skinned,
+baby-like type, and she looked quite as young as her companion. She had
+had a very lonely, if extraordinarily luxurious childhood, and a sickly
+girlhood, whose principal events were minor operations on eyes or ears,
+and experiments in diets and treatments, miserable sieges with oculists
+and dentists and stomach-pumps. She had been sent to several schools,
+but ill-health made her progress a great mortification, and finally she
+had been given a governess, Miss Roche, a fussily-dressed, effusive
+Frenchwoman, who later traveled with her. Emily's only accounts of her
+European experience dealt with Miss Roche's masterly treatment of
+ungracious officials, her faculty for making Emily comfortable at short
+notice and at any cost or place, and her ability to bring certain small
+possessions through the custom-house without unnecessary revelations.
+And at eighteen the younger Miss Saunders had been given a large
+coming-out tea, had joined the two most exclusive Cotillions,--the
+Junior and the Browning--had lunched and dined and gone to the play
+with the other debutantes, and had had, according to the admiring and
+attentive press, a glorious first season.
+
+As a matter of fact, however, it had been a most unhappy time for the
+person most concerned. Emily was not a social success. Not more than
+one debutante in ten is; Emily was one of the nine. Before every dance
+her hopes rose irrepressibly, as she gazed at her dainty little person
+in the mirror, studied her exquisite frock and her pearls, and the
+smooth perfection of the hair so demurely coiled under its wreath of
+rosebuds, or band of shining satin. To-night, she would be a success,
+to-night she would wipe out old scores. This mood lasted until she was
+actually in the dressing-room, in a whirl of arriving girls. Then her
+courage began to ebb. She would watch them, as the maid took off her
+carriage shoes; pleasantly take her turn at the mirror, exchange a shy,
+half-absent greeting with the few she knew; wish, with all her heart,
+that she dared put herself under their protection. Just a few were cool
+enough to enter the big ballroom in a gale of mirth, surrender
+themselves for a few moments of gallant dispute to the clustered young
+men at the door, and be ready to dance without a care, the first dozen
+dances promised, and nothing to do but be happy.
+
+But Emily drifted out shyly, fussed carefully with fans or glove-clasps
+while looking furtively about for possible partners, returned in a
+panic to the dressing-room on a pretense of exploring a slipper-bag for
+a handkerchief, and made a fresh start. Perhaps this time some group of
+chattering and laughing girls and men would be too close to the door
+for her comfort; not invited to join them, Emily would feel obliged to
+drift on across the floor to greet some gracious older woman, and sink
+into a chair, smiling at compliments, and covering a defeat with a
+regretful:
+
+"I'm really only looking on to-night. Mama worries so if I overdo."
+
+And here she would feel out of the current indeed, hopelessly shelved.
+Who would come looking for a partner in this quiet corner, next to old
+Mrs. Chickering whose two granddaughters were in the very center of the
+merry group at the door? Emily would smilingly rise, and go back to the
+dressing-room again.
+
+The famous Browning dances, in their beginning, a generation earlier,
+had been much smaller, less formal and more intimate than they were
+now. The sixty or seventy young persons who went to those first dances
+were all close friends, in a simpler social structure, and a less
+self-conscious day. They had been the most delightful events in Ella's
+girlhood, and she felt it to be entirely Emily's fault that Emily did
+not find them equally enchanting.
+
+"But I don't know the people who go to them very well!" Emily would
+say, half-confidential, half-resentful. Ella always met this argument
+with high scorn.
+
+"Oh, Baby, if you'd stop whining and fretting, and just get in and
+enjoy yourself once!" Ella would answer impatiently. "You don't have to
+know a man intimately to dance with him, I should hope! Just GO, and
+have a good time! My Lord, the way we all used to laugh and talk and
+rush about, you'd have thought we were a pack of children!"
+
+Ella and her contemporaries always went to these balls even now, the
+magnificent matrons of forty showing rounded arms and beautiful bosoms,
+and gowns far more beautiful than those the girls wore. Jealousy and
+rivalry and heartaches all forgot, they sat laughing and talking in
+groups, clustered along the walls, or played six-handed euchre in the
+adjoining card-room, and had, if the truth had been known, a far better
+time than the girls they chaperoned.
+
+After a winter or two, however, Emily stopped going, except perhaps
+once in a season. She began to devote a great deal of her thought and
+her conversation to her health, and was not long in finding doctors and
+nurses to whom the subject was equally fascinating. Emily had a
+favorite hospital, and was frequently ordered there for experiences
+that touched more deeply the chords of her nature than anything else
+ever did in her life. No one at home ever paid her such flattering
+devotion as did the sweet-faced, low-voiced nurses, and the
+doctor--whose coming, twice a day, was such an event. The doctor was a
+model husband and father, his beautiful wife a woman whom Ella knew and
+liked very well, but Emily had her nickname for him, and her little
+presents for him, and many a small, innocuous joke between herself and
+the doctor made her feel herself close to him. Emily was always glad
+when she could turn from her mother's mournful solicitude, Kenneth's
+snubs and Ella's imperativeness, and the humiliating contact with a
+society that could get along very well without her, to the universal
+welcome she had from all her friends in Mrs. Fowler's hospital.
+
+To Susan the thought of hypodermics, anesthetics, antisepsis and clinic
+thermometers, charts and diets, was utterly mysterious and abhorrent,
+and her healthy distaste for them amused Emily, and gave Emily a good
+reason for discussing and defending them.
+
+Susan's part was to listen and agree, listen and agree, listen and
+agree, on this as on all topics. She had not been long at "High
+Gardens" before Emily, in a series of impulsive gushes of confidence,
+had volunteered the information that Ella was so jealous and selfish
+and heartless that she was just about breaking Mama's heart, never
+happy unless she was poisoning somebody's mind against Emily, and never
+willing to let Emily keep a single friend, or do anything she wanted to
+do.
+
+"So now you see why I am always so dignified and quiet with Ella," said
+Emily, in the still midnight when all this was revealed. "That's the
+ONE thing that makes her mad!"
+
+"I can't believe it!" said Susan, aching for sleep, and yawning under
+cover of the dark.
+
+"I keep up for Mama's sake," Emily said. "But haven't you noticed how
+Ella tries to get you away from me? You MUST have! Why, the very first
+night you were here, she called out, 'Come in and see me on your way
+down!' Don't you remember? And yesterday, when I wasn't dressed and she
+wanted you to go driving, after dinner! Don't you remember?"
+
+"Yes, but---" Susan began. She could dismiss this morbid fancy with a
+few vigorous protests, with a hearty laugh. But she would probably
+dismiss herself from the Saunders' employ, as well, if she pursued any
+such bracing policy.
+
+"You poor kid, it's pretty hard on you!" she said, admiringly. And for
+half an hour she was not allowed to go to sleep.
+
+Susan began to dread these midnight talks. The moon rose, flooded the
+sleeping porch, mounted higher. The watch under Susan's pillow ticked
+past one o'clock, past half-past one--
+
+"Emily, you know really Ella is awfully proud of you," she was finally
+saying, "and, as for trying to influence your mother, you can't blame
+her. You're your mother's favorite--anyone can see that--and I do think
+she feels--"
+
+"Well, that's true!" Emily said, mollified. A silence followed. Susan
+began to settle her head by imperceptible degrees into the pillow;
+perhaps Emily was dropping off! Silence--silence--heavenly delicious
+silence. What a wonderful thing this sleeping porch was, Susan thought
+drowsily, and how delicious the country night--
+
+"Susan, why do you suppose I am Mama's favorite?" Emily's clear,
+wide-awake voice would pursue, with pensive interest.
+
+Or, "Susan, when did you begin to like me?" she would question, on
+their drives. "Susan, when I was looking straight up into Mrs. Carter's
+face,--you know the way I always do!--she laughed at me, and said I was
+a madcap monkey? Why did she say that?" Emily would pout, and wrinkle
+her brows in pretty, childish doubt. "I'm not a monkey, and _I_ don't
+think I'm a madcap? Do you?"
+
+"You're different, you see, Emily. You're not in the least like anybody
+else!" Susan would say.
+
+"But WHY am I different?" And if it was possible, Emily might even come
+over to sit on the arm of Susan's chair, or drop on her knees and
+encircle Susan's waist with her arms.
+
+"Well, in the first place you're terribly original, Emily, and you
+always say right out what you mean--" Susan would begin.
+
+With Ella, when she grew to know her well, Susan was really happier.
+She was too honest to enjoy the part she must always play with Emily,
+yet too practically aware of the advantages of this new position, to
+risk it by frankness, and eventually follow the other companions, the
+governesses and trained nurses who had preceded her. Emily
+characterized these departed ladies as "beasts," and still flushed a
+deep resentful red when she mentioned certain ones among them.
+
+Susan found in Ella, in the first place, far more to admire than she
+could in Emily. Ella's very size made for a sort of bigness in
+character. She looked her two hundred and thirty pounds, but she looked
+handsome, glowing and comfortable as well. Everything she wore was
+loose and dashing in effect; she was a fanatic about cleanliness and
+freshness, and always looked as if freshly bathed and brushed and
+dressed. Ella never put on a garment, other than a gown or wrap, twice.
+Sometimes a little heap of snowy, ribboned underwear was carried away
+from her rooms three or four times a day.
+
+She was dictatorial and impatient and exacting, but she was witty and
+good-natured, too, and so extremely popular with men and women of her
+own age that she could have dined out three times a night. Ella was
+fondly nicknamed "Mike" by her own contemporaries, and was always in
+demand for dinners and lunch parties and card parties. She was beloved
+by the younger set, too. Susan thought her big-sisterly interest in the
+debutantes very charming to see and, when she had time to remember her
+sister's little companion now and then, she would carry Susan off for a
+drive, or send for her when she was alone for tea, and the two laughed
+a great deal together. Susan could honestly admire here, and Ella liked
+her admiration.
+
+Miss Saunders believed herself to be a member of the most distinguished
+American family in existence, and her place to be undisputed as queen
+of the most exclusive little social circle in the world. She knew
+enough of the social sets of London and Washington and New York society
+to allude to them casually and intimately, and she told Susan that no
+other city could boast of more charming persons than those who composed
+her own particular set in San Francisco. Ella never spoke of "society"
+without intense gravity; nothing in life interested her so much as the
+question of belonging or not belonging to it. To her personally, of
+course, it meant nothing; she had been born inside the charmed ring,
+and would die there; but the status of other persons filled her with
+concern. She was very angry when her mother or Emily showed any
+wavering in this all-important matter.
+
+"Well, what did you have to SEE her for, Mama?" Ella would irritably
+demand, when her autocratic "Who'd you see to-day? What'd you do?" had
+drawn from her mother the name of some caller.
+
+"Why, dearie, I happened to be right there. I was just crossing the
+porch when they drove up!" Mrs. Saunders would timidly submit.
+
+"Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord! Mama, you make me crazy!" Ella would drop her
+hands, fling her head back, gaze despairingly at her mother. "That was
+your chance to snub her, Mama! Why didn't you have Chow Yew say that
+you were out?"
+
+"But, dearie, she seemed a real sweet little thing!"
+
+"Sweet little--! You'll have me CRAZY! Sweet little nothing--just
+because she married Gordon Jones, and the St. Johns have taken her up,
+she thinks she can get into society! And anyway, I wouldn't have given
+Rosie St. John the satisfaction for a thousand dollars! Did you ask her
+to your bridge lunch?"
+
+"Ella, dear, it is MY lunch," her mother might remind her, with dignity.
+
+"Mama, did you ask that woman here to play cards?"
+
+"Well, dearie, she happened to say--"
+
+"Oh, happened to say--!" A sudden calm would fall upon Miss Ella, the
+calm of desperate decision. The subject would be dropped for the time,
+but she would bring a written note to the lunch table.
+
+"Listen to this, Mama; I can change it if you don't like it," Ella
+would begin, kindly, and proceed to read it.
+
+       HIGH GARDENS.  MY DEAR MRS. JONES:
+
+ Mother has asked me to write you that her little bridge lunch
+  for Friday, the third, must be given up because of the dangerous
+  illness of a close personal friend. She hopes that it is only a
+  pleasure deferred, and will write you herself when less anxious
+  and depressed.      Cordially yours,
+
+                     ELLA CORNWALLIS SAUNDERS.
+
+"But, Ella, dear," the mother would protest, "there are others coming--"
+
+"Leave the others to me! I'll telephone and make it the day before."
+Ella would seal and dispatch the note, and be inclined to feel
+generously tender and considerate of her mother for the rest of the day.
+
+Ella was at home for a few moments, almost every day; but she did not
+dine at home more than once or twice in a fortnight. But she was always
+there for the family's occasional formal dinner party in which events
+Susan refused very sensibly to take part. She and Miss Baker dined
+early and most harmoniously in the breakfast-room, and were free to
+make themselves useful to the ladies of the house afterward. Ella would
+be magnificent in spangled cloth-of-gold; Emily very piquante in demure
+and drooping white, embroidered exquisitely with tiny French blossoms
+in color; Mrs. Saunders rustling in black lace and lavender silk, as
+the three went downstairs at eight o'clock. Across the wide hall below
+would stream the hooded women and the men in great-coats, silk hats in
+hand. Ella did not leave the drawing-room to meet them, as on less
+formal occasions, but a great chattering and laughing would break out
+as they went in.
+
+Susan, sitting back on her knees in the upper hall, to peer through the
+railing at the scene below, to Miss Baker's intense amusement, could
+admire everything but the men guests. They were either more or less
+attractive and married, thought Susan, or very young, very old, or very
+uninteresting bachelors. Red-faced, eighteen-year-old boys, laughing
+nervously, and stumbling over their pumps, shared the honors with
+cackling little fifty-year-old gallants. It could only be said that
+they were males, and that Ella would have cheerfully consigned her
+mother to bed with a bad headache rather than have had one too few of
+them to evenly balance the number of women. The members of the family
+knew what patience and effort were required, what writing and
+telephoning, before the right number was acquired.
+
+The first personal word that Kenneth Saunders ever spoke to his
+sister's companion was when, running downstairs, on the occasion of one
+of these dinners, he came upon her, crouched in her outlook, and
+thoroughly enjoying herself.
+
+"Good God!" said Kenneth, recoiling.
+
+"Sh-sh--it's only me--I'm watching 'em!" Susan whispered, even laying
+her hand upon the immaculate young gentleman's arm in her anxiety to
+quiet him.
+
+"Why, Lord; why doesn't Ella count you in on these things?" he
+demanded, gruffly. "Next time I'll tell her--"
+
+"If you do, I'll never speak to you again!" Susan threatened, her merry
+face close to his in the dark. "I wouldn't be down there for a farm!"
+
+"What do you do, just watch 'em?" Kenneth asked sociably, hanging over
+the railing beside her.
+
+"It's lots of fun!" Susan said, in a whisper. "Who's that?"
+
+"That's that Bacon girl--isn't she the limit!" Kenneth whispered back.
+"Lord," he added regretfully, "I'd much rather stay up here than go
+down! What Ella wants to round up a gang like this for--"
+
+And, sadly speculating, the son of the house ran downstairs, and Susan,
+congratulating herself, returned to her watching.
+
+Indeed, after a month or two in her new position, she thought an
+evening to herself a luxury to be enormously enjoyed. It was on such an
+occasion that Susan got the full benefit of the bathroom, the
+luxuriously lighted and appointed dressing-table, the porch with its
+view of a dozen gardens drenched in heavenly moonlight. At other times
+Emily's conversation distracted her and interrupted her at her toilet.
+Emily gave her no instant alone.
+
+Emily came up very late after the dinners to yawn and gossip with Susan
+while Gerda, her mother's staid middle-aged maid, drew off her slippers
+and stockings, and reverently lifted the dainty gown safely to its
+closet. Susan always got up, rolled herself in a wrap, and listened to
+the account of the dinner; Emily was rather critical of the women, but
+viewed the men more romantically. She repeated their compliments,
+exulting that they had been paid her "under Ella's very nose," or while
+"Mama was staring right at us." It pleased Emily to imagine a great
+many love-affairs for herself, and to feel that they must all be made
+as mysterious and kept as secret as possible.
+
+It was the old story, thought Susan, listening sympathetically, and in
+utter disbelief, to these recitals. Mary Lou and Georgie were not alone
+in claiming vague and mythical love-affairs; Emily even carried them to
+the point of indicating old bundles of letters in her desk as "from Bob
+Brock--tell you all about that some time!" or alluding to some youth
+who had gone away, left that part of the country entirely for her sake,
+some years ago. And even Georgie would not have taken as seriously as
+Emily did the least accidental exchange of courtesies with the eligible
+male. If the two girls, wasting a morning in the shops in town,
+happened to meet some hurrying young man in the street, the color
+rushed into Emily's face, and she alluded to the incident a dozen times
+during the course of the day. Like most girls, she had a special manner
+for men, a rather audacious and attractive manner, Susan thought. The
+conversation was never anything but gay and frivolous and casual. It
+always pleased Emily when such a meeting occurred.
+
+"Did you notice that Peyton Hamilton leaned over and said something to
+me very quickly, in a low voice, this morning?" Emily would ask, later,
+suddenly looking mischievous and penitent at once.
+
+"Oh, ho! That's what you do when I'm not noticing!" Susan would upbraid
+her.
+
+"He asked me if he could call," Emily would say, yawning, "but I told
+him I didn't like him well enough for that!"
+
+Susan was astonished to find herself generally accepted because of her
+association with Emily Saunders. She had always appreciated the
+difficulty of entering the inner circle of society with insufficient
+credentials. Now she learned how simple the whole thing was when the
+right person or persons assumed the responsibility. Girls whom years
+ago she had rather fancied to be "snobs" and "stuck-up" proved very
+gracious, very informal and jolly, at closer view; even the most
+prominent matrons began to call her "child" and "you little Susan
+Brown, you!" and show her small kindnesses.
+
+Susan took them at exactly their own valuation, revered those women
+who, like Ella, were supreme; watched curiously others a little less
+sure of their standing; and pitied and smiled at the struggles of the
+third group, who took rebuffs and humiliations smilingly, and fell only
+to rise and climb again. Susan knew that the Thayers, the Chickerings
+and Chaunceys and Coughs, the Saunders and the St. Johns, and Dolly
+Ripley, the great heiress, were really secure, nothing could shake them
+from their proud eminence. It gave her a little satisfaction to put the
+Baxters and Peter Coleman decidedly a step below; even lovely Isabel
+Wallace and the Carters and the Geralds, while ornamenting the very
+nicest set, were not quite the social authorities that the first-named
+families were. And several lower grades passed before one came to
+Connie Fox and her type, poor, pushing, ambitious, watching every
+chance to score even the tiniest progress toward the goal of social
+recognition. Connie Fox and her mother were a curious study to Susan,
+who, far more secure for the time being than they were, watched them
+with deep interest. The husband and father was an insurance broker,
+whose very modest income might have comfortably supported a quiet
+country home, and one maid, and eventually have been stretched to
+afford the daughter and only child a college education or a trousseau
+as circumstances decreed. As it was, a little house on Broadway was
+maintained with every appearance of luxury, a capped-and-aproned maid
+backed before guests through the tiny hall; Connie's vivacity covered
+the long wait for the luncheons that an irate Chinese cook, whose wages
+were perpetually in arrears, served when it pleased him to do so. Mrs.
+Fox bought prizes for Connie's gay little card-parties with the rent
+money, and retired with a headache immediately after tearfully
+informing the harassed breadwinner of the fact. She ironed Connie's
+gowns, bullied her little dressmaker, cried and made empty promises to
+her milliner, cut her old friends, telephoned her husband at six
+o'clock that, as "the girls" had not gone yet, perhaps he had better
+have a bite of dinner downtown. She gushed and beamed on Connie's
+friends, cultivated those she could reach assiduously, and never
+dreamed that a great many people were watching her with amusement when
+she worked her way about a room to squeeze herself in next to some
+social potentate.
+
+She had her reward when the mail brought Constance the coveted
+dance-cards; when she saw her name in the society columns of the
+newspapers, and was able to announce carelessly that that lucky girlie
+of hers was really going to Honolulu with the Cyrus Holmes. Dolly
+Ripley, the heiress, had taken a sudden fancy to Connie, some two years
+before Susan met her, and this alone was enough to reward Mrs. Fox for
+all the privations, snubs and humiliations she had suffered since the
+years when she curled Connie's straight hair on a stick, nearly blinded
+herself tucking and embroidering her little dresses, and finished up
+the week's ironing herself so that her one maid could escort Connie to
+an exclusive little dancing-class.
+
+Susan saw Connie now and then, and met the mother and daughter on a
+certain autumn Sunday when Ella had chaperoned the two younger girls to
+a luncheon at the Burlingame club-house. They had spent the night
+before with a friend of Ella's, whose lovely country home was but a few
+minutes' walk from the club, and Susan was elated with the glorious
+conviction that she had added to the gaiety of the party, and that
+through her even Emily was having a really enjoyable time. She met a
+great many distinguished persons to-day, the golf and polo players, the
+great Eastern actress who was the center of a group of adoring males,
+and was being entertained by the oldest and most capable of dowagers,
+and Dolly Ripley, a lean, eager, round-shouldered, rowdyish little
+person, talking as a professional breeder might talk of her dogs and
+horses, and shadowed by Connie Fox. Susan was so filled with the
+excitement of the occasion, the beauty of the day, the delightful club
+and its delightful guests, that she was able to speak to Miss Dolly
+Ripley quite as if she also had inherited some ten millions of dollars,
+and owned the most expensive, if not the handsomest, home in the state.
+
+"That was so like dear Dolly!" said Mrs. Fox later, coming up behind
+Susan on the porch, and slipping an arm girlishly about her waist.
+
+"What was?" asked Susan, after greetings.
+
+"Why, to ask what your first name was, and say that as she hated the
+name of Brown, she was going to call you Susan!" said Mrs. Fox sweetly.
+"Don't you find her very dear and simple?"
+
+"Why, I just met her--" Susan said, disliking the arm about her waist,
+and finding Mrs. Fox's interest in her opinion of Dolly Ripley quite
+transparent.
+
+"Ah, I know her so well!" Mrs. Fox added, with a happy sigh. "Always
+bright and interested when she meets people. But I scold her--yes, I
+do!--for giving people a false impression. I say, 'Dolly,'--I've known
+her so long, you know!--'Dolly, dear, people might easily think you
+meant some of these impulsive things you say, dear, whereas your
+friends, who know you really well, know that it's just your little
+manner, and that you'll have forgotten all about it to-morrow!' I don't
+mean YOU, Miss Brown," Mrs. Fox interrupted herself to say hastily.
+"Far from it!----Now, my dear, tell me that you know I didn't mean you!"
+
+"I understand perfectly," Susan said graciously. And she knew that at
+last she really did. Mrs. Fox was fluttering like some poor bird that
+sees danger near its young. She couldn't have anyone else, especially
+this insignificant little Miss Brown, who seemed to be making rather an
+impression everywhere, jeopardize Connie's intimacy with Dolly Ripley,
+without using such poor and obvious little weapons as lay at her
+command to prevent it.
+
+Standing on the porch of the Burlingame Club, and staring out across
+the gracious slopes of the landscape, Susan had an exhilarated sense of
+being among the players of this fascinating game at last. She must play
+it alone, to be sure, but far better alone than assisted as Connie Fox
+was assisted. It was an immense advantage to be expected to accompany
+Emily everywhere; it made a snub practically impossible, while
+heightening the compliment when she was asked anywhere without Emily.
+Susan was always willing to entertain a difficult guest, to play cards
+or not to play with apparently equal enjoyment--more desirable than
+either, she was "fun," and the more she was laughed at, the funnier she
+grew.
+
+"And you'll be there with Emily, of course, Miss Brown," said the
+different hostess graciously. "Emily, you're going to bring Susan
+Brown, you know!--I'm telephoning, Miss Brown, because I'm afraid my
+note didn't make it clear that we want you, too!"
+
+Emily's well-known eccentricity did not make Susan the less popular;
+even though she was personally involved in it.
+
+"Oh, I wrote you a note for Emily this morning, Mrs. Willis," Susan
+would say, at the club, "she's feeling wretchedly to-day, and she wants
+to be excused from your luncheon to-morrow!"
+
+"Oh?" The matron addressed would eye the messenger with kindly
+sharpness. "What's the matter--very sick?"
+
+"We-ell, not dying!" A dimple would betray the companion's demureness.
+
+"Not dying? No, I suppose not! Well, you tell Emily that she's a silly,
+selfish little cat, or words to that effect!"
+
+"I'll choose words to that effect," Susan would assure the speaker,
+smilingly.
+
+"You couldn't come, anyway, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, no, Mrs. Willis! Thank you so much!"
+
+"No, of course not." The matron would bite her lips in momentary
+irritation, and, when they parted, the cause of that pretty,
+appreciative, amusing little companion of Emily Saunders would be
+appreciably strengthened.
+
+One winter morning Emily tossed a square, large envelope across the
+breakfast table toward her companion.
+
+"Sue, that looks like a Browning invitation! What do you bet that he's
+sent you a card for the dances!"
+
+"He couldn't!" gasped Susan, snatching it up, while her eyes danced,
+and the radiant color flooded her face. Her hand actually shook when
+she tore the envelope open, and as the engraved card made its
+appearance, Susan's expression might have been that of Cinderella
+eyeing her coach-and-four.
+
+For Browning--founder of the cotillion club, and still manager of the
+four or five winter dances--was the one unquestioned, irrefutable,
+omnipotent social authority of San Francisco. To go to the "Brownings"
+was to have arrived socially; no other distinction was equivalent,
+because there was absolutely no other standard of judgment. Very high
+up, indeed, in the social scale must be the woman who could resist the
+temptation to stick her card to the Brownings in her mirror frame,
+where the eyes of her women friends must inevitably fall upon it, and
+yearly hundreds of matrons tossed through sleepless nights, all through
+the late summer and the fall, hoping against hope, despairing, hoping
+again, that the magic card might really be delivered some day in early
+December, and her debutante daughter's social position be placed beyond
+criticism once more. Only perhaps one hundred persons out of
+"Brownie's" four hundred guests could be sure of the privilege. The
+others must suffer and wait.
+
+Browning himself, a harassed, overworked, kindly gentleman, whose
+management of the big dances brought him nothing but responsibility and
+annoyance, threatened yearly to resign from his post, and yearly was
+dragged back into the work, fussing for hours with his secretary over
+the list, before he could personally give it to the hungrily waiting
+reporters with the weary statement that it was absolutely correct, that
+no more names were to be added this year, that he did not propose to
+defend, through the columns of the press, his omission of certain names
+and his acceptance of others, and that, finally, he was off for a
+week's vacation in the southern part of the state, and thanked them all
+for their kindly interest in himself and his efforts for San Francisco
+society.
+
+It was the next morning's paper that was so anxiously awaited, and so
+eagerly perused in hundreds of luxurious boudoirs--exulted over, or
+wept over and reviled,--but read by nearly every woman in the city.
+
+And now he had sent Susan a late card, and Susan knew why. She had met
+the great man at the Hotel Rafael a few days before, at tea-time, and
+he had asked Susan most affectionately of her aunt, Mrs. Lancaster, and
+recalled, with a little emotion, the dances of two generations before,
+when he was a small boy, and the lovely Georgianna Ralston was a beauty
+and a belle. Susan could have kissed the magic bit of pasteboard!
+
+But she knew too well just what Emily wanted to think of Browning's
+courtesy, to mention his old admiration for her aunt. And Emily
+immediately justified her diplomatic silence by saying:
+
+"Isn't that AWFULLY decent of Brownie! He did that just for Ella and
+me--that's like him! He'll do anything for some people!"
+
+"Well, of course I can't go," Susan said briskly. "But I do call it
+awfully decent! And no little remarks about sending a check, either,
+and no chaperone's card! The old duck! However, I haven't a gown, and I
+haven't a beau, and you don't go, and so I'll write a tearful regret. I
+hope it won't be the cause of his giving the whole thing up. I hate to
+discourage the dear boy!"
+
+Emily laughed approvingly.
+
+"No, but honestly, Sue," she said, in eager assent, "don't you know how
+people would misunderstand--you know how people are! You and I know
+that you don't care a whoop about society, and that you'd be the last
+person in the world to use your position here--but you know what other
+people might say! And Brownie hates talk--"
+
+Susan had to swallow hard, and remain smiling. It was part of the price
+that she paid for being here in this beautiful environment, for being,
+in every material sense, a member of one of the state's richest
+families. She could not say, as she longed to say, "Oh, Emily, don't
+talk ROT! You know that before your own grandfather made his money as a
+common miner, and when Isabel Wallace's grandfather was making shoes,
+mine was a rich planter in Virginia!" But she knew that she could
+safely have treated Emily's own mother with rudeness, she could have
+hopelessly mixed up the letters she wrote for Ella, she could have set
+the house on fire or appropriated to her own use the large sums of
+money she occasionally was entrusted by the family to draw for one
+purpose or another from the bank, and been quickly forgiven, if
+forgivness was a convenience to the Saunders family at the moment. But
+to fail to realize that between the daughter of the house of Saunders
+and the daughter of the house of Brown an unspanned social chasm must
+forever stretch would have been, indeed, the unforgivable offense.
+
+It was all very different from Susan's old ideals of a paid companion's
+duties. She had drawn these ideals from the English novels she consumed
+with much enjoyment in early youth--from "Queenie's Whim" and "Uncle
+Max" and the novels of Charlotte Yonge. She had imagined herself,
+before her arrival at "High Gardens," as playing piano duets with
+Emily, reading French for an hour, German for an hour, gardening,
+tramping, driving, perhaps making a call on some sick old woman with
+soup and jelly in her basket, or carrying armfuls of blossoms to the
+church for decoration. If one of Emily's sick headaches came on, it
+would be Susan's duty to care for her tenderly, and to read to her in a
+clear, low, restful voice when she was recovering; to write her notes,
+to keep her vases filled with flowers, to "preside" at the tea-table,
+efficient, unobtrusive, and indispensable. She would make herself
+useful to Ella, too; arrange her collections of coins, carry her
+telephone messages, write her notes. She would accompany the little old
+mother on her round through the greenhouses, read to her and be ready
+to fly for her book or her shawl. And if Susan's visionary activities
+also embraced a little missionary work in the direction of the son of
+the house, it was of a very sisterly and blameless nature. Surely the
+most demure of companions, reading to Mrs. Saunders in the library,
+might notice an attentive listener lounging in a dark corner, or might
+color shyly when Ken's sisters commented on the fact that he seemed to
+be at home a good deal these days.
+
+It was a little disillusioning to discover, as during her first weeks
+in the new work she did discover, that almost no duties whatever would
+be required of her. It seemed to make more irksome the indefinite thing
+that was required of her; her constant interested participation in just
+whatever happened to interest Emily at the moment. Susan loved tennis
+and driving, loved shopping and lunching in town, loved to stroll over
+to the hotel for tea in the pleasant afternoons, or was satisfied to
+lie down and read for an hour or two.
+
+But it was very trying to a person of her definite impulsive briskness
+never to know, from one hour or one day to the next, just what
+occupation was in prospect. Emily would order the carriage for four
+o'clock, only to decide, when it came around, that she would rather
+drag the collies out into the side-garden, to waste three dozen camera
+plates and three hours in trying to get good pictures of them.
+Sometimes Emily herself posed before the camera, and Susan took picture
+after picture of her.
+
+"Sue, don't you think it would be fun to try some of me in my Mandarin
+coat? Come up while I get into it. Oh, and go get Chow Yew to get that
+Chinese violin he plays, and I'll hold it! We'll take 'em in the
+Japanese garden!" Emily would be quite fired with enthusiasm, but
+before the girls were upstairs she might change in favor of her riding
+habit and silk hat, and Susan would telephone the stable that Miss
+Emily's riding horse was wanted in the side-garden. "You're a darling!"
+she would say to Susan, after an exhausting hour or two. "Now, next
+time I'll take you!"
+
+But Susan's pictures never were taken. Emily's interest rarely touched
+twice in the same place.
+
+"Em, it's twenty minutes past four! Aren't we going to tea with Isabel
+Wallace?" Susan would ask, coming in to find Emily comfortably
+stretched out with a book.
+
+"Oh, Lord, so we were! Well, let's not!" Emily would yawn.
+
+"But, Em, they expect us!"
+
+"Well, go telephone, Sue, there's a dear! And tell them I've got a
+terrible headache. And you and I'll have tea up here. Tell Carrie I
+want to see her about it; I'm hungry; I want to order it specially."
+
+Sometimes, when the girls came downstairs, dressed for some outing, it
+was Miss Ella who upset their plans. Approving of her little sister's
+appearance, she would lure Emily off for a round of formal calls.
+
+"Be decent now, Baby! You'll never have a good time, if you don't go
+and do the correct thing now and then. Come on. I'm going to town on
+the two, and we can get a carriage right at the ferry--"
+
+But Susan rarely managed to save the afternoon. Going noiselessly
+upstairs, she was almost always captured by the lonely old mistress of
+the house.
+
+"Girls gone?" Mrs. Saunders would pipe, in her cracked little voice,
+from the doorway of her rooms. "Don't the house seem still? Come in,
+Susan, you and I'll console each other over a cup of tea."
+
+Susan, smilingly following her, would be at a loss to account for her
+own distaste and disappointment. But she was so tired of people! She
+wanted so desperately to be alone!
+
+The precious chance would drift by, a rich tea would presently be
+served; the little over-dressed, over-fed old lady was really very
+lonely; she went to a luncheon or card-party not oftener than two or
+three times a month, and she loved company. There was almost no close
+human need or interest in her life; she was as far from her children as
+was any other old lady of their acquaintance.
+
+Susan knew that she had been very proud of her sons and daughters, as a
+happy young mother. The girl was continually discovering, among old
+Mrs. Saunders' treasures, large pictures of Ella, at five, at seven, at
+nine, with straight long bangs and rosetted hats that tied under her
+chin, and French dresses tied with sashes about her knees, and pictures
+of Kenneth leaning against stone benches, or sitting in swings, a thin
+and sickly-looking little boy, in a velvet suit and ribboned straw hat.
+There were pictures of the dead children, too, and a picture of Emily,
+at three months, sitting in an immense shell, and clad only in the
+folds of her own fat little person. On the backs of these pictures,
+Mrs. Saunders had written "Kennie, six years old," and the date, or
+"Totty, aged nine"--she never tired of looking at them now, and of
+telling Susan that the buttons on Ella's dress had been of sterling
+silver, "made right from Papa's mine," and that the little ship Kenneth
+held had cost twenty-five dollars. All of her conversation was
+boastful, in an inoffensive, faded sort of way. She told Susan about
+her wedding, about her gown and her mother's gown, and the cost of her
+music, and the number of the musicians.
+
+Mrs. Saunders, Susan used to think, letting her thoughts wander as the
+old lady rambled on, was an unfortunately misplaced person. She had
+none of the qualities of the great lady, nothing spiritual or mental
+with which to fend off the vacuity of old age. As a girl, a bride, a
+young matron, she had not shown her lack so pitiably. But now, at
+sixty-five, Mrs. Saunders had no character, no tastes, no opinions
+worth considering. She liked to read the paper, she liked her flowers,
+although she took none of the actual care of them, and she liked to
+listen to music; there was a mechanical piano in her room, and Susan
+often heard the music downstairs at night, and pictured the old lady,
+reading in bed, calling to Miss Baker when a record approached its
+finish, and listening contentedly to selections from "Faust" and
+"Ernani," and the "Chanson des Alpes." Mrs. Saunders would have been
+far happier as a member of the fairly well-to-do middle class. She
+would have loved to shop with married daughters, sharply interrogating
+clerks as to the durability of shoes, and the weight of little
+underflannels; she would have been a good angel in the nurseries, as an
+unfailing authority when the new baby came, or hushing the less recent
+babies to sleep in tender old arms. She would have been a judge of hot
+jellies, a critic of pastry. But bound in this little aimless groove of
+dressmakers' calls, and card-parties, she was quite out of her natural
+element. It was not astonishing that, like Emily, she occasionally
+enjoyed an illness, and dispensed with the useless obligation of
+getting up and dressing herself at all!
+
+Invitations, they were really commands, to the Browning dances were
+received early in December; Susan, dating her graceful little note of
+regret, was really shocked to notice the swift flight of the months.
+December already! And she had seemed to leave Hunter, Baxter & Hunter
+only last week. Susan fell into a reverie over her writing, her eyes
+roving absently over the stretch of wooded hills below her window.
+December--! Nearly a year since Peter Coleman had sent her a circle of
+pearls, and she had precipitated the events that had ended their
+friendship. It was a sore spot still, the memory; but Susan, more sore
+at herself for letting him mislead her than with him, burned to
+reestablish herself in his eyes as a woman of dignity and reserve,
+rather than to take revenge upon him for what was, she knew now, as
+much a part of him as his laughing eyes and his indomitable buoyancy.
+
+The room in which she was writing was warm. Furnace heat is not common
+in California, but, with a thousand other conveniences, the Saunders
+home had a furnace. There were winter roses, somewhere near her, making
+the air sweet; the sunlight slanted in brightly across the wide couch
+where Emily was lying, teasing Susan between casual glances at her
+magazine. A particularly gay week had left both girls feeling decidedly
+unwell. Emily complained of headache and neuralgia; Susan had
+breakfasted on hot soda and water, her eyes felt heavy, her skin hot
+and dry and prickly.
+
+"We all eat too much in this house!" she said aloud, cheerfully. "And
+we don't exercise enough!" Emily did not answer, merely smiled, as at a
+joke. The subject of diet was not popular with either of the Misses
+Saunders. Emily never admitted that her physical miseries had anything
+to do with her stomach; and Ella, whose bedroom scales exasperated her
+afresh every time she got on them, while making dolorous allusions to
+her own size whenever it pleased her to do so, never allowed anyone
+else the privilege. But even with her healthy appetite, and splendid
+constitution, Susan was unable to eat as both the sisters did. Every
+other day she resolved sternly to diet, and frequently at night she
+could not sleep for indigestion; but the Saunders home was no
+atmosphere for Spartan resolutions, and every meal-time saw Susan's
+courage defeated afresh. She could have remained away from the table
+with far less effort than was required, when a delicious dish was
+placed before her, to send it away untouched. There were four regular
+meals daily in the Saunders home; the girls usually added a fifth when
+they went down to the pantries to forage before going to bed; and
+tempting little dishes of candy and candied fruits were set
+unobtrusively on card-tables, on desks, on the piano where the girls
+were amusing themselves with the songs of the day.
+
+It was a comfortable, care-free life they led, irresponsible beyond any
+of Susan's wildest dreams. She and Emily lounged about their bright,
+warm apartments, these winter mornings, until nine o'clock, lingered
+over their breakfast--talking, talking and talking, until the
+dining-room clock struck a silvery, sweet eleven; and perhaps drifted
+into Miss Ella's room for more talk, or amused themselves with Chow
+Yew's pidgin English, while he filled vases in one of the pantries. At
+twelve o'clock they went up to dress for the one o'clock luncheon, an
+elaborate meal at which Mrs. Saunders plaintively commented on the
+sauce Bechamel, Ella reviled the cook, and Kenneth, if he was present,
+drank a great deal of some charged water from a siphon, or perhaps made
+Lizzie or Carrie nearly leap out of their skins by a sudden, terrifying
+inquiry why Miss Brown hadn't been served to salad before he was, or
+perhaps growled at Emily a question as to what the girls had been
+talking about all night long.
+
+After luncheon, if Kenneth did not want the new motor-car, which was
+supposed to be his particular affectation, the girls used it, giggling
+in the tonneau at the immobility of Flornoy, the French chauffeur;
+otherwise they drove behind the bays, and stopped at some lovely home,
+standing back from the road behind a sweep of drive, and an avenue of
+shady trees, for tea. Susan could take her part in the tea-time gossip
+now, could add her surmises and comment to the general gossip, and knew
+what the society weeklies meant when they used initials, or alluded to
+a "certain prominent debutante recently returned from an Eastern
+school."
+
+As the season ripened, she and Emily went to four or five luncheons
+every week, feminine affairs, with cards or matinee to follow. Dinner
+invitations were more rare; there were men at the dinners, and the risk
+of boring a partner with Emily's uninteresting little personality was
+too great to be often taken. Her poor health served both herself and
+her friends as an excuse. Ella went everywhere, even to the debutante's
+affairs; but Emily was too entirely self-centered to be popular.
+
+She and Susan were a great deal alone. They chattered and laughed
+together through shopping trips, luncheons at the clubs, matinees, and
+trips home on the boat. They bought prizes for Ella's card-parties, or
+engagement cups and wedding-presents for those fortunate girls who
+claimed the center of the social stage now and then with the
+announcement of their personal plans. They bought an endless variety of
+pretty things for Emily, who prided herself on the fact that she could
+not bear to have near her anything old or worn or ugly. A thousand
+little reminders came to Emily wherever she went of things without
+which she could not exist.
+
+"What a darling chain that woman's wearing; let's go straight up to
+Shreve's and look at chains," said Emily, on the boat; or "White-bait!
+Here it is on this menu. I hadn't thought of it for months! Do remind
+Mrs. Pullet to get some!" or "Can't you remember what it was Isabel
+said that she was going to get? Don't you remember I said I needed it,
+too?"
+
+If Susan had purchases of her own to make, Emily could barely wait with
+patience until they were completed, before adding:
+
+"I think I'll have a pair of slippers, too. Something a little nicer
+than that, please"; or "That's going to make up into a dear wrapper for
+you, Sue," she would enthusiastically declare, "I ought to have another
+wrapper, oughtn't I? Let's go up to Chinatown, and see some of the big
+wadded ones at Sing Fat's. I really need one!"
+
+Just before Christmas, Emily went to the southern part of the state
+with a visiting cousin from the East, and Susan gladly seized the
+opportunity for a little visit at home. She found herself strangely
+stirred when she went in, from the bright winter sunshine, to the
+dingy, odorous old house, encountering the atmosphere familiar to her
+from babyhood, and the unaltered warm embraces of Mary Lou and her
+aunt. Before she had hung up her hat and coat, she was swept again into
+the old ways, listening, while she changed her dress, to Mary Lou's
+patient complaints and wistful questions, slipping out to the bakery
+just before dinner to bring home a great paper-bag of hot rolls, and
+ending the evening, after a little shopping expedition to Fillmore
+Street, with solitaire at the dining-room table. The shabbiness and
+disorder and a sort of material sordidness were more marked than ever,
+but Susan was keenly conscious of some subtle, touching charm,
+unnoticed heretofore, that seemed to flavor the old environment
+to-night. They were very pure and loving and loyal, her aunt and
+cousins, very practically considerate and tender toward each other,
+despite the flimsy fabric of their absurd dreams; very good, in the
+old-fashioned sense of the term, if not very successful or very clever.
+
+They made much of her coming, rejoiced over her and kissed her as if
+she never had even in thought neglected them, and exulted innocently in
+the marvelous delights of her new life. Georgie was driven over from
+the Mission by her husband, the next day, in Susan's honor, and carried
+the fat, loppy baby in for so brief a visit that it was felt hardly
+worth while to unwrap and wrap up again little Myra Estelle. Mrs.
+Lancaster had previously, with a burst of tears, informed Susan that
+Georgie was looking very badly, and that, nursing that heavy child, she
+should have been spared more than she was by the doctor's mother and
+the old servant. But Susan, although finding the young mother pale and
+rather excited, thought that Georgie looked well, and admired with the
+others her heavy, handsome new suit and the over-trimmed hat that quite
+eclipsed her small face. The baby was unmanageable, and roared
+throughout the visit, to Georgie's distress.
+
+"She never cries this way at home!" protested young Mrs. O'Connor.
+
+"Give her some ninny," Mrs. Lancaster suggested, eagerly, but Georgie,
+glancing at the street where Joe was holding the restless black horse
+in check, said nervously that Joe didn't like it until the right time.
+She presently went out to hand Myra to Susan while she climbed into
+place, and was followed by a scream from Mrs. Lancaster, who remarked
+later that seeing the black horse start just as Susan handed the child
+up, she had expected to see them all dashed to pieces.
+
+"Well, Susan, light of my old eyes, had enough of the rotten rich?"
+asked William Oliver, coming in for a later dinner, on the first night
+of her visit, and jerking her to him for a resounding kiss before she
+had any idea of his intention.
+
+"Billy!" Susan said, mildly scandalized, her eyes on her aunt.
+
+"Well, well, what's all this!" Mrs. Lancaster remarked, without alarm.
+William, shaking out his napkin, drawing his chair up to the table, and
+falling upon his dinner with vigor, demanded:
+
+"Come on, now! Tell us all, all!"
+
+But Susan, who had been chattering fast enough from the moment of her
+arrival, could not seem to get started again. It was indeed a little
+difficult to continue an enthusiastic conversation, unaffected by his
+running fire of comment. For in these days he was drifting rapidly
+toward a sort of altruistic socialism, and so listened to her recital
+with sardonic smiles, snorts of scorn, and caustic annotations.
+
+"The Carters--ha! That whole bunch ought to be hanged," Billy remarked.
+"All their money comes from the rents of bad houses, and--let me tell
+you something, when there was a movement made to buy up that Jackson
+Street block, and turn it into a park, it was old Carter, yes, and his
+wife, too, who refused to put a price on their property!"
+
+"Oh, Billy, you don't KNOW that!"
+
+"I don't? All right, maybe I don't," Mr. Oliver returned growlingly to
+his meal, only to break out a moment later, "The Kirkwoods! Yes; that's
+a rare old bunch! They're still holding the city to the franchise they
+swindled the Government out of, right after the Civil War! Every time
+you pay taxes--"
+
+"I don't pay taxes!" Susan interrupted frivolously, and resumed her
+glowing account. Billy made no further contribution to the conversation
+until he asked some moments later, "Does old Brock ever tell you about
+his factories, while he's taking you around his orchid-house? There's a
+man a week killed there, and the foremen tell the girls when they hire
+them that they aren't expected to take care of themselves on the wages
+they get!"
+
+But the night before her return to San Rafael, Mr. Oliver, in his
+nicest mood, took Susan to the Orpheum, and they had fried oysters and
+coffee in a little Fillmore Street restaurant afterward, Billy
+admitting with graceful frankness that funds were rather low, and Susan
+really eager for the old experience and the old sensations. Susan liked
+the brotherly, clumsy way in which he tried to ascertain, as they sat
+loitering and talking over the little meal, just how much of her
+thoughts still went to Peter Coleman, and laughed outright, as soon as
+she detected his purpose, as only an absolutely heart-free girl could
+laugh, and laid her hand over his for a little appreciative squeeze
+before they dismissed the subject. After that he told her of some of
+his own troubles, the great burden of the laboring classes that he felt
+rested on his particular back, and his voice rose and he pounded the
+table as he talked of the other countries of the world, where even
+greater outrages, or where experimental solutions were in existence.
+Susan brought the conversation to Josephine Carroll, and watched his
+whole face grow tender, and heard his voice soften, as they spoke of
+her.
+
+"No; but is it really and truly serious this time, Bill?" she asked,
+with that little thrill of pain that all good sisters know when the
+news comes.
+
+"Serious? GOSH!" said the lover, simply.
+
+"Engaged?"
+
+"No-o. I couldn't very well. I'm in so deep at the works that I may get
+fired any minute. More than that, the boys generally want me to act as
+spokesman, and so I'm a sort of marked card, and I mightn't get in
+anywhere else, very easily. And I couldn't ask Jo to go with me to some
+Eastern factory or foundry town, without being pretty sure of a job.
+No; things are just drifting."
+
+"Well, but Bill," Susan said anxiously, "somebody else will step in if
+you don't! Jo's such a beauty--"
+
+He turned to her almost with a snarl.
+
+"Well, what do you want me to do? Steal?" he asked angrily. And then
+softening suddenly he added: "She's young,--the little queen of queens!"
+
+"And yet you say you don't want money," Susan said, drily, with a shrug
+of her shoulders.
+
+The next day she went back to Emily, and again the lazy, comfortable
+days began to slip by, one just like the other. At Christmas-time Susan
+was deluged with gifts, the holidays were an endless chain of good
+times, the house sweet with violets, and always full of guests and
+callers; girls in furs who munched candy as they chattered, and young
+men who laughed and shouted around the punch bowl. Susan and Emily were
+caught in a gay current that streamed to the club, to talk and drink
+eggnog before blazing logs, and streamed to one handsome home after
+another, to talk and drink eggnog before other fires, and to be shown
+and admire beautiful and expensive presents. They bundled in and out of
+carriages and motors, laughing as they crowded in, and sitting on each
+other's laps, and carrying a chorus of chatter and laughter everywhere.
+Susan would find herself, the inevitable glass in hand, talking hard to
+some little silk-clad old lady in some softly lighted lovely
+drawing-room, to be whisked away to some other drawing-room, and to
+another fireside, where perhaps there was a stocky, bashful girl of
+fourteen to amuse, or somebody's grandfather to interest and smile upon.
+
+Everywhere were holly wreaths and lights, soft carpets, fires and rich
+gowns, and everywhere the same display of gold picture frames and
+silver plates, rock crystal bowls, rugs and cameras and mahogany desks
+and tables, furs and jeweled chains and rings. Everywhere were candies
+from all over the world, and fruitcake from London, and marrons and
+sticky candied fruit, and everywhere unobtrusive maids were silently
+offering trays covered with small glasses.
+
+Susan was frankly sick when the new year began, and Emily had several
+heart and nerve attacks, and was very difficult to amuse. But both
+girls agreed that the holidays had been the "time of their lives."
+
+It was felt by the Saunders family that Susan had shown a very becoming
+spirit in the matter of the Browning dances. Ella, who had at first
+slightly resented the fact that "Brownie" had chosen to honor Emily's
+paid companion in so signal a manner, had gradually shifted to the
+opinion that, in doing so, he had no more than confirmed the family's
+opinion of Susan Brown, after all, and shown a very decent
+discrimination.
+
+"No EARTHLY reason why you shouldn't have accepted!" said Ella.
+
+"Oh, Duchess," said Susan, who sometimes pleased her with this name,
+"fancy the talk!"
+
+"Well," drawled Ella, resuming her perusal of a scandalous weekly, "I
+don't know that I'm afraid of talk, myself!"
+
+"At the same time, El," Emily contributed, eagerly, "you know what a
+fuss they made when Vera Brock brought that Miss De Foe, of New York!"
+
+Ella gave her little sister a very keen look,
+
+"Vera Brock?" she said, dreamily, with politely elevated brows.
+
+"Well, of course, I don't take the Brocks seriously--" Emily began,
+reddening.
+
+"Well, I should hope you wouldn't, Baby!" answered the older sister,
+promptly and forcibly. "Don't make an UTTER fool of yourself!"
+
+Emily retired into an enraged silence, and a day or two later, Ella, on
+a Sunday morning late in February, announced that she was going to
+chaperone both the girls to the Browning dance on the following Friday
+night.
+
+Susan was thrown into a most delightful flutter, longing desperately to
+go, but chilled with nervousness whenever she seriously thought of it.
+She lay awake every night anxiously computing the number of her
+possible partners, and came down to breakfast every morning cold with
+the resolution that she would make a great mistake in exposing herself
+to possible snubbing and neglect. She thought of nothing but the
+Browning, listened eagerly to what the other girls said of it, her
+heart sinking when Louise Chickering observed that there never were men
+enough at the Brownings, and rising again when Alice Chauncey hardily
+observed that, if a girl was a good dancer, that was all that mattered,
+she couldn't help having a good time! Susan knew she danced well--
+
+However, Emily succumbed on Thursday to a heart attack. The whole
+household went through its usual excitement, the doctor came, the nurse
+was hurriedly summoned, Susan removed all the smaller articles from
+Emily's room, and replaced the bed's flowery cover with a sheet, the
+invalid liking the hospital aspect. Susan was not very much amazed at
+the suddenness of this affliction; Emily had been notably lacking in
+enthusiasm about the dance, and on Wednesday afternoon, Ella having
+issued the casual command, "See if you can't get a man or two to dine
+with us at the hotel before the dance, Emily; then you girls will be
+sure of some partners, anyway!" Emily had spent a discouraging hour at
+the telephone.
+
+"Hello, George!" Susan had heard her say gaily. "This is Emily
+Saunders. George, I rang up because--you know the Browning is Friday
+night, and Ella's giving me a little dinner at the Palace before
+it--and I wondered--we're just getting it up hurriedly--" An interval
+of silence on Emily's part would follow, then she would resume,
+eagerly, "Oh, certainly! I'm sorry, but of course I understand. Yes,
+indeed; I'll see you Friday night--" and the conversation would be
+ended.
+
+And, after a moment of silence, she would call another number, and go
+through the little conversation again. Susan, filled with apprehensions
+regarding her own partners, could not blame Emily for the heart attack,
+and felt a little vague relief on her own account. Better sure at home
+than sorry in the dreadful brilliance of a Browning ball!
+
+"I'm afraid this means no dance!" murmured Emily, apologetically.
+
+"As if I cared, Emmy Lou!" Susan reassured her cheerfully.
+
+"Well, I don't think you would have had a good time, Sue!" Emily said,
+and the topic of the dance was presumably exhausted.
+
+But when Ella got home, the next morning, she reopened the question
+with some heat. Emily could do exactly as Emily pleased, declared Ella,
+but Susan Brown should and would come to the last Browning.
+
+"Oh, please, Duchess--!" Susan besought her.
+
+"Very well, Sue, if you don't, I'll make that kid so sorry she ever--"
+
+"Oh, please!--And beside--" said Susan, "I haven't anything to wear! So
+that DOES settle it!"
+
+"What were you going to wear?" demanded Ella, scowling.
+
+"Em said she'd lend me her white lace."
+
+"Well, that's all right! Gerda'll fix it for you--"
+
+"But Emily sent it back to Madame Leonard yesterday afternoon. She
+wanted the sash changed," Susan hastily explained.
+
+"Well, she's got other gowns," Ella said, with a dangerous glint in her
+eyes. "What about that thing with the Persian embroidery? What about
+the net one she wore to Isabel's?"
+
+"The net one's really gone to pieces, Duchess. It was a flimsy sort of
+thing, anyway. And the Persian one she's only had on twice. When we
+were talking about it Monday she said she'd rather I didn't--"
+
+"Oh, she did? D'ye hear that, Mama?" Ella asked, holding herself in
+check. "And what about the chiffon?"
+
+"Well, Ella, she telephoned Madame this morning not to hurry with that,
+because she wasn't going to the dance."
+
+"Was she going to wear it?"
+
+"Well, no. But she telephoned Madame just the same--I don't know why
+she did," Susan smiled. "But what's the difference?" she ended
+cheerfully.
+
+"Quite a Flora McFlimsey!" said Mrs. Saunders, with her nervous, shrill
+little laugh, adding eagerly to the now thoroughly aroused Ella. "You
+know Baby doesn't really go about much, Totty; she hasn't as many gowns
+as you, dear!"
+
+"Now, look here, Mama," Ella said, levelly, "if we can manage to get
+Susan something to wear, well and good; but--if that rotten, selfish,
+nasty kid has really spoiled this whole thing, she'll be sorry! That's
+all. I'd try to get a dress in town, if it wasn't so late! As it is
+I'll telephone Madame about the Persian--"
+
+"Oh, honestly, I couldn't! If Emily didn't want me to!" Susan began,
+scarlet-cheeked.
+
+"I think you're all in a conspiracy to drive me crazy!" Ella said
+angrily. "Emily shall ask you just as nicely as she knows how, to
+wear--"
+
+"Totty, she's SICK!" pleaded Emily's mother.
+
+"Sick! She's chock-full of poison because she never knows when to stop
+eating," said Kenneth, with fraternal gallantry. He returned to his own
+thoughts, presently adding, "Why don't you borrow a dress from Isabel?"
+
+"Isabel?" Ella considered it, brightened. "Isabel Wallace," she said,
+in sudden approval. "That's exactly what I'll do!" And she swept
+magnificently to the little telephone niche near the dining-room door.
+"Isabel," said she, a moment later, "this is Mike--"
+
+So Susan went to the dance. Miss Isabel Wallace sent over a great box
+of gowns from which she might choose the most effective, and Emily,
+with a sort of timid sullenness, urged her to go. Ella and her charge
+went into town in the afternoon, and loitered into the club for tea.
+Susan, whose color was already burning high, and whose eyes were
+dancing, fretted inwardly at Ella's leisurely enjoyment of a second and
+a third sup. It was nearly six o'clock, it was after six! Ella seemed
+willing to delay indefinitely, waiting on the stairs of the club for a
+long chat with a passing woman, and lingering with various friends in
+the foyer of the great hotel.
+
+But finally they were in the big bedrooms, with Clemence, Ella's maid,
+in eager and interested attendance. Clemence had laid Susan's delicious
+frills and laces out upon the bed; Susan's little wrapper was waiting
+her; there was nothing to do now but plunge into the joy of dressing. A
+large, placid person known to Susan vaguely as the Mrs. Keith, who had
+been twice divorced, had the room next to Ella, and pretty Mary
+Peacock, her daughter, shared Susan's room. The older ladies, assuming
+loose wrappers, sat gossiping over cocktails and smoking cigarettes,
+and Mary and Susan seized the opportunity to monopolize Clemence.
+Clemence arranged Susan's hair, pulling, twisting, flinging hot masses
+over the girl's face, inserting pins firmly, loosening strands with her
+hard little French fingers. Susan had only occasional blinded glimpses
+of her face, one temple bare and bald, the other eclipsed like a
+gipsy's.
+
+"Look here, Clemence, if I don't like it, out it comes!" she said.
+
+"Mais, certainement, ca va sans dire!" Clemence agreed serenely. Mary
+Peacock, full of amused interest, watched as she rubbed her face and
+throat with cold cream.
+
+"I wish I had your neck and shoulders, Miss Brown," said Miss Peacock.
+"I get so sick of high-necked gowns that I'd almost rather stay home!"
+
+"Why, you're fatter than I am!" Susan exclaimed. "You've got lovely
+shoulders!"
+
+"Yes, darling!" Mary said, gushingly. "And I've got the sort of blood
+that breaks out, in a hot room," she added after a moment, "don't look
+so scared, it's nothing serious! But I daren't ever take the risk of
+wearing a low gown!"
+
+"But how did you get it?" ejaculated Susan. "Are you taking something
+for it?"
+
+"No, love," Mary continued, in the same, amused, ironic strain,
+"because I've been traveling about, half my life, to get it cured,
+Germany and France, everywhere! And there ain't no such animal! Isn't
+it lovely?"
+
+"But how did you get it?" Susan innocently persisted. Mary gave her a
+look half exasperated and half warning; but, when Clemence had stepped
+into the next room for a moment, she said:
+
+"Don't be an utter fool! Where do you THINK I got it?
+
+"The worst of it is," she went on pleasantly, as Clemence came back,
+"that my father's married again, you know, to the sweetest little thing
+you ever saw. An only girl, with four or five big brothers, and her
+father a minister! Well--"
+
+"Voici!" exclaimed the maid. And Susan faced herself in the mirror, and
+could not resist a shamed, admiring smile. But if the smooth rolls and
+the cunning sweeps and twists of bright hair made her prettier than
+usual, Susan was hardly recognizable when the maid touched lips and
+cheeks with color and eyebrows with her clever pencil. She had thought
+her eyes bright before; now they had a starry glitter that even their
+owner thought effective; her cheeks glowed softly--
+
+"Here, stop flirting with yourself, and put on your gown, it's after
+eight!" Mary said, and Clemence slipped the fragrant beauty of silk and
+lace over Susan's head, and knelt down to hook it, and pushed it down
+over the hips, and tied the little cord that held the low bodice so
+charmingly in place. Clemence said nothing when she had finished, nor
+did Mary, nor did Ella when they presently joined Ella to go
+downstairs, but Susan was satisfied. It is an unfortunate girl indeed
+who does not think herself a beauty for one night at least in her life;
+Susan thought herself beautiful tonight.
+
+They joined the men in the Lounge, and Susan had to go out to dinner,
+if not quite "on a man's arm," as in her old favorite books, at least
+with her own partner, feeling very awkward, and conscious of shoulders
+and hips as she did so. But she presently felt the influence of the
+lights and music, and of the heating food and wine, and talked and
+laughed quite at her ease, feeling delightfully like a great lady and a
+great beauty. Her dinner partner presently asked her for the "second"
+and the supper dance, and Susan, hoping that she concealed indecent
+rapture, gladly consented. By just so much was she relieved of the
+evening's awful responsibility. She did not particularly admire this
+nice, fat young man, but to be saved from visible unpopularity, she
+would gladly have danced with the waiter.
+
+It was nearer eleven than ten o'clock when they sauntered through
+various wide hallways to the palm-decorated flight of stairs that led
+down to the ballroom. Susan gave one dismayed glance at the brilliant
+sweep of floor as they descended.
+
+"They're dancing!" she ejaculated,--late, and a stranger, what chance
+had she!
+
+"Gosh, you're crazy about it, aren't you?" grinned her partner, Mr.
+Teddy Carpenter. "Don't you care, they've just begun. Want to finish
+this with me?"
+
+But Susan was greeting the host, who stood at the foot of the stairs, a
+fat, good-natured little man, beaming at everyone out of small
+twinkling blue eyes, and shaking hands with the debutantes while he
+spoke to their mothers over their shoulders.
+
+"Hello, Brownie!" Ella said, affectionately. "Where's everybody?"
+
+Mr. Browning flung his fat little arms in the air.
+
+"I don't know," he said, in humorous distress. "The girls appear to be
+holding a meeting over there in the dressing-room, and the men are in
+the smoker! I'm going to round 'em up! How do you do, Miss Brown? Gad,
+you look so like your aunt,--and she WAS a beauty, Ella!--that I could
+kiss you for it, as I did her once!"
+
+"My aunt has black hair and brown eyes, Miss Ella, and weighs one
+hundred and ninety pounds!" twinkled Susan.
+
+"Kiss her again for that, Brownie, and introduce me," said a tall,
+young man at the host's side easily. "I'm going to have this, aren't I,
+Miss Brown? Come on, they're just beginning--"
+
+Off went Susan, swept deliciously into the tide of enchanting music and
+motion. She wasn't expected to talk, she had no time to worry, she
+could dance well, and she did.
+
+Kenneth Saunders came up in the pause before the dance was encored, and
+asked for the "next but one,"--there were no cards at the Brownings;
+all over the hall girls were nodding over their partners' shoulders, in
+answer to questions, "Next, Louise?" "Next waltz--one after that,
+then?" "I'm next, remember!"
+
+Kenneth brought a bashful blonde youth with him, who instantly claimed
+the next dance. He did not speak to Susan again until it was over,
+when, remarking simply, "God, that was life!" he asked for the third
+ensuing, and surrendered Susan to some dark youth unknown, who said,
+"Ours? Now, don't say no, for there's suicide in my blood, girl, and
+I'm a man of few words!"
+
+"I am honestly all mixed up!" Susan laughed. "I think this is
+promised--"
+
+It didn't appear to matter. The dark young man took the next two, and
+Susan found herself in the enchanting position of a person reproached
+by disappointed partners. Perhaps there were disappointed and unpopular
+girls at the dance, perhaps there was heart-burning and disappointment
+and jealousy; she saw none of it. She was passed from hand to hand,
+complimented, flirted with, led into the little curtained niches where
+she could be told with proper gravity of the feelings her wit and
+beauty awakened in various masculine hearts. By twelve o'clock Susan
+wished that the ball would last a week, she was borne along like a
+feather on its glittering and golden surface.
+
+Ella was by this time passionately playing the new and fascinating game
+of bridge whist, in a nearby room, but Browning was still busy, and
+presently he came across the floor to Susan, and asked her for a
+dance--an honor for which she was entirely unprepared, for he seldom
+danced, and one that she was quick enough to accept at once.
+
+"Perhaps you've promised the next?" said Browning.
+
+"If I have," said the confident Susan, "I hereby call it off."
+
+"Well," he said smilingly, pleased. And although he did not finish the
+dance, and they presently sat down together, she knew that it had been
+the evening's most important event.
+
+"There's a man coming over from the club, later," said Mr. Browning,
+"he's a wonderful fellow! Writer, and a sort of cousin of Ella Saunders
+by the way, or else his wife is. He's just on from New York, and for a
+sort of rest, and he may go on to Japan for his next novel. Very
+remarkable fellow!"
+
+"A writer?" Susan looked interested.
+
+"Yes, you know him, of course. Bocqueraz--that's who it is!"
+
+"Not Stephen Graham Bocqueraz!" ejaculated Susan, round-eyed.
+
+"Yes--yes!" Mr. Browning liked her enthusiasm.
+
+"But is he here?" Susan asked, almost reverently. "Why, I'm perfectly
+crazy about his books!" she confided. "Why--why--he's about the biggest
+there IS!"
+
+"Yes, he writes good stuff," the man agreed. "Well, now, don't you miss
+meeting him! He'll be here directly," his eyes roved to the stairway, a
+few feet from where they were sitting. "Here he is now!" said he. "Come
+now, Miss Brown---"
+
+"Oh, honestly! I'm scared--I don't know what to say!" Susan said in a
+panic. But Browning's fat little hand was firmly gripped over hers and
+she went with him to meet the two or three men who were chatting
+together as they came slowly, composedly, into the ball-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+From among them she could instantly pick the writer, even though all
+three were strangers, and although, from the pictures she had seen of
+him, she had always fancied that Stephen Bocqueraz was a large,
+athletic type of man, instead of the erect and square-built gentleman
+who walked between the other two taller men. He was below the average
+height, certainly, dark, clean-shaven, bright-eyed, with a thin-lipped,
+wide, and most expressive mouth, and sleek hair so black as to make his
+evening dress seem another color. He was dressed with exquisite
+precision, and with one hand he constantly adjusted and played with the
+round black-rimmed glasses that hung by a silk ribbon about his neck.
+Susan knew him, at this time, to be about forty-five, perhaps a little
+less. If her very first impression was that he was both affected and
+well aware of his attractiveness, her second conceded that here was a
+man who could make any affectation charming, and not the less
+attractive because he knew his value.
+
+"And what do I do, Mr. Br-r-rowning," asked Mr. Bocqueraz with pleasant
+precision, "when I wish to monopolize the company of a very charming
+young lady, at a dance, and yet, not dancing, cannot ask her to be my
+partner?"
+
+"The next is the supper dance," suggested Susan, dimpling, "if it isn't
+too bold to mention it!"
+
+He flashed her an appreciative look, the first they had really
+exchanged.
+
+"Supper it is," he said gravely, offering her his arm. But Browning
+delayed him for a few introductions first; and Susan stood watching
+him, and thinking him very distinguished, and that to study a really
+great man, so pleasantly at her ease, was very thrilling. Presently he
+turned to her again, and they went in to supper; to Susan it was all
+like an exciting dream. They chose a little table in the shallow angle
+of a closed doorway, and watched the confusion all about them; and
+Susan, warmed by the appreciative eyes so near her, found herself
+talking quite naturally, and more than once was rewarded by the
+writer's unexpected laughter. She asked him if Mrs. Bocqueraz and his
+daughter were with him, and he said no, not on this particular trip.
+
+"Julie and her mother are in Europe," he said, with just a suggestion
+of his Spanish grandfather in his clean-clipped speech. "Julie left
+Miss Bence's School at seventeen, had a coming-out party in our city
+house the following winter. Now it seems Europe is the thing. Mrs.
+Bocqueraz likes to do things systematically, and she told me, before
+Julie was out of the nursery, that she thought it was very nice for a
+girl to marry in her second winter in society, after a European trip. I
+have no doubt my daughter will announce her engagement upon her return."
+
+"To whom?" said Susan, laughing at his precise, re-signed tone.
+
+"That I don't know," said Stephen Bocqueraz, with a twinkle in his eye,
+"nor does Julie, I fancy. But undoubtedly her mother does!"
+
+"Here is somebody coming over for a dance, I suppose!" he said after a
+few moments, and Susan was flattered by the little hint of regret in
+his tone. But the newcomer was Peter Coleman, and the emotion of
+meeting him drove every other thought out of her head. She did not
+rise, as she gave him her hand; the color flooded her face.
+
+"Susan, you little turkey-buzzard--" It was the old Peter!--"where've
+you been all evening? The next for me!"
+
+"Mr. Bocqueraz, Mr. Coleman," Susan said, with composure, "Peter, Mr.
+Stephen Graham Bocqueraz."
+
+Even to Peter the name meant something.
+
+"Why, Susan, you little grab-all!" he accused her vivaciously. "How
+dare you monopolize a man like Mr. Bocqueraz for the whole supper
+dance! I'll bet some of those women are ready to tear your eyes out!"
+
+"I've been doing the monopolizing," Mr. Bocqueraz said, turning a
+rather serious look from Peter, to smile with sudden brightness at
+Susan. "When I find a young woman at whose christening ALL the fairies
+came to dance," he added, "I always do all the monopolizing I can!
+However, if you have a prior claim--"
+
+"But he hasn't!" Susan said, smilingly. "I'm engaged ten deep," she
+added pleasantly to Peter. "Honestly, I haven't half a dance left! I
+stole this."
+
+"Why, I won't stand for it," Peter said, turning red.
+
+"Come, it seems to me Mr. Coleman deserves something!" Stephen
+Bocqueraz smiled. And indeed Peter looked bigger and happier and
+handsomer than ever.
+
+"Not from me," Susan persisted, quietly pleasant. Peter stood for a
+moment or two, not quite ready to laugh, not willing to go away. Susan
+busied herself with her salad, stared dreamily across the room. And
+presently he departed after exchanging a few commonplaces with
+Bocqueraz.
+
+"And what's the significance of all that?" asked the author when they
+were alone again.
+
+Susan had been wishing to make some sort of definite impression upon
+Mr. Stephen Graham Bocqueraz; wishing to remain in his mind as
+separated from the other women he had met to-night. Suddenly she saw
+this as her chance, and she took him somewhat into her confidence. She
+told him of her old office position, and of her aunt, and of Peter, and
+that she was now Emily Saunders' paid companion, and here only as a
+sort of Cinderella.
+
+Never did any girl, flushing, dimpling, shrugging her shoulders over
+such a recital, have a more appreciative listener. Stephen Bocqueraz's
+sympathetic look met hers whenever she looked up; he nodded, agreed,
+frowned thoughtfully or laughed outright. They sat through the next
+dance, and through half the next, hidden in one of the many diminutive
+"parlors" that surrounded the ball-room, and when Susan was surrendered
+to an outraged partner she felt that she and the great man were fairly
+started toward a real friendship, and that these attractive boys she
+was dancing with were really very young, after all.
+
+"Remember Stephen Bocqueraz that Brownie introduced to you just before
+supper?" asked Ella, as they went home, yawning, sleepy and headachy,
+the next day. Ella had been playing cards through the supper hour.
+
+"Perfectly!" Susan answered, flushing and smiling.
+
+"You must have made a hit," Ella remarked, "because--I'm giving him a
+big dinner on Tuesday, at the Palace--and when I talked to him he asked
+if you would be there. Well, I'm glad you had a nice time, kiddy, and
+we'll do it again!"
+
+Susan had thanked her gratefully more than once, but she thanked her
+again now. She felt that she truly loved Ella, so big and good natured
+and kind.
+
+Emily was a little bit cold when Susan told her about the ball, and the
+companion promptly suppressed the details of her own successes, and
+confined her recollections to the girls who had asked for Emily, and to
+generalities. Susan put her wilting orchids in water, and went dreamily
+through the next two or three days, recovering from the pleasure and
+excitement. It was almost a week before Emily was quite herself again;
+then, when Isabel Wallace came running in to Emily's sick-room to beg
+Susan to fill a place at their dinner-table at a few hours' notice,
+Susan's firm refusal quite won Emily's friendship back.
+
+"Isabel's a dear," said Emily, contentedly settling down with the
+Indian bead-work in which she and Susan had had several lessons, and
+with which they filled some spare time, "but she's not a leader. I took
+you up, so now Isabel does! I knew--I felt sure that, if Ella let you
+borrow that dress, Isabel would begin to patronize you!"
+
+It was just one of Emily's nasty speeches, and Emily really wasn't
+well, so Susan reminded herself, when the hot, angry color burned in
+her face, and an angry answer came to her mind. What hurt most was that
+it was partly true; Emily HAD taken her up, and, when she ceased to be
+all that Emily required of sympathy and flattery and interest, Emily
+would find someone else to fill Miss Brown's place. Without Emily she
+was nobody, and it did not console Susan to reflect that, had Emily's
+fortune been hers and Emily in her position, the circumstances would be
+exactly reversed. Just the accident of having money would have made
+Miss Brown the flattered and admired, the safe and secure one; just the
+not having it would have pushed Emily further even than Susan was from
+the world of leisure and beauty and luxury.
+
+"This world IS money!" thought Susan, when she saw the head-waiter come
+forward so smilingly to meet Ella and herself at the Palm Garden; when
+Leonard put off a dozen meekly enduring women to finish Miss Emily
+Saunders' gown on time; when the very sexton at church came hurrying to
+escort Mrs. Saunders and herself through the disappointed crowds in the
+aisles, and establish them in, and lock them in, the big empty pew. The
+newspapers gave half a column of blame to the little girl who tried to
+steal a two-dollar scarf from the Emporium, but there was nothing but
+admiration for Ella on the day when she and a twenty-year-old boy, for
+a wager, led a woolly white toy lamb, a lamb costing twenty-five
+dollars, through the streets, from the club to the Palace Hotel. The
+papers were only deeply interested and amused when Miss Elsa Chisholm
+gave a dinner to six favorite riding-horses, who were entertained in
+the family dining-room after a layer of tan-bark had been laid on the
+floor, and fed by their owners from specially designed leather bags and
+boxes; and they merely reported the fact that Miss Dolly Ripley had
+found so unusual an intelligence in her gardener that she had deeded to
+him her grandfather's eighty-thousand-dollar library. "He really has
+ever so much better brains than I have, don't you know?" said Miss
+Ripley to the press.
+
+In return for the newspapers' indulgent attitude, however, they were
+shown no clemency by the Saunders and the people of their set. On a
+certain glorious, golden afternoon in May, Susan, twisting a card that
+bore the name of Miss Margaret Summers, representing the CHRONICLE,
+went down to see the reporter. The Saunders family hated newspaper
+notoriety, but it was a favorite saying that since the newspapers would
+print things anyway, they might as well get them straight, and Susan
+often sent dinner or luncheon lists to the three morning papers.
+
+However, the young woman who rose when Susan went into the drawing-room
+was not in search of news. Her young, pretty face was full of distress.
+
+"Miss Saunders?" asked she.
+
+"I'm Miss Brown," Susan said. "Miss Saunders is giving a card-party and
+I am to act for her."
+
+Miss Summers, beginning her story, also began to cry. She was the
+society editor, she explained, and two weeks before she had described
+in her column a luncheon given by Miss Emily Saunders. Among the list
+of guests she had mentioned Miss Carolyn Seymour.
+
+"Not Carolyn Seymour!" said Susan, shocked. "Why, she never is here!
+The Seymours---" she shook her head. "I know people do accept them,"
+said Susan, "but the Saunders don't even know them! They're not in the
+best set, you know, they're really hardly in society at all!"
+
+"I know NOW," Miss Summers said miserably. "But all the other
+girls--this year's debutantes--were there, and I had to guess at most
+of the names, and I chanced it! Fool that I was!" she interrupted
+herself bitterly. "Well, the next day, while I was in the office, my
+telephone rang. It was Thursday, and I had my Sunday page to do, and I
+was just RUSHING, and I had a bad cold,--I've got it yet. So I just
+said, 'What is it?' rather sharply, you know, and a voice said, in a
+businesslike sort of way, 'How did you happen to put Miss Carolyn
+Seymour's name on Miss Emily Saunders' lunch list?' I never dreamed
+that it was Miss Saunders; how should I? She didn't say 'I' or 'me' or
+anything--just that. So I said, 'Well, is it a matter of international
+importance?'"
+
+"Ouch!" said Susan, wincing, and shaking a doubtful head.
+
+"I know, it was awful!" the other girl agreed eagerly. "But--" her
+anxious eyes searched Susan's face. "Well; so the next day Mr. Brice
+called me into the office, and showed me a letter from Miss Ella
+Saunders, saying--" and Miss Summers began to cry again. "And I can't
+tell Mamma!" she sobbed. "My brother's been so ill, and I was so proud
+of my position!"
+
+"Do you mean they--FIRED you?" Susan asked, all sympathy.
+
+"He said he'd have to!" gulped Miss Summers, with a long sniff. "He
+said that Saunders and Babcock advertise so much with them, and that,
+if she wasn't appeased somehow--"
+
+"Well, now, I'll tell you," said Susan, ringing for tea, "I'll wait
+until Miss Saunders is in a good mood, and then I'll do the very best I
+can for you. You know, a thing like that seems small, but it's just the
+sort of thing that is REALLY important," she pursued, consolingly. She
+had quite cheered her caller before the tea-cups were emptied, but she
+was anything but hopeful of her mission herself.
+
+And Ella justified her misgivings when the topic was tactfully opened
+the next day.
+
+"I'm sorry for the little thing," said Ella, briskly, "but she
+certainly oughtn't to have that position if she doesn't know better
+than that! Carolyn Seymour in this house--I never heard of such a
+thing! I was denying it all the next day at the club and it's extremely
+unpleasant. Besides," added Ella, reddening, "she was extremely
+impertinent about it when I telephoned---"
+
+"Duchess, she didn't dream it was you! She only said that she didn't
+know it was so important---" Susan pleaded.
+
+"Well," interrupted Miss Saunders, in a satisfied and final tone, "next
+time perhaps she WILL know who it is, and whether it is important or
+not! Sue, while you're there at the desk," she added, "will you write
+to Mrs. Bergess, Mrs. Gerald Florence Bergess, and tell her that I
+looked at the frames at Gump's for her prizes, and they're lovely, from
+fourteen up, and that I had him put three or four aside---"
+
+After the dance Peter began to call rather frequently at "High
+Gardens," a compliment which Emily took entirely to herself, and to
+escort the girls about on their afternoon calls, or keep them and Ella,
+and the old mistress of the house as well, laughing throughout the late
+and formal dinner. Susan's reserve and her resolutions melted before
+the old charm; she had nothing to gain by snubbing him; it was much
+pleasanter to let by-gones be by-gones, and enjoy the moment. Peter had
+every advantage; if she refused him her friendship a hundred other
+girls were only too eager to fill her place, so she was gay and
+companionable with him once more, and extracted a little fresh flavor
+from the friendship in Emily's unconsciousness of the constant
+interchange of looks and inflections that went on between Susan and
+Peter over her head. Susan sometimes thought of Mrs. Carroll's old
+comment on the popularity of the absorbed and busy girl when she
+realized that Peter was trying in vain to find time for a personal word
+with her, or was resenting her interest in some other caller, while she
+left Emily to him. She was nearer to Peter than ever, a thousand times
+more sure of herself, and, if she would still have married him, she was
+far less fond of him than she had been years ago.
+
+Susan asked him some questions, during one idle tea-time, of Hunter,
+Baxter & Hunter. His uncle had withdrawn from the firm now, he told
+her, adding with characteristic frankness that in his opinion "the old
+guy got badly stung." The Baxter home had been sold to a club; the old
+people had found the great house too big for them and were established
+now in one of the very smartest of the new apartment houses that were
+beginning to be built in San Francisco. Susan called, with Emily, upon
+Mrs. Baxter, and somehow found the old lady's personality as curiously
+shrunk, in some intangible way, as was her domestic domain in
+actuality. Mrs. Baxter, cackling emphatically and disapprovingly of the
+world in general, fussily accompanying them to the elevator, was merely
+a rather tiresome and pitiful old woman, very different from the
+delicate little grande dame of Susan's recollection. Ella reported the
+Baxter fortune as sadly diminished, but there were still maids and the
+faithful Emma; there were still the little closed carriage and the
+semi-annual trip to Coronado. Nor did Peter appear to have suffered
+financially in any way; although Mrs. Baxter had somewhat fretfully
+confided to the girls that his uncle had suggested that it was time
+that Peter stood upon his own feet; and that Peter accordingly had
+entered into business relations with a certain very wealthy firm of
+grain brokers. Susan could not imagine Peter as actively involved in
+any very lucrative deals, but Peter spent a great deal of money, never
+denied himself anything, and took frequent and delightful vacations.
+
+He took Emily and Susan to polo and tennis games, and, when the season
+at the hotel opened, they went regularly to the dances. In July Peter
+went to Tahoe, where Mrs. Saunders planned to take the younger girls
+later for at least a few weeks' stay. Ella chaperoned them to
+Burlingame for a week of theatricals; all three staying with Ella's
+friend, Mrs. Keith, whose daughter, Mary Peacock, had also Dolly Ripley
+and lovely Isabel Wallace for her guests. Little Constance Fox,
+visiting some other friends nearby, was in constant attendance upon
+Miss Ripley, and Susan thought the relationship between them an
+extraordinary study; Miss Ripley bored, rude, casual, and Constance
+increasingly attentive, eager, admiring.
+
+"When are you going to come and spend a week with me?" drawled Miss
+Ripley to Susan.
+
+"You'll have the loveliest time of your life!" Connie added,
+brilliantly. "Be sure you ask me for that week, Dolly!"
+
+"We'll write you about it," Miss Ripley said lazily, and Constance,
+putting the best face she could upon the little slight, slapped her
+hand playfully, and said:
+
+"Oh, aren't you mean!"
+
+"Dolly takes it so for granted that I'm welcome at her house at ANY
+time," said Constance to Susan, later, "that she forgets how rude a
+thing like that can sound!" She had followed Susan into her own room,
+and now stood by the window, looking down a sun-steeped vista of lovely
+roads and trees and gardens with a discontented face. Susan, changing
+her dress for an afternoon on the tennis-courts, merely nodded
+sympathetically.
+
+"Lord, I would like to go this afternoon!" added Constance, presently.
+
+"Aren't you going over for the tennis?" Susan asked in amazement. For
+the semi-finals of the tournament were to be played on this glorious
+afternoon, and there would be a brilliant crowd on the courts and tea
+at the club to follow.
+
+"No; I can't!" Miss Fox said briefly. "Tell everyone that I'm lying
+down with a terrible headache, won't you?"
+
+"But why?" asked Susan. For the headache was obviously a fiction.
+
+"You know that mustard-colored linen with the black embroidery that
+Dolly's worn once or twice, don't you?" asked Connie, with apparent
+irrelevancy.
+
+Susan nodded, utterly at a loss.
+
+"Well, she gave it to me to-day, and the hat and the parasol," said
+Constance, with a sort of resigned bitterness. "She said she had got
+the outfit at Osbourne's, last month, and she thought it would look
+stunning on me, and wouldn't I like to wear it to the club this
+afternoon?"
+
+"Well--?" Susan said, as the other paused. "Why not?"
+
+"Oh, why not!" echoed Connie, with mild exasperation. "Don't be a
+damned fool!"
+
+"Oh, I see!" Susan said, enlightened. "Everybody knows it's Miss
+Ripley's, of course! She probably didn't think of that!"
+
+"She probably did!" responded Connie, with a rather dry laugh.
+"However, the fact remains that she'll take it out of me if I go and
+don't wear it, and Mamma never will forgive me if I do! So, I came in
+to borrow a book. Of course, Susan, I've taken things from Dolly Ripley
+before, and I probably will again," she added, with the nearest
+approach to a sensible manner that Susan had ever seen in her, "but
+this is going a little TOO far!"
+
+And, borrowing a book, she departed, leaving Susan to finish her
+dressing in a very sober frame of mind. She wondered if her
+relationship toward Emily could possibly impress any outsider as
+Connie's attitude toward Dolly Ripley impressed her.
+
+With Isabel Wallace she began, during this visit, the intimate and
+delightful friendship for which they two had been ready for a long
+time. Isabel was two years older than Susan, a beautiful, grave-eyed
+brunette, gracious in manner, sweet of voice, the finest type that her
+class and environment can produce. Isabel was well read, musical,
+traveled; she spoke two or three languages besides her mother tongue.
+She had been adored all her life by three younger brothers, by her
+charming and simple, half-invalid mother, and her big, clever father,
+and now, all the girls were beginning to suspect, was also adored by
+the very delightful Eastern man who was at present Mrs. Butler Holmes'
+guest in Burlingame, and upon whom all of them had been wasting their
+prettiest smiles. John Furlong was college-bred, young, handsome, of a
+rich Eastern family, in every way a suitable husband for the beautiful
+woman with whom he was so visibly falling in love.
+
+Susan watched the little affair with a heartache, not all unworthy. She
+didn't quite want to be Isabel, or want a lover quite like John. But
+she did long for something beautiful and desirable all her own; it was
+hard to be always the outsider, always alone. When she thought of
+Isabel's father and mother, their joy in her joy, her own pleasure in
+pleasing them, a thrill of pain shook her. If Isabel was all grateful,
+all radiant, all generous, she, Susan, could have been graceful and
+radiant and generous too! She lay awake in the soft summer nights,
+thinking of what John would say to Isabel, and what Isabel, so lovely
+and so happy, would reply.
+
+"Sue, you will know how wonderful it is when it comes to you!" Isabel
+said, on the last night of their Burlingame visit, when she gave Susan
+a shy hint that it was "all RIGHT," if a profound secret still.
+
+The girls did not stay for the theatricals, after all. Emily was deeply
+disgusted at being excluded from some of the ensembles in which she had
+hoped to take part and, on the very eve of the festivities, she became
+alarmingly ill, threw Mrs. Keith's household into utter consternation
+and confusion, and was escorted home immediately by Susan and a trained
+nurse.
+
+Back at "High Gardens," they settled down contentedly enough to the
+familiar routine. Emily spent two-thirds of the time in bed, but Susan,
+fired by Isabel Wallace's example, took regular exercises now, airing
+the dogs or finding commissions to execute for Emily or Mrs. Saunders,
+made radical changes in her diet, and attempted, with only partial
+success, to confine her reading to improving books. A relative had sent
+Emily the first of the new jig-saw puzzles from New York, and Emily had
+immediately wired for more. She and Susan spent hours over them; they
+became in fact an obsession, and Susan began to see jig-saw divisions:
+in everything her eye rested on; the lawn, the clouds, or the
+drawing-room walls.
+
+Sometimes Kenneth joined them, and Susan knew that it was on her
+account. She was very demure with him; her conversation for Emily, her
+eyes all sisterly unembarrassment when they met his. Mrs. Saunders was
+not well, and kept to her room, so that more than once Susan dined
+alone with the man of the house. When this happened Kenneth would bring
+his chair down from the head of the table and set it next to hers. He
+called her "Tweeny" for some favorite character in a play, brought her
+some books she had questioned him about, asked her casually, on the
+days she went to town for Emily, at what time she would come back, and
+joined her on the train.
+
+Susan had thought of him as a husband, as she thought of every
+unattached man, the instant she met him. But the glamour of those early
+views of Kenneth Saunders had been somewhat dimmed, and since her
+arrival at "High Gardens" she had tried rather more not to displease
+this easily annoyed member of the family, than to make a definite
+pleasant impression upon him. Now, however, she began seriously to
+consider him. And it took her a few brief moments only to decide that,
+if he should ask her, she would be mad to refuse to become his wife. He
+was probably as fine a match as offered itself at the time in all San
+Francisco's social set, good-looking, of a suitable age, a gentleman,
+and very rich. He was so rich and of so socially prominent a family
+that his wife need never trouble herself with the faintest thought of
+her own standing; it would be an established fact, supreme and
+irrefutable. Beside him Peter Coleman was a poor man, and even Isabel's
+John paled socially and financially. Kenneth Saunders would be a
+brilliant "catch" for any girl; for little Susan Brown--it would be a
+veritable triumph!
+
+Susan's heart warmed as she thought of the details. There would be a
+dignified announcement from Mrs. Saunders. Then,--Babel! Telephoning,
+notes, telegrams! Ella would of course do the correct thing; there
+would be a series of receptions and dinners; there would be formal
+affairs on all sides. The newspapers would seize upon it; the family
+jewels would be reset; the long-stored silver resurrected. There would
+be engagement cups and wedding-presents, and a trip East, and the
+instant election of young Mrs. Saunders to the Town and Country Club.
+And, in all the confusion, the graceful figure of the unspoiled little
+companion would shine serene, poised, gracious, prettily deferential to
+both the sisters-in-law of whom she now, as a matron, took precedence.
+
+Kenneth Saunders was no hero of romance; he was at best a little silent
+and unresponsive; he was a trifle bald; his face, Susan had thought at
+first sight, indicated weakness and dissipation. But it was a very
+handsome face withal, and, if silent, Kenneth could be very dignified
+and courteous in his manner; "very much the gentleman," Susan said to
+herself, "always equal to the situation"!
+
+Other things, more serious things, she liked to think she was woman of
+the world enough to condone. He drank to excess, of course; no woman
+could live in the same house with him and remain unaware of that; Susan
+had often heard him raging in the more intense stages approaching
+delirium tremens. There had been other things, too;--women, but Susan
+had only a vague idea of just what that meant, and Kenneth's world
+resolutely made light of it.
+
+"Ken's no molly-coddle!" Ella had said to her complacently, in
+connection with this topic, and one of Ella's closest friends had
+added, "Oh, Heaven save me from ever having one of my sons afraid to go
+out and do what the other boys do. Let 'em sow their wild oats, they're
+all the sooner over it!"
+
+So Susan did not regard this phase of his nature very seriously. Indeed
+his mother often said wailingly that, if Kenneth could only find some
+"fine girl," and settle down, he would be the steadiest and best fellow
+in the world. It was Mrs. Saunders who elucidated the last details of a
+certain episode of Kenneth's early life for Susan. Emily had spoken of
+it, and Ella had once or twice alluded to it, but from them Susan only
+gathered that Kenneth, in some inexplicable and outrageous way, had
+been actually arrested for something that was not in the least his
+fault, and held as a witness in a murder case. He had been but
+twenty-two years old at the time, and, as his sisters indignantly
+agreed, it had ruined his life for years following, and Ken should have
+sued the person or persons who had dared to involve the son of the
+house of Saunders in so disgraceful and humiliating an affair.
+
+"It was in one of those bad houses, my dear," Mrs. Saunders finally
+contributed, "and poor Ken was no worse than the thousands of other men
+who frequent 'em! Of course, it's terrible from a woman's point of
+view, but you know what men are! And when this terrible thing happened,
+Ken wasn't anywhere near--didn't know one thing about it until a great
+big brute of a policeman grabbed hold of his arm---! And of course the
+newspapers mentioned my poor boy's name in connection with it, far and
+wide!"
+
+After that Kenneth had gone abroad for a long time, and whether the
+trained nurse who had at that time entered his life was really a nurse,
+or whether she had merely called herself one, Susan could not quite
+ascertain. Either the family had selected this nurse, to take care of
+Kenneth who was not well at the time, or she had joined him later and
+traveled with him as his nurse. Whatever it was, the association had
+lasted two or three years, and then Kenneth had come home, definitely
+disenchanted with women in general and woman in particular, and had
+settled down into the silent, cynical, unresponsive man that Susan
+knew. If he ever had any experiences whatever with the opposite sex
+they were not of a nature to be mentioned before his sisters and his
+mother. He scorned all the women of Ella's set, and was bitingly
+critical of Emily's friends.
+
+One night, lying awake, Susan thought that she heard a dim commotion
+from the direction of the hallway--Kenneth's voice, Ella's voice, high
+and angry, some unfamiliar feminine voice, hysterical and shrill, and
+Mrs. Saunders, crying out: "Tottie, don't speak that way to Kennie!"
+
+But before she could rouse herself fully, Mycroft's soothing tones
+drowned out the other voices; there was evidently a truce. The episode
+ended a few moments later with the grating of carriage wheels on the
+drive far below, and Susan was not quite sure, the next morning, that
+it had been more than a dream.
+
+But Kenneth's history, summed up, was not a bit less edifying, was not
+indeed half as unpleasant, as that of many of the men, less rich and
+less prominent than he, who were marrying lovely girls everywhere, with
+the full consent and approval of parents and guardians. Susan had seen
+the newspaper accounts of the debauch that preceded young Harry van
+Vleet's marriage only by a few hours; had seen the bridegroom, still
+white-faced and shaking, lead away from the altar one of the sweetest
+of the debutantes. She had heard Rose St. John's mother say pleasantly
+to Rose's promised husband, "I asked your Chinese boy about those
+little week-end parties at your bungalow, Russell; I said, 'Yoo, were
+they pretty ladies Mr. Russ used to have over there?' But he only said
+'No can 'member!'"
+
+"That's where his wages go up!" the gentleman had responded cheerfully.
+
+And, after all, Susan thought, looking on, Russell Lord was not as bad
+as the oldest Gerald boy, who married an Eastern girl, an heiress and a
+beauty, in spite of the fact that his utter unfitness for marriage was
+written plain in his face; or as bad as poor Trixie Chauncey's husband,
+who had entirely disappeared from public view, leaving the buoyant
+Trixie to reconcile two infant sons to the unknown horrors and dangers
+of the future.
+
+If Kenneth drank, after his marriage, Mycroft would take care of him,
+as he did now; but Susan honestly hoped that domesticity, for which
+Kenneth seemed to have a real liking, would affect him in every way for
+good. She had not that horror of drink that had once been hers.
+Everybody drank, before dinner, with dinner, after dinner. It was
+customary to have some of the men brighten under it, some overdo it,
+some remain quite sober in spite of it. Susan and Emily, like all the
+girls they knew, frequently ordered cocktails instead of afternoon tea,
+when, as it might happen, they were in the Palace or the new St.
+Francis. The cocktails were served in tea-cups, the waiter gravely
+passed sugar and cream with them; the little deception was immensely
+enjoyed by everyone. "Two in a cup, Martini," Emily would say, settling
+into her seat, and the waiter would look deferentially at Susan, "The
+same, madam?"
+
+It was a different world from her old world; it used a different
+language, lived by another code. None of her old values held here;
+things she had always thought quite permissible were unforgivable sins;
+things at which Auntie would turn pale with horror were a quietly
+accepted part of every-day life. No story was too bad for the women to
+tell over their tea-cups, or in their boudoirs, but if any little
+ordinary physical misery were alluded to, except in the most flippant
+way, such as the rash on a child's stomach, or the preceding
+discomforts of maternity, there was a pained and disgusted silence, and
+an open snub, if possible, for the woman so crude as to introduce the
+distasteful topic.
+
+Susan saw good little women ostracized for the fact that their husbands
+did not appear at ease in evening dress, for their evident respect for
+their own butlers, or for their mere eagerness to get into society. On
+the other hand, she saw warmly accepted and admired the beautiful Mrs.
+Nokesmith, who had married her second husband the day after her release
+from her first, and pretty Beulah Garrett, whose father had swindled a
+hundred trusting friends out of their entire capital, and Mrs. Lawrence
+Edwards, whose oldest son had just had a marriage, contracted with a
+Barbary Coast woman while he was intoxicated, canceled by law. Divorce
+and disease, and dishonesty and insanity did not seem so terrible as
+they once had; perhaps because they were never called by their real
+names. The insane were beautifully cared for and safely out of sight;
+to disease no allusion was ever made; dishonesty was carried on in
+mysterious business avenues far from public inspection and public
+thought; and, as Ella once pointed out, the happiest people in society
+were those who had been married unhappily, divorced, and more
+fortunately mated a second time. All the married women Ella knew had
+"crushes"--young men who lounged in every afternoon for tea and
+cigarettes and gossip, and filled chairs at dinner parties, and formed
+a background in a theater box. Sometimes one or two matrons and their
+admirers, properly chaperoned, or in safe numbers, went off on motoring
+trips, and perhaps encountered, at the Del Monte or Santa Cruz hotels
+their own husbands, with the women that they particularly admired.
+Nothing was considered quite so pitiful as the wife who found this
+arrangement at all distressing. "It's always all right," said Ella,
+broadly, to Susan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+In the autumn Susan went home for a week, for the Lancaster family was
+convulsed by the prospect of Alfie's marriage to a little nobody whose
+father kept a large bakery in the Mission, and Susan was needed to
+brace Alfred's mother for the blow. Mary Lou's old admirer and his
+little, invalid wife, were staying at the house now, and Susan found
+"Ferd" a sad blow to her old romantic vision of him: a stout, little,
+ruddy-cheeked man, too brilliantly dressed, with hair turning gray, and
+an offensive habit of attacking the idle rich for Susan's benefit, and
+dilating upon his own business successes. Georgie came over to spend a
+night in the old home while Susan was there, carrying the heavy, lumpy
+baby. Myra was teething now, cross and unmanageable, and Georgie was
+worried because a barley preparation did not seem to agree with her,
+and Joe disapproved of patent foods. Joe hoped that the new baby--Susan
+widened her eyes. Oh, yes, in May, Georgie announced simply, and with a
+tired sigh,--Joe hoped the new baby would be a boy. She herself hoped
+for a little girl, wouldn't it be sweet to call it May? Georgie looked
+badly, and if she did not exactly break down and cry during her visit,
+Susan felt that tears were always close behind her eyes.
+
+Billy, beside her somewhat lachrymose aunt and cousins, shone out,
+during this visit, as Susan had never known him to do before. He looked
+splendidly big and strong and well, well groomed and erect in carriage,
+and she liked the little compliment he paid her in postponing the
+German lesson that should have filled the evening, and dressing himself
+in his best to take her to the Orpheum. Susan returned it by wearing
+her prettiest gown and hat. They set out in great spirits, Susan
+chattering steadily, in the relief it was to speak her mind honestly,
+and Billy listening, and now and then shouting out in the laughter that
+never failed her spirited narratives.
+
+He told her of the Carrolls,--all good news, for Anna had been offered
+a fine position as assistant matron in one of the best of the city's
+surgical hospitals; Betts had sold a story to the Argonaut for twelve
+dollars, and Philip was going steadily ahead; "you wouldn't believe he
+was the same fellow!" said Billy. Jimmy and Betts and their mother were
+to go up in a few days for a fortnight's holiday in the little
+shooting-box that some Eastern friends had built years ago in the
+Humboldt woods. The owners had left the key with Mrs. Carroll, and she
+might use the little cabin as much as she liked.
+
+"And what about Jo?" Susan asked.
+
+This was the best news of all. Jo was to go East for the winter with
+one of her mother's friends, whose daughter was Jo's own age. They were
+to visit Boston and Washington, New York for the Opera, Palm Beach in
+February, and New Orleans for the Mardi Gras. Mrs. Frothingham was a
+widow, and had a son at Yale, who would join them for some of the
+holidays. Susan was absolutely delighted at the news, and alluded to it
+over and over again.
+
+"It's so different when people DESERVE a thing, and when it's all new
+to them," she said to Billy, "it makes it seem so much more glorious!"
+
+They came out of the theater at eleven, cramped and blinking, and
+Susan, confused for a moment, was trying to get her bearings, when
+Billy touched her arm.
+
+"The Earl of Somerset is trying to bow to you, Sue!"
+
+She laughed, and followed the direction of his look. It was Stephen
+Bocqueraz who was smiling at her, a very distinguished figure under the
+lamp-post, with his fur-lined great-coat, his round tortoise-shell
+eye-glasses and his silk hat. He came up to them at once, and Susan,
+pleasantly conscious that a great many people recognized the great man,
+introduced him to Billy.
+
+He had just gotten back from a long visit in the Southern part of the
+state, he said, and had been dining to-night with friends at the
+Bohemian Club, and was walking back to his hotel. Susan could not keep
+the pleasure the meeting gave her out of her eyes and voice, and Billy
+showed a sort of boyish and bashful admiration of the writer, too.
+
+"But this--this is a very felicitous occasion," said Mr. Bocqueraz. "We
+must celebrate this in some fitting manner!"
+
+So he took them to supper, dismissing their hesitation as unworthy of
+combat; Susan and Billy laughed helplessly and happily as they sat down
+at the little table, and heard the German waiter's rapture at the
+commands Stephen Bocqueraz so easily gave him in his mother tongue.
+Billy, reddening but determined, must at once try his German too, and
+the waiter and Bocqueraz laughed at him even while they answered him,
+and agreed that the young man as a linguist was ganz wunderbar. Billy
+evidently liked his company; he was at his best to-night, unaffected,
+youthful, earnest. Susan herself felt that she had never been so happy
+in her life.
+
+Long afterward she tried to remember what they had talked about. She
+knew that the conversation had been to her as a draught of sparkling
+wine. All her little affections were in full play to-night, the little
+odds and ends of worldly knowledge she had gleaned from Ella and Ella's
+friends, the humor of Emily and Peter Coleman. And because she was an
+Irishman's daughter a thousand witticisms flashed in her speech, and
+her eyes shone like stars under the stimulus of another's wit and the
+admiration in another's eyes.
+
+It became promptly evident that Bocqueraz liked them both. He began to
+call Billy "lad," in a friendly, older-brotherly manner, and his
+laughter at Susan was alternated with moments of the gravest, the most
+flattering attention.
+
+"She's quite wonderful, isn't she?" he said to Billy under his breath,
+but Susan heard it, and later he added, quite impersonally, "She's
+absolutely extraordinary! We must have her in New York, you know; my
+wife must meet her!"
+
+They talked of music and musicians, and Bocqueraz and Billy argued and
+disputed, and presently the author's card was sent to the leader of the
+orchestra, with a request for the special bit of music under
+discussion. They talked of authors and poets and painters and actors,
+and he knew many of them, and knew something of them all. He talked of
+clubs, New York clubs and London clubs, and of plays that were yet to
+be given, and music that the public would never hear.
+
+Susan felt as if electricity was coursing through her veins. She felt
+no fatigue, no sleepiness, no hunger; her champagne bubbled untouched,
+but she emptied her glass of ice-water over and over again. Of the
+lights and the music and the crowd she was only vaguely conscious; she
+saw, as if in a dream, the hands of the big clock, at the end of the
+room, move past one, past two o'clock, but she never thought of the
+time.
+
+It was after two o'clock; still they talked on. The musicians had gone
+home, lights were put out in the corners of the room, tables and chairs
+were being piled together.
+
+Stephen Bocqueraz had turned his chair so that he sat sideways at the
+table; Billy, opposite him, leaned on his elbows; Susan, sitting
+between them, framing her face in her hands, moved her eyes from one
+face to the other.
+
+"And now, children," said the writer, when at last they were in the
+empty, chilly darkness of the street, "where can I get you a carriage?
+The cars seem to have stopped."
+
+"The cars stop at about one," said William, "but there's a place two
+blocks up where we can get a hack. Don't let us take you out of your
+way."
+
+"Good-night, then, lad," said Bocqueraz, laying his hand affectionately
+on Billy's shoulder. "Good-night, you wonderful little girl. Tell my
+wife's good cousins in San Rafael that I am coming over very soon to
+pay my respects."
+
+He turned briskly on his heel and left them, and Susan stood looking
+after him for a moment.
+
+"Where's your livery stable?" asked the girl then, taking Billy's arm.
+
+"There isn't any!" Billy told her shamelessly. "But I've got just a
+dollar and eighty cents, and I was afraid he would put us into a
+carriage!"
+
+Susan, brought violently to earth, burst out laughing, gathered her
+skirts up philosophically, and took his arm for the long walk home. It
+was a cool bright night, the sky was spattered thickly with stars, the
+moon long ago set. Susan was very silent, mind and heart swept with
+glorious dreams. Billy, beyond the remark that Bocqueraz certainly was
+a king, also had little to say, but his frequent yawns indicated that
+it was rather because of fatigue than of visions.
+
+The house was astir when they reached it, but the confusion there was
+too great to give anyone time to notice the hour of their return. Alfie
+had brought his bride to see his mother, earlier in the evening, and Ma
+had had hysterics the moment that they left the house. These were no
+sooner calmed than Mrs. Eastman had had a "stroke," the doctor had now
+come and gone, but Mary Lou and her husband still hovered over the
+sufferer, "and I declare I don't know what the world's coming to!" Mrs.
+Lancaster said despairingly.
+
+"What is it-what is it?" Mary Lord was calling, when Susan reached the
+top flight. Susan went in to give her the news, Mary was restless
+to-night, and glad of company; the room seemed close and warm. Lydia,
+sleeping heavily on the couch, only turned and grunted occasionally at
+the sound of the girls' voices.
+
+Susan lay awake until almost dawn, wrapped in warm and delicious
+emotion. She recalled the little separate phases of the evening's talk,
+brought them from her memory deliberately, one by one. When she
+remembered that Mr. Bocqueraz had asked if Billy was "the fiance," for
+some reason she could not define, she shut her eyes in the dark, and a
+wave of some new, enveloping delight swept her from feet to head.
+Certain remembered looks, inflections, words, shook the deeps of her
+being with a strange and poignantly sweet sense of weakness and power:
+a trembling joy.
+
+The new thrill, whatever it was, was with her when she wakened, and
+when she ran downstairs, humming the Toreador's song, Mary Lou and her
+aunt told her that she was like a bit of sunshine in the house; the
+girl's eyes were soft and bright with dreams; her cheeks were glowing.
+
+When the postman came she flew to meet him. There was no definite hope
+in her mind as she did so, but she came back more slowly, nevertheless.
+No letter for her.
+
+But at eleven o'clock a messenger boy appeared with a special delivery
+letter for Miss Susan Brown, she signed the little book with a
+sensation that was almost fear. This--this was beginning to frighten
+her----
+
+Susan read it with a fast-beating heart. It was short, dignified. Mr.
+Bocqueraz wrote that he was sending her the book of which he had
+spoken; he had enjoyed nothing for a long time as much as their little
+supper last evening; he hoped to see her and that very fine lad, Billy,
+very soon again. His love to them both. He was her faithful friend, all
+ways and always, Stephen Graham Bocqueraz.
+
+She slipped it inside her blouse, ignored it for a few moments,
+returned to it from other thoughts with a sense of infinite delight,
+and read it again. Susan could not quite analyze its charm, but in her
+whole being she was conscious of a warmth, a lightness, and a certain
+sweet and heady happiness throughout the entire day and the next day.
+
+Her thoughts began to turn toward New York. All young Californians are
+conscious, sooner or later in their growth, of the call of the great
+city, and just now Susan was wrapped in a cloud of dreams that hung
+over Broadway. She saw herself one of the ebbing and flowing crowd,
+watching the world from her place at the breakfast table in a great
+hotel, sweeping through the perfumed warmth and brightness of a theater
+lobby to her carriage.
+
+Stephen Bocqueraz had spoken of her coming to New York as a matter of
+course. "You belong there," he decided, gravely appraising her. "My
+wife will write to ask you to come, and we will find you just the niche
+you like among your own sort and kind, and your own work to do."
+
+"Oh, it would be too wonderful!" Susan had gasped.
+
+"New York is not wonderful," he told her, with smiling, kindly,
+disillusioned eyes, "but YOU are wonderful!"
+
+Susan, when she went back to San Rafael, was seized by a mood of bitter
+dissatisfaction with herself. What did she know--what could she do? She
+was fitted neither for the stage nor for literature, she had no gift of
+music or of art. Lost opportunities rose up to haunt her. Ah, if she
+had only studied something, if she were only wiser, a linguist, a
+student of poetry or of history. Nearing twenty-five, she was as
+ignorant as she had been at fifteen! A remembered line from a
+carelessly read poem, a reference to some play by Ibsen or Maeterlinck
+or d'Annunzio, or the memory of some newspaper clipping that concerned
+the marriage of a famous singer or the power of a new
+anaesthetic,--this was all her learning!
+
+Stephen Bocqueraz, on the Sunday following their second meeting, called
+upon his wife's mother's cousin. Mrs. Saunders was still at the
+hospital, and Emily was driven by the excitement of the occasion behind
+a very barrier of affectations, but Kenneth was gracious and
+hospitable, and took them all to the hotel for tea. Here they were the
+center of a changing, admiring, laughing group; everybody wanted to
+have at least a word with the great man, and Emily enjoyed a delightful
+feeling of popularity. Susan, quite eclipsed, was apparently pleasantly
+busy with her tea, and with the odds and ends of conversation that fell
+to her. But Susan knew that Stephen Bocqueraz did not move out of her
+hearing for one moment during the afternoon, nor miss a word that she
+said; nor say, she suspected, a word that she was not meant to hear.
+Just to exist, under these conditions, was enough. Susan, in quiet
+undertones, laughed and chatted and flirted and filled tea-cups, never
+once directly addressing the writer, and never really addressing anyone
+else.
+
+Kenneth brought "Cousin Stephen" home for dinner, but Emily turned
+fractious, and announced that she was not going down.
+
+"YOU'D rather be up here just quietly with me, wouldn't you, Sue?"
+coaxed Emily, sitting on the arm of Susan's chair, and putting an arm
+about her.
+
+"Of course I would, old lady! We'll send down for something nice, and
+get into comfortable things," Susan said.
+
+It hardly disappointed her; she was walking on air. She went demurely
+to the library door, to make her excuses; and Bocqueraz's look
+enveloped her like a shaft of sunlight. All the evening, upstairs, and
+stretched out in a long chair and in a loose silk wrapper, she was
+curiously conscious of his presence downstairs; whenever she thought of
+him, she must close her book, and fall to dreaming. His voice, his
+words, the things he had not said ... they spun a brilliant web about
+her. She loved to be young; she saw new beauty to-night in the thick
+rope of tawny hair that hung loosely across her shoulder, in the white
+breast, half-hidden by the fold of her robe, in the crossed, silk-clad
+ankles. All the world seemed beautiful tonight, and she beautiful with
+the rest.
+
+Three days later she came downstairs, at five o'clock on a gloomy, dark
+afternoon, in search of firelight and tea. Emily and Kenneth, Peter
+Coleman and Mary Peacock, who were staying at the hotel for a week or
+two, were motoring. The original plan had included Susan, but at the
+last moment Emily had been discovered upstairs, staring undecidedly out
+of the window, humming abstractedly.
+
+"Aren't you coming, Em?" Susan had asked, finding her.
+
+"I--I don't believe I will," Emily said lightly, without turning. "Go
+on, don't wait for me! It's nothing," she had persisted, when Susan
+questioned her, "Nothing at all! At least," the truth came out at last,
+"at least, I think it looks ODD. So now go on, without me," said Emily.
+
+"What looks odd?"
+
+"Nothing does, I tell you! Please go on."
+
+"You mean, three girls and two men," Susan said slowly.
+
+Emily assented by silence.
+
+"Well, then, you go and I'll stay," Susan said, in annoyance, "but it's
+perfect rubbish!"
+
+"No, you go," Emily said, pettishly.
+
+Susan went, perhaps six feet; turned back.
+
+"I wish you'd go," she said, in dissatisfaction.
+
+"If I did," Emily said, in a low, quiet tone, still looking out of the
+window, "it would be simply because of the looks of things!"
+
+"Well, go because of the looks of things then!" Susan agreed cheerfully.
+
+"No, but you see," Emily said eagerly, turning around, "it DOES look
+odd--not to me, of course! But mean odd to other people if you go and I
+don't-don't you think so, Sue?"
+
+"Ye-es," drawled Susan, with a sort of bored and fexasperated sigh. And
+she went to her own room to write letters, not disappointed, but
+irritated so thoroughly that she could hardly control her thoughts.
+
+At five o'clock, dressed in a childish black velvet gown--her one
+pretty house gown--with the deep embroidered collar and cuffs that were
+so becoming to her, and with her hair freshly brushed and swept back
+simply from her face, she came downstairs for a cup of tea.
+
+And in the library, sunk into a deep chair before the fire, she found
+Stephen Bocqueraz, his head resting against the back of the chair, his
+knees crossed and his finger-tips fitted together. Susan's heart began
+to race.
+
+He got up and they shook hands, and stood for too long a moment looking
+at each other. The sense of floating--floating--losing her
+anchorage--began to make Susan's head spin. She sat down, opposite him,
+as he took his chair again, but her breath was coming too short to
+permit of speech.
+
+"Upon my word I thought the woman said that you were all out!" said
+Bocqueraz, appreciative eyes upon her, "I hardly hoped for a piece of
+luck like this!"
+
+"Well, they are, you know. I'm not, strictly speaking, a Saunders,"
+smiled Susan.
+
+"No; you're nobody but yourself," he agreed, following a serious look
+with his sudden, bright smile. "You're a very extraordinary woman,
+Mamselle Suzanne," he went on briskly, "and I've got a nice little plan
+all ready to talk to you about. One of these days Mrs. Bocqueraz--she's
+a wonderful woman for this sort of thing!--shall write to your aunt, or
+whoever is in loco parentis, and you shall come on to New York for a
+visit. And while you're there---" He broke off, raised his eyes from a
+study of the fire, and again sent her his sudden and sweet and most
+disturbing smile.
+
+"Oh, don't talk about it!" said Susan. "It's too good to be true!"
+
+"Nothing's too good to be true," he answered. "Once or twice before
+it's been my extraordinary good fortune to find a personality, and give
+it a push in the right direction. You'll find the world kind enough to
+you--Lillian will see to it that you meet a few of the right people,
+and you'll do the rest. And how you'll love it, and how they'll love
+you!" He jumped up. "However, I'm not going to spoil you," he said,
+smilingly.
+
+He went to one of the bookcases and presently came back to read to her
+from Phillips' "Paolo and Francesca," and from "The Book and the Ring."
+And never in later life did Susan read either without hearing his
+exquisite voice through the immortal lines:
+
+  "A ring without a poesy, and that ring mine?
+     O Lyric Love! ..."
+
+  "O Lord of Rimini, with tears we leave her, as we leave a
+       child,
+     Be gentle with her, even as God has been...."
+
+"Some day I'll read you Pompilia, little Suzanne," said Bocqueraz. "Do
+you know Pompilia? Do you know Alice Meynell and some of Patmore's
+stuff, and the 'Dread of Height'?"
+
+"I don't know anything," said Susan, feeling it true. "Well," he said
+gaily, "we'll read them all!"
+
+Susan presently poured his tea; her guest wheeling his great leather
+chair so that its arm touched the arm of her own.
+
+"You make me feel all thumbs, watching me so!" she protested.
+
+"I like to watch you," he answered undisturbed. "Here, we'll put this
+plate on the arm of my chair,--so. Then we can both use it. Your scones
+on that side, and mine on this, and my butter-knife between the two,
+like Prosper Le Gai's sword, eh?"
+
+Susan's color heightened suddenly; she frowned. He was a man of the
+world, of course, and a married man, and much older than she, but
+somehow she didn't like it. She didn't like the laughter in his eyes.
+There had been just a hint of this--this freedom, in his speech a few
+nights ago, but somehow in Billy's presence it had seemed harmless--
+
+"And why the blush?" he was askingly negligently, yet watching her
+closely, as if he rather enjoyed her confusion.
+
+"You know why," Susan said, meeting his eyes with a little difficulty.
+
+"I know why. But that's nothing to blush at. Analyze it. What is there
+in that to embarrass you?"
+
+"I don't know," Susan said, awkwardly, feeling very young.
+
+"Life is a very beautiful thing, my child," he said, almost as if he
+were rebuking her, "and the closer we come to the big heart of life the
+more wonderful things we find. No--no--don't let the people about you
+make you afraid of life." He finished his cup of tea, and she poured
+him another. "I think it's time to transplant you," he said then,
+pleasantly, "and since last night I've been thinking of a very
+delightful and practical way to do it. Lillian--Mrs. Bocqueraz has a
+very old friend in New York in Mrs. Gifford Curtis--no, you don't know
+the name perhaps, but she's a very remarkable woman--an invalid. All
+the world goes to her teas and dinners, all the world has been going
+there since Booth fell in love with her, and Patti--when she was in her
+prime!--spent whole Sunday afternoons singing to her! You'll meet
+everyone who's at all worth while there now, playwrights, and painters,
+and writers, and musicians. Her daughters are all married to prominent
+men; one lives in Paris, one in London, two near her; friends keep
+coming and going. It's a wonderful family. Well, there's a Miss
+Concannon who's been with her as a sort of companion for twenty years,
+but Miss Concannon isn't young, and she confided to me a few months ago
+that she needed an assistant,--someone to pour tea and write notes and
+play accompaniments---"
+
+"A sort of Julie le Breton?" said Susan, with sparkling eyes. She
+resolved to begin piano practice for two hours a day to-morrow.
+
+"I beg pardon? Yes--yes, exactly, so I'm going to write Lillian at
+once, and she'll put the wheels in motion!"
+
+"I don't know what good angel ever made you think of ME," said Susan.
+
+"Don't you?" the man asked, in a low tone. There was a pause. Both
+stared at the fire. Suddenly Bocqueraz cleared his throat.
+
+"Well!" he said, jumping up, "if this clock is right it's after
+half-past six. Where are these good people?"
+
+"Here they are--there's the car coming in the gate now!" Susan said in
+relief. She ran out to the steps to meet them.
+
+A day or two later, as she was passing Ella's half-open doorway, Ella's
+voice floated out into the hall.
+
+"That you, Susan? Come in. Will you do your fat friend a favor?" Ella,
+home again, had at once resumed her despotic control of the household.
+She was lying on a couch at this moment, lazily waving a scribbled half
+sheet of paper over her head.
+
+"Take this to Mrs. Pullet, Sue," said she, "and ask her to tell the
+cook, in some confidential moment, that there are several things
+written down here that he seems to have forgotten the existence of. I
+want to see them on the table, from time to time. While I was with the
+Crewes I was positively MORTIFIED at the memory of our meals! And from
+now on, while Mr. Bocqueraz's here, we'll be giving two dinners a week."
+
+"While--?" Susan felt a delicious, a terrifying weakness run like a
+wave from head to feet.
+
+"He's going to be here for a month or two!" Ella announced
+complacently. "It was all arranged last night. I almost fell off my
+feet when he proposed it. He says he's got some work to finish up, and
+he thinks the atmosphere here agrees with him. Kate Stanlaws turned a
+lovely pea-green, for they were trying to get him to go with them to
+Alaska. He'll have the room next to Mamma's, with the round porch, and
+the big room off the library for a study. I had them clear everything
+out of it, and Ken's going to send over a desk, and chair, and so on.
+And do try to do everything you can to make him comfortable, Sue.
+Mamma's terribly pleased that he wants to come," finished Ella, making
+a long arm for her novel, "But of course he and I made an instant hit
+with each other!"
+
+"Oh, of course I will!" Susan promised. She went away with her list,
+pleasure and excitement and a sort of terror struggling together in her
+heart.
+
+Pleasure prevailed, however, when Stephen Bocqueraz was really
+established at "High Gardens," and the first nervous meeting was safely
+over. Everybody in the house was the happier and brighter for his
+coming, and Susan felt it no sin to enjoy him with the rest. Meal times
+became very merry; the tea-hour, when he would come across the hall
+from his workroom, tired, relaxed, hungry, was often the time of
+prolonged and delightful talks, and on such evenings as Ella left her
+cousin free of dinner engagements, even Emily had to admit that his
+reading, under the drawing-room lamp, was a rare delight.
+
+Sometimes he gave himself a half-holiday, and joined Emily and Susan in
+their driving or motoring. On almost every evening that he did not dine
+at home he was downstairs in time for a little chat with Susan over the
+library fire. They were never alone very long, but they had a dozen
+brief encounters every day, exchanged a dozen quick, significant
+glances across the breakfast table, or over the book that he was
+reading aloud.
+
+Susan lived in a dazed, wide-eyed state of reasonless excitement and
+perilous delight. It was all so meaningless, she assured her pretty
+vision in the mirror, as she arranged her bright hair,--the man was
+married, and most happily married; he was older than she; he was a man
+of honor! And she, Susan Brown, was only playing this fascinating game
+exceptionally well. She had never flirted before and had been rather
+proud of it. Well, she was flirting now, and proud of that, too! She
+was quite the last girl in the world to fall SERIOUSLY in love, with
+her eyes wide open, in so extremely undesirable a direction! This was
+not falling in love at all. Stephen Bocqueraz spoke of his wife half a
+dozen times a day. Susan, on her part, found plenty of things about him
+to dislike! But he was clever, and--yes, and fascinating, and he
+admired her immensely, and there was no harm done so far, and none to
+be done. Why try to define the affair by cut-and-dried rules; it was
+quite different from anything that had ever happened before, it stood
+in a class quite by itself.
+
+The intangible bond between them strengthened every day. Susan,
+watching him when Ella's friends gathered about him, watching the
+honest modesty with which he evaded their empty praises, their attempts
+at lionizing, could not but thrill to know that HER praise stirred him,
+that the deprecatory, indifferent air was dropped quickly enough for
+HER! It was intoxicating to know, as she did know, that he was
+thinking, as she was, of what they would say when they next had a
+moment together; that, whatever she wore, he found her worth watching;
+that, whatever her mood, she never failed to amuse and delight him! Her
+rather evasive beauty grew more definite under his eyes; she bubbled
+with fun and nonsense. "You little fool!" Ella would laugh, with an
+approving glance toward Susan at the tea-table, and "Honestly, Sue, you
+were killing tonight!" Emily, who loved to be amused, said more than
+once.
+
+One day Miss Brown was delegated to carry a message to Mr. Bocqueraz in
+his study. Mrs. Saunders was sorry to interrupt his writing, but a very
+dear old friend was coming to dinner that evening, and would Cousin
+Stephen come into the drawing-room for a moment, before he and Ella
+went out?
+
+Susan tripped demurely to the study door and rapped.
+
+"Come in!" a voice shouted. Susan turned the knob, and put her head
+into the room. Mr. Bocqueraz, writing at a large table by the window,
+and facing the door across its shining top, flung down his pen, and
+stretched back luxuriously in his chair.
+
+"Well, well!" said he, smiling and blinking. "Come in, Susanna!"
+
+"Mrs. Saunders wanted me to ask you---"
+
+"But come in! I've reached a tight corner; couldn't get any further
+anyway!" He pushed away his papers. "There are days, you know, when
+you're not even on bowing acquaintance with your characters."
+
+He looked so genial, so almost fatherly, so contentedly lazy, leaning
+back in his big chair, the winter sunshine streaming in the window
+behind him, and a dozen jars of fragrant winter flowers making the
+whole room sweet, that Susan came in, unhesitatingly. It was the mood
+of all his moods that she liked best; interested, interesting,
+impersonal.
+
+"But I oughtn't--you're writing," said Susan, taking a chair across the
+table from him, and laying bold hands on his manuscript, nevertheless.
+"What a darling hand you write!" she observed, "and what enormous
+margins. Oh, I see, you write notes in the margins--corrections?"
+
+"Exactly!" He was watching her between half-closed lids, with lazy
+pleasure.
+
+"'The only,' in a loop," said Susan, "that's not much of a note! I
+could have written that myself," she added, eying him sideways through
+a film of drifting hair.
+
+"Very well, write anything you like!" he offered amusedly.
+
+"Oh, honestly?" asked Susan with dancing eyes. And, at his nod, she
+dipped a pen in the ink, and began to read the story with a serious
+scowl.
+
+"Here!" she said suddenly, "this isn't at all sensible!" And she read
+aloud:
+
+    "So crystal clear was the gaze with which he met her own,
+     that she was aware of an immediate sense, a vaguely alarming
+     sense, that her confidence must be made with concessions not
+     only to what he had told her--and told her so exquisitely as to
+     indicate his knowledge of other facts from which those he
+     chose to reveal were deliberately selected--but also to what he
+     had not--surely the most significant detail of the whole
+     significant episode--so chosen to reveal!"
+
+"Oh, I see what it means, when I read it aloud," said Susan, cheerfully
+honest. "But at first it didn't seem to make sense!"
+
+"Go ahead. Fix it anyway you like."
+
+"Well---" Susan dimpled. "Then I'll--let's see--I'll put 'surely' after
+'also,'" she announced, "and end it up, 'to what he had not so chosen
+to reveal!' Don't you think that's better?"
+
+"Clearer, certainly.--On that margin, Baby."
+
+"And will you really let it stay that way?" asked the baby, eying the
+altered page with great satisfaction.
+
+"Oh, really. You will see it so in the book."
+
+His quiet certainty that these scattered pages would surely be a book
+some day thrilled Susan, as power always thrilled her. Just as she had
+admired Thorny's old scribbled prices, years before, so she admired
+this quiet mastery now. She asked Stephen Bocqueraz questions, and he
+told her of his boyhood dreams, of the early struggles in the big city,
+of the first success.
+
+"One hundred dollars for a story, Susan. It looked a little fortune!"
+
+"And were you married then?"
+
+"Married?" He smiled. "My dear child, Mrs. Bocqueraz is worth almost a
+million dollars in her own right. No--we have never faced poverty
+together!" There was almost a wistful look in his eyes.
+
+"And to whom is this book going to be dedicated?" asked Susan.
+
+"Well, I don't know. Lillian has two, and Julie has one or two, and
+various men, here and in London. Perhaps I'll dedicate this one to a
+bold baggage of an Irish girl. Would you like that?"
+
+"Oh, you couldn't!" Susan said, frightened.
+
+"Why couldn't I?"
+
+"Because,--I'd rather you wouldn't! I--and it would look odd!"
+stammered Susan.
+
+"Would you care, if it did?" he asked, with that treacherous sudden
+drop in his voice that always stirred her heart so painfully.
+
+"No-o---" Susan answered, scarcely above a whisper.
+
+"What are you afraid of, little girl?" he asked, putting his hand over
+hers on the desk.
+
+Susan moved her hand away.
+
+"Because, your wife---" she began awkwardly, turning a fiery red.
+
+Bocqueraz abruptly left his seat, and walked to a window.
+
+"Susan," he said, coming back, after a moment, "have I ever done
+anything to warrant--to make you distrust me?"
+
+"No,--never!" said Susan heartily, ashamed of herself.
+
+"Friends?" he asked, gravely. And with his sudden smile he put his two
+hands out, across the desk.
+
+It was like playing with fire; she knew it. But Susan felt herself
+quite equal to anyone at playing with fire.
+
+"Friends!" she laughed, gripping his hands with hers. "And now," she
+stood up, "really I mustn't interrupt you any longer!"
+
+"But wait a moment," he said. "Come see what a pretty vista I
+get--right across the Japanese garden to the woods!"
+
+"The same as we do upstairs," Susan said. But she went to stand beside
+him at the window.
+
+"No," said Stephen Bocqueraz presently, quietly taking up the thread of
+the interrupted conversation, "I won't dedicate my book to you, Susan,
+but some day I'll write you a book of your own! I have been wishing,"
+he added soberly, his eyes on the little curved bridge and the dwarfed
+shrubs, the pond and the stepping-stones across the garden, "I have
+been wishing that I never had met you, my dear. I knew, years ago, in
+those hard, early days of which I've been telling you, that you were
+somewhere, but--but I didn't wait for you, Susan, and now I can do no
+more than wish you God-speed, and perhaps give you a helping hand upon
+your way! That's all I wanted to say."
+
+"I'm--I'm not going to answer you," said Susan, steadily, composedly.
+
+Side by side they looked out of the window, for another moment or two,
+then Bocqueraz turned suddenly and catching her hands in his, asked
+almost gaily:
+
+"Well, this is something, at least, isn't it--to be good friends, and
+to have had this much of each other?"
+
+"Surely! A lot!" Susan answered, in smiling relief. And a moment later
+she had delivered her message, and was gone, and he had seated himself
+at his work again.
+
+How much was pretense and how much serious earnest, on his part, she
+wondered. How much was real on her own? Not one bit of it, said Susan,
+fresh from her bath, in the bracing cool winter morning, and walking
+briskly into town for the mail. Not--not much of it, anyway, she
+decided when tea-time brought warmth and relaxation, the leaping of
+fire-light against the library walls, the sound of the clear and
+cultivated voice.
+
+But what was the verdict later, when Susan, bare-armed and
+bare-shouldered, with softened light striking brassy gleams from her
+hair, and the perfumed dimness and silence of the great house
+impressing every sense, paused for a message from Stephen Bocqueraz at
+the foot of the stairs, or warmed her shining little slipper at the
+fire, while he watched her from the chair not four feet away?
+
+When she said "I--I'm not going to answer you," in the clear, bright
+morning light, Susan was enjoyably aware of the dramatic value of the
+moment; when she evaded Bocqueraz's eye throughout an entire luncheon
+she did it deliberately; it was a part of the cheerful, delightful game
+it pleased them both to be playing.
+
+But not all was posing, not all was pretense. Nature, now and then,
+treacherously slipped in a real thrill, where only play-acting was
+expected. Susan, laughing at the memory of some sentimental fencing,
+was sometimes caught unaware by a little pang of regret; how blank and
+dull life would be when this casual game was over! After all, he WAS
+the great writer; before the eyes of all the world, even this pretense
+at an intimate friendship was a feather in her cap!
+
+And he did not attempt to keep their rapidly developing friendship a
+secret; Susan was alternately gratified and terrified by the reality of
+his allusions to her before outsiders. No playing here! Everybody knew,
+in their little circle, that, in the nicest and most elder-brotherly
+way possible, Stephen Bocqueraz thought Susan Brown the greatest fun in
+the world, and quoted her, and presented her with his autographed
+books. This side of the affair, being real, had a tendency to make it
+all seem real, and sometimes confused, and sometimes a little
+frightened Susan.
+
+"That a woman of Emily's mental caliber can hire a woman of yours, for
+a matter of dollars and cents," he said to Susan whimsically, "is proof
+that something is radically wrong somewhere! Well, some day we'll put
+you where values are a little different. Anybody can be rich. Mighty
+few can be Susan!"
+
+She did not believe everything he said, of course, or take all his
+chivalrous speeches quite seriously. But obviously, some of it was said
+in all honesty, she thought, or why should he take the trouble to say
+it? And the nearness of his bracing personality blew across the
+artificial atmosphere in which she lived like the cool breath of great
+moors or of virgin forests. Genius and work and success became the real
+things of life; money but a mere accident. A horrible sense of the
+unreality of everything that surrounded her began to oppress Susan. She
+saw the poisoned undercurrent of this glittering and exquisite
+existence, the selfishness, the cruelties, the narrowness. She saw its
+fundamental insincerity. In a world where wrongs were to be righted,
+and ignorance enlightened, and childhood sheltered and trained, she
+began to think it strange that strong, and young, and wealthy men and
+women should be content to waste enormous sums of money upon food to
+which they scarcely ever brought a normal appetite, upon bridge-prizes
+for guests whose interest in them scarcely survived the moment of
+unwrapping the dainty beribboned boxes in which they came, upon costly
+toys for children whose nurseries were already crowded with toys. She
+wondered that they should think it worth while to spend hours and days
+in harassing dressmakers and milliners, to make a brief appearance in
+the gowns they were so quickly ready to discard, that they should
+gratify every passing whim so instantly that all wishes died together,
+like little plants torn up too soon.
+
+The whole seemed wonderful and beautiful still. But the parts of this
+life, seriously analyzed, seemed to turn to dust and ashes. Of course,
+a hundred little shop-girls might ache with envy at reading that Mrs.
+Harvey Brock was to give her debutante daughter a fancy-dress ball,
+costing ten thousand dollars, and might hang wistfully over the
+pictures of Miss Peggy Brock in her Dresden gown with her ribbon-tied
+crook; but Susan knew that Peggy cried and scolded the whole afternoon,
+before the dance, because Teddy Russell was not coming, that young
+Martin Brock drank too much on that evening and embarrassed his entire
+family before he could be gotten upstairs, and that Mrs. Brock
+considered the whole event a failure because some favors, for which she
+had cabled to Paris, did not come, and the effect of the german was
+lost. Somehow, the "lovely and gifted heiress" of the newspapers never
+seemed to Susan at all reconcilable with Dolly Ripley, vapid,
+overdressed, with diamonds sparkling about her sallow throat, and the
+"jolly impromptu" trip of the St. Johns to New York lost its point when
+one knew it was planned because the name of young Florence St. John had
+been pointedly omitted from Ella Saunders dance list.
+
+Boasting, lying, pretending--how weary Susan got of it all! She was too
+well schooled to smile when Ella, meeting the Honorable Mary Saunders
+and Sir Charles Saunders, of London, said magnificently, "We bear the
+same arms, Sir Charles, but of course ours is the colonial branch of
+the family!" and she nodded admiringly at Dolly Ripley's boyish and
+blunt fashion of saying occasionally "We Ripleys,--oh, we drink and
+gamble and do other things, I admit; we're not saints! But we can't
+lie, you know!"
+
+"I hate to take the kiddies to New York, Mike," perhaps some young
+matron would say simply. "Percy's family is one of the old, old
+families there, you know, shamelessly rich, and terribly exclusive! And
+one doesn't want the children to take themselves seriously yet awhile!"
+
+"Bluffers!" the smiling and interested Miss Brown would say to herself,
+as she listened. She listened a great deal; everyone was willing to
+talk, and she was often amused at the very slight knowledge that could
+carry a society girl through a conversation. In Hunter, Baxter &
+Hunter's offices there would be instant challenges, even at auntie's
+table affectation met its just punishment, and inaccuracy was promptly
+detected. But there was no such censorship here.
+
+"Looks like a decent little cob!" some girl would say, staring at rider
+passing the hotel window, at teatime.
+
+"Yes," another voice would agree, "good points. Looks thoroughbred."
+
+"Yes, he does! Looks like a Kentucky mount."
+
+"Louisa! Not with that neck!"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. My grandfather raised fancy stock, you know. Just
+for his own pleasure, of course, So I DO know a good horse!"
+
+"Well, but he steps more like a racer," somebody else would contribute.
+
+"That's what I thought! Loose-built for a racer, though."
+
+"And what a fool riding him--the man has no seat!"
+
+"Oh, absolutely not! Probably a groom, but it's a shame to allow it!"
+
+"Groom, of course. But you'll never see a groom riding a horse of mine
+that way!"
+
+"Rather NOT!"
+
+And, an ordinary rider, on a stable hack, having by this time passed
+from view, the subject, would be changed.
+
+Or perhaps some social offense would absorb everybody's attention for
+the better part of half-an-hour.
+
+"Look, Emily," their hostess would say, during a call, "isn't this
+rich! The Bridges have had their crest put on their
+mourning-stationery! Don't you LOVE it! Mamma says that the girls must
+have done it; the old lady MUST know better! Execrable bad taste, I
+call it."
+
+"Oh, ISN'T that awful!" Emily would inspect the submitted letter with
+deep amusement.
+
+"Oh, Mary, let's see it--I don't believe it!" somebody else would
+exclaim.
+
+"Poor things, and they try so hard to do everything right!" Kindly pity
+would soften the tones of a fourth speaker.
+
+"But you know Mary, they DO do that in England," somebody might protest.
+
+"Oh, Peggy, rot! Of course they don't!"
+
+"Why, certainly they do!" A little feeling would be rising. "When Helen
+and I were in London we had some friends--"
+
+"Nonsense, Peggy, it's terribly vulgar! I know because Mamma's cousin--"
+
+"Oh honestly, Peggy, it's never done!"
+
+"I never heard of such a thing!"
+
+"You might use your crest in black, Peg, but in color--!"
+
+"Just ask any engraver, Peg. I know when Frances was sending to England
+for our correct quarterings,--they'd been changed--"
+
+"But I tell you I KNOW," Miss Peggy would say angrily. "Do you mean to
+tell me that you'd take the word of a stationer--"
+
+"A herald. You can't call that a stationer--"
+
+"Well, then a herald! What do they know?"
+
+"Why, of course they know!" shocked voices would protest. "It's their
+business!"
+
+"Well," the defender of the Bridges would continue loftily, "all I can
+say is that Alice and I SAW it--"
+
+"I know that when WE were in London," some pleasant, interested voice
+would interpose, modestly, "our friends--Lord and Lady Merridew, they
+were, you know, and Sir Henry Phillpots--they were in mourning, and
+THEY didn't. But of course I don't know what other people, not
+nobility, that is, might do!"
+
+And of course this crushing conclusion admitted of no answer. But Miss
+Peggy might say to Susan later, with a bright, pitying smile:
+
+"Alice will ROAR when I tell her about this! Lord and Lady
+Merridew,--that's simply delicious! I love it!"
+
+"Bandar-log," Bocqueraz called them, and Susan often thought of the
+term in these days. From complete disenchantment she was saved,
+however, by her deepening affection for Isabel Wallace, and, whenever
+they were together, Susan had to admit that a more lovely personality
+had never been developed by any environment or in any class. Isabel,
+fresh, unspoiled, eager to have everyone with whom she came in contact
+as enchanted with life as she was herself, developed a real devotion
+for Susan, and showed it in a hundred ways. If Emily was away for a
+night, Isabel was sure to come and carry Susan off for as many hours as
+possible to the lovely Wallace home. They had long, serious talks
+together; Susan did not know whether to admire or envy most Isabel's
+serene happiness in her engagement, the most brilliant engagement of
+the winter, and Isabel's deeper interest in her charities, her tender
+consideration of her invalid mother, her flowers, her plan for the
+small brothers.
+
+"John is wonderful, of course," Isabel would agree in a smiling aside
+to Susan when, furred and glowing, she had brought her handsome big
+lover into the Saunders' drawing-room for a cup of tea, "but I've been
+spoiled all my life, Susan, and I'm afraid he's going right on with it!
+And--" Isabel's lovely eyes would be lighted with an ardent glow, "and
+I want to do something with my life, Sue, something BIG, in return for
+it all!"
+
+Again, Susan found herself watching with curious wistfulness the girl
+who had really had an offer of marriage, who was engaged, openly adored
+and desired. What had he said to her--and she to him--what emotions
+crossed their hearts when they went to watch the building of the
+beautiful home that was to be theirs?
+
+A man and a woman--a man and a woman--loving and marrying--what a
+miracle the familiar aspects of approaching marriage began to seem! In
+these days Susan read old poems with a thrill, read "Trilby" again, and
+found herself trembling, read "Adam Bede," and shut the book with a
+thundering heart. She went, with the others, to "Faust," and turned to
+Stephen Bocqueraz a pale, tense face, and eyes brimming with tears.
+
+The writer's study, beyond the big library, had a fascination for her.
+At least once a day she looked in upon him there, sometimes with Emily,
+sometimes with Ella, never, after that first day, alone.
+
+"You can see that he's perfectly devoted to that dolly-faced wife of
+his!" Ella said, half-contemptuously. "I think we all bore him," Emily
+said. "Stephen is a good and noble man," said his wife's old cousin.
+Susan never permitted herself to speak of him. "Don't you like him?"
+asked Isabel. "He seems crazy about you! I think you're terribly fine
+to be so indifferent about it, Susan!"
+
+On a certain December evening Emily decided that she was very unwell,
+and must have a trained nurse. Susan, who had stopped, without Emily,
+at the Wallaces' for tea, understood perfectly that the youngest Miss
+Saunders was delicately intimating that she expected a little more
+attention from her companion. A few months ago she would have risen to
+the occasion with the sort of cheerful flattery that never failed in
+its effect on Emily, but to-night a sort of stubborn irritation kept
+her lips sealed, and in the end she telephoned for the nurse Emily
+fancied, a Miss Watts, who had been taking care of one of Emily's
+friends.
+
+Miss Watts, effusive and solicitous, arrived, and Susan could see that
+Emily was repenting of her bargain long before she, Susan, had dressed
+for dinner. But she ran downstairs with a singing heart, nevertheless.
+Ella was to bring two friends in for cards, immediately after dinner;
+Kenneth had not been home for three days; Miss Baker was in close
+attendance upon Mrs. Saunders, who had retired to her room before
+dinner; so Susan and Stephen were free to dine alone. Susan had
+hesitated, in the midst of her dressing, over the consideration of a
+gown, and had finally compromised with her conscience by deciding upon
+quite the oldest, plainest, shabbiest black silk in the little
+collection.
+
+"Most becoming thing you ever put on!" said Emily, trying to
+reestablish quite cordial relations.
+
+"I know," Susan agreed guiltily.
+
+When she and Stephen Bocqueraz came back into one of the smaller
+drawing-rooms after dinner Susan walked to the fire and stood, for a
+few moments, staring down at the coals. The conversation during the
+softly lighted, intimate little dinner had brought them both to a
+dangerous mood. Susan was excited beyond the power of reasonable
+thought. It was all nonsense, they were simply playing; he was a
+married man, and she a woman who never could by any possibility be
+anything but "good," she would have agreed impatiently and gaily with
+her own conscience if she had heard it at all--but just now she felt
+like enjoying this particular bit of foolery to the utmost, and, since
+there was really no harm in it, she was going to enjoy it! She had not
+touched wine at dinner, but some subtler intoxication had seized her,
+she felt conscious of her own beauty, her white throat, her shining
+hair, her slender figure in its clinging black, she felt conscious of
+Stephen's eyes, conscious of the effective background for them both
+that the room afforded; the dull hangings, subdued lights and softly
+shining surfaces.
+
+Her companion stood near her, watching her. Susan, still excitedly
+confident that she controlled the situation, began to feel her breath
+come deep and swift, began to wish that she could think of just the
+right thing to say, to relieve the tension a little-began to wish that
+Ella would come in--
+
+She raised her eyes, a little frightened, a little embarrassed, to his,
+and in the next second he had put his arms about her and crushed her to
+him and kissed her on the mouth.
+
+"Susan," he said, very quietly, "you are my girl--you are MY girl, will
+you let me take care of you? I can't help it--I love you."
+
+This was not play-acting, at last. A grim, an almost terrible
+earnestness was in his voice; his face was very pale; his eyes dark
+with passion. Susan, almost faint with the shock, pushed away his arms,
+walked a few staggering steps and stood, her back turned to him, one
+hand over her heart, the other clinging to the back of a chair, her
+breath coming so violently that her whole body shook.
+
+"Oh, don't--don't--don't!" she said, in a horrified and frightened
+whisper.
+
+"Susan"--he began eagerly, coming toward her. She turned to face him,
+and breathing as if she had been running, and in simple entreaty, she
+said:
+
+"Please--please--if you touch me again--if you touch me again--I
+cannot--the maids will hear--Bostwick will hear--"
+
+"No, no, no! Don't be frightened, dear," he said quickly and
+soothingly. "I won't. I won't do anything you don't want me to!"
+
+Susan pressed her hand over her eyes; her knees felt so weak that she
+was afraid to move. Her breathing slowly grew more even.
+
+"My dear--if you'll forgive me!" the man said repentantly. She gave him
+a weary smile, as she went to drop into her low chair before the fire.
+
+"No, no, Mr. Bocqueraz, I'm to blame," she said quietly. And suddenly
+she put her elbows on her knees, and buried her face in her hands.
+
+"Listen, Susan--" he began again. But again she silenced him.
+
+"Just--one--moment--" she said pleadingly. For two or three moments
+there was silence.
+
+"No, it's my fault," Susan said then, more composedly, pushing her hair
+back from her forehead with both hands, and raising her wretched eyes.
+"Oh, how could I--how could I!" And again she hid her face.
+
+Stephen Bocqueraz did not speak, and presently Susan added, with a sort
+of passion:
+
+"It was wicked, and it was COMMON, and no decent woman--"
+
+"No, you shan't take that tone!" said Bocqueraz, suddenly looking up
+from a somber study of the fire. "It is true, Susan, and--and I can't
+be sorry it is. It's the truest thing in the world!"
+
+"Oh, let's not--let's NOT talk that way!" All that was good and honest
+in her came to Susan's rescue now, all her clean and honorable
+heritage. "We've only been fooling, haven't we?" she urged eagerly.
+"You know we have! Why, you--you--"
+
+"No," said Bocqueraz, "it's too big now to be laughed away, Susan!" He
+came and knelt beside her chair and put his arm about her, his face so
+close that Susan could lay an arresting hand upon his shoulder. Her
+heart beat madly, her senses swam.
+
+"You mustn't!" said Susan, trying to force her voice above a hoarse
+whisper, and failing.
+
+"Do you think you can deceive me about it?" he asked. "Not any more
+than I could deceive you! Do you think I'M glad--haven't you seen how
+I've been fighting it--ignoring it--"
+
+Susan's eyes were fixed upon his with frightened fascination; she could
+not have spoken if life had depended upon it.
+
+"No," he said, "whatever comes of it, or however we suffer for it, I
+love you, and you love me, don't you, Susan?"
+
+She had forgotten herself now, forgotten that this was only a sort of
+play--forgotten her part as a leading lady, bare-armed and
+bright-haired, whose role it was to charm this handsome man, in the
+soft lamplight. She suddenly knew that she could not deny what he
+asked, and with the knowledge that she DID care for him, that this
+splendid thing had come into her life for her to reject or to keep,
+every rational thought deserted her. It only seemed important that he
+should know that she was not going to answer "No."
+
+"Do you care a little, Susan?" he asked again. Susan did not answer or
+move. Her eyes never left his face.
+
+She was still staring at him, a moment later, ashen-faced and helpless,
+when they heard Bostwick crossing the hall to admit Ella and her
+chattering friends. Somehow she stood up, somehow walked to the door.
+
+"After nine!" said Ella, briskly introducing, "but I know you didn't
+miss us! Get a card-table, Bostwick, please. And, Sue, will you wait,
+like a love, and see that we get something to eat at twelve--at one?
+Take these things, Lizzie. NOW. What is it, Stephen? A four-spot? You
+get it. How's the kid, Sue?"
+
+"I'm going right up to see!" Susan said dizzily, glad to escape. She
+went up to Emily's room, and was made welcome by the bored invalid, and
+gladly restored to her place as chief attendant. When Emily was sleepy
+Susan went downstairs to superintend the arrangements for supper;
+presently she presided over the chafing-dish. She did not speak to
+Bocqueraz or meet his look once during the evening. But in every fiber
+of her being she was conscious of his nearness, and of his eyes.
+
+The long night brought misgivings, and Susan went down to breakfast
+cold with a sudden revulsion of feeling. Ella kept her guest busy all
+day, and all through the following day. Susan, half-sick at first with
+the variety and violence of her emotions, had convinced herself, before
+forty-eight hours were over, that the whole affair had been no more
+than a moment of madness, as much regretted by him as by herself.
+
+It was humiliating to remember with what a lack of self-control and
+reserve she had borne herself, she reflected. "But one more word of
+this sort," Susan resolved, "and I will simply go back to Auntie within
+the hour!"
+
+On the third afternoon, a Sunday, Peter Coleman came to suggest an idle
+stroll with Emily and Susan, and was promptly seized by the gratified
+Emily for a motor-trip.
+
+"We'll stop for Isabel and John," said Emily, elated. "Unless," her
+voice became a trifle flat, "unless you'd like to go, Sue," she
+amended, "and in that case, if Isabel can go, we can--"
+
+"Oh, heavens, no!" Susan said, laughing, pleased at the disgusted face
+Peter Coleman showed beyond Emily's head. "Ella wants me to go over to
+the hotel, anyway, to talk about borrowing chairs for the concert, and
+I'll go this afternoon," she added, lowering her voice so that it
+should not penetrate the library, where Ella and Bocqueraz and some
+luncheon guests were talking together.
+
+But when she walked down the drive half an hour later, with the collies
+leaping about her, the writer quietly fell into step at her side. Susan
+stopped short, the color rushing into her face. But her companion paid
+no heed to her confusion.
+
+"I want to talk to you, Susan," said he unsmilingly, and with a tired
+sigh. "Where shall we walk? Up behind the convent here?"
+
+"You look headachy," Susan said sympathetically, distracted from larger
+issues by the sight of his drawn, rather colorless face.
+
+"Bad night," he explained briefly. And with no further objection she
+took the convent road, and they walked through the pale flood of winter
+sunshine together. There had been heavy rains; to-day the air was
+fresh-washed and clear, but they could hear the steady droning of the
+fog-horn on the distant bay.
+
+The convent, washed with clear sunlight, loomed high above its bare,
+well-kept gardens. The usual Sunday visitors were mounting and
+descending the great flight of steps to the doorway; a white-robed
+portress stood talking to one little group at the top, her folded arms
+lost in her wide sleeves. A three-year-old, in a caped white coat, made
+every one laugh by her independent investigations of arches and doorway.
+
+"Dear Lord, to be that size again!" thought Susan, heavy-hearted.
+
+"I've been thinking a good deal since Tuesday night, Susan," began
+Bocqueraz quietly, when they had reached the shelved road that runs
+past the carriage gates and lodges of beautiful private estates, and
+circles across the hills, above the town. "And, of course, I've been
+blaming myself bitterly; but I'm not going to speak of that now. Until
+Tuesday I hoped that what pain there was to bear, because of my caring
+for you, would be borne by me alone. If I blame myself, Sue, it's only
+because I felt that I would rather bear it, any amount of it, than go
+away from you a moment before I must. But when I realize that you,
+too--"
+
+He paused, and Susan did not speak, could not speak, even though she
+knew that her silence was a definite statement.
+
+"No--" he said presently, "we must face the thing honestly. And perhaps
+it's better so. I want to speak to you about my marriage. I was
+twenty-five, and Lillian eighteen. I had come to the city, a
+seventeen-year-old boy, to make my fortune, and it was after the first
+small success that we met. She was an heiress--a sweet, pretty, spoiled
+little girl; she is just a little girl now in many ways. It was a very
+extraordinary marriage for her to wish to make; her mother disapproved;
+her guardians disapproved. I promised the mother to go away, and I did,
+but Lillian had an illness a month or two later and they sent for me,
+and we were married. Her mother has always regarded me as of secondary
+importance in her daughter's life; she took charge of our house, and of
+the baby when Julie came, and went right on with her spoiling and
+watching and exulting in Lillian. They took trips abroad; they decided
+whether or not to open the town house; they paid all the bills. Lillian
+has her suite of rooms, and I mine. Julie is very prettily fond of me;
+they like to give a big tea, two or three times a winter, and have me
+in evidence, or Lillian likes to have me plan theatricals, or manage
+amateur grand-opera for her. When Julie was about ten I had my own
+ideas as to her upbringing, but there was a painful scene, in which the
+child herself was consulted, and stood with her mother and grandmother--
+
+"So, for several years, Susan, it has been only the decent outer shell
+of a marriage. We sometimes live in different cities for months at a
+time, or live in the same house, and see no more of each other than
+guests in the same hotel. Lillian makes no secret of it; she would be
+glad to be free. We have never had a day, never an hour, of real
+companionship! My dear Sue--" his voice, which had been cold and
+bitter, softened suddenly, and he turned to her the sudden winning
+smile that she remembered noticing the first evening they had known
+each other. "My dear Sue," he said, "when I think what I have missed in
+life I could go mad! When I think what it would be to have beside me a
+comrade who liked what I like, who would throw a few things into a suit
+case, and put her hand in mine, and wander over the world with me,
+laughing and singing through Italy, watching a sudden storm from the
+doorway of an English inn--"
+
+"Ah, don't!" Susan said wistfully.
+
+"You have never seen the Canadian forests, Sue, on some of the tropical
+beaches, or the color in a japanese street, or the moon rising over the
+Irish lakes!" he went on, "and how you would love it all!",
+
+"We oughtn't--oughtn't to talk this way--", Susan said unsteadily.
+
+They were crossing a field, above the town, and came now to a little
+stile. Susan sat down on the little weather-burned step, and stared
+down on the town below. Bocqueraz leaned on the rail, and looked at her.
+
+"Always--always--always," he pursued seriously. "I have known that you
+were somewhere in the world. Just you, a bold and gay and witty and
+beautiful woman, who would tear my heart out by the roots when I met
+you, and shake me out of my comfortable indifference to the world and
+everything in it. And you have come! But, Susan, I never knew, I never
+dreamed what it would mean to me to go away from you, to leave you in
+peace, never guessing--"
+
+"No, it's too late for that!" said Susan, clearing her throat. "I'd
+rather know."
+
+If she had been acting it would have been the correct thing to say. The
+terrifying thought was that she was not acting; she was in deadly,
+desperate earnest now, and yet she could not seem to stop short; every
+instant involved her the deeper.
+
+"We--we must stop this," she said, jumping up, and walking briskly
+toward the village. "I am so sorry--I am so ashamed! It all
+seemed--seemed so foolish up to--well, to Tuesday. We must have been
+mad that night! I never dreamed that things would go so far. I don't
+blame you, I blame myself. I assure you I haven't slept since, I can't
+seem to eat or think or do anything naturally any more! Sometimes I
+think I'm going crazy!"
+
+"My poor little girl!" They were in a sheltered bit of road now, and
+Bocqueraz put his two hands lightly on her shoulders, and stopped her
+short. Susan rested her two hands upon his arms, her eyes, raised to
+his, suddenly brimmed with tears. "My poor little girl!" he said again
+tenderly, "we'll find a way out! It's come on you too suddenly, Sue--it
+came upon me like a thunderbolt. But there's just one thing," and Susan
+remembered long afterward the look in his eyes as he spoke of it, "just
+one thing you mustn't forget, Susan. You belong to me now, and I'll
+move heaven and earth--but I'll have you. It's come all wrong,
+sweetheart, and we can't see our way now. But, my dearest, the
+wonderful thing is that it has come----
+
+"Think of the lives," he went on, as Susan did not answer, "think of
+the women, toiling away in dull, dreary lives, to whom a vision like
+this has never come!"
+
+"Oh, I know!" said Susan, in sudden passionate assent.
+
+"But don't misunderstand me, dear, you're not to be hurried or troubled
+in this thing. We'll think, and talk things over, and plan. My world is
+a broader and saner world than yours is, Susan, and when I take you
+there you will be as honored and as readily accepted as any woman among
+them all. My wife will set me free---" he fell into a muse, as they
+walked along the quiet country road, and Susan, her brain a mad whirl
+of thoughts, did not interrupt him. "I believe she will set me free,"
+he said, "as soon as she knows that my happiness, and all my life,
+depend upon it. It can be done; it can be arranged, surely. You know
+that our eastern divorce laws are different from yours here, Susan---"
+
+"I think I must be mad to let you talk so!" burst out Susan, "You must
+not! Divorce---! Why, my aunt---!"
+
+"We'll not mention it again," he assured her quickly, but although for
+the rest of their walk they said very little, the girl escaped upstairs
+to her room before dinner with a baffled sense that the dreadful word,
+if unpronounced, had been none the less thundering in her brain and his
+all the way.
+
+She made herself comfortable in wrapper and slippers, rather to the
+satisfaction of Emily, who had brought Peter back to dinner, barely
+touched the tray that the sympathetic Lizzie brought upstairs, and lay
+trying to read a book that she flung aside again and again for the
+thoughts that would have their way.
+
+She must think this whole thing out, she told herself desperately; view
+it dispassionately and calmly; decide upon the best and quickest step
+toward reinstating the old order, toward blotting out this last
+fortnight of weakness and madness. But, if Susan was fighting for the
+laws of men, a force far stronger was taking arms against her, the
+great law of nature held her in its grip. The voice of Stephen
+Bocqueraz rang across her sanest resolution; the touch of Stephen
+Bocqueraz's hand burned her like a fire.
+
+Well, it had been sent to her, she thought resentfully, lying back
+spent and exhausted; she had not invited it. Suppose she accepted it;
+suppose she sanctioned his efforts to obtain a divorce, suppose she
+were married to him--And at the thought her resolutions melted away in
+the sudden delicious and enervating wave of emotion that swept over
+her. To belong to him!
+
+"Oh, my God, I do not know what to do!" Susan whispered. She slipped to
+her knees, and buried her face in her hands. If her mind would but be
+still for a moment, would stop its mad hurry, she might pray.
+
+A knock at the door brought her to her feet; it was Miss Baker, who was
+sitting with Kenneth to-night, and who wanted company. Susan was glad
+to go noiselessly up to the little sitting-room next to Kenneth's room,
+and sit chatting under the lamp. Now and then low groaning and
+muttering came from the sick man, and the women paused for a pitiful
+second. Susan presently went in to help Miss Baker persuade him to
+drink some cooling preparation.
+
+The big room was luxurious enough for a Sultan, yet with hints of
+Kenneth's earlier athletic interests in evidence too. A wonderful lamp
+at the bedside diffused a soft light. The sufferer, in embroidered and
+monogrammed silk night-wear, was under a trimly drawn sheet, with a
+fluffy satin quilt folded across his feet. He muttered and shook his
+head, as the drink was presented, and, his bloodshot eyes discovering
+Susan, he whispered her name, immediately shouting it aloud, hot eyes
+on her face:
+
+"Susan!"
+
+"Feeling better?" Susan smiled encouragingly, maternally, down upon him.
+
+But his gaze had wandered again. He drained the glass, and immediately
+seemed quieter.
+
+"He'll sleep now," said Miss Baker, when they were back in the
+adjoining room. "Doesn't it seem a shame?"
+
+"Couldn't he be cured, Miss Baker?"
+
+"Well," the nurse pursed her lips, shook her head thoughtfully. "No, I
+don't believe he could now. Doctor thinks the south of France will do
+wonders, and he says that if Mr. Saunders stayed on a strict diet for,
+say a year, and then took some German cure--but I don't know! Nobody
+could make him do it anyway. Why, we can't keep him on a diet for
+twenty-four hours! Of course he can't keep this up. A few more attacks
+like this will finish him. He's going to have a nurse in the morning,
+and Doctor says that in about a month he ought to get away. It's my
+opinion he'll end in a mad-house," Miss Baker ended, with quiet
+satisfaction.
+
+"Oh, don't!" Susan cried in horror.
+
+"Well, a lot of them do, my dear! He'll never get entirely well, that's
+positive. And now the problem is," the nurse, who was knitting a
+delicate rainbow afghan for a baby, smiled placidly over her faint
+pinks and blues, "now the question is, who's going abroad with him? He
+can't go alone. Ella declines the honor," Miss Baker's lips curled; she
+detested Ella "Emily--you know what Emily is! And the poor mother, who
+would really make the effort, he says gets on his nerves. Anyway, she's
+not fit. If he had a man friend---! But the only one he'd go with, Mr.
+Russell, is married."
+
+"A nurse?" suggested Susan.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" Miss Baker gave her a significant look. "There are two
+classes of nurses," she said, "one sort wouldn't dare take a man who
+has the delirium tremens anywhere, much less to a strange country, and
+the other---! They tried that once, before my day it was, but I guess
+that was enough for them. Of course the best thing that he could do,"
+pursued the nurse lightly, "is get married."
+
+"Well," Susan felt the topic a rather delicate one. "Ought he marry?"
+she ventured.
+
+"Don't think I'd marry him!" Miss Baker assured her hastily, "but he's
+no worse than the Gregory boy, married last week. He's really no worse
+than lots of others!"
+
+"Well, it's a lovely, lovely world!" brooded Susan bitterly. "I wish to
+GOD," she added passionately, "that there was some way of telling right
+from wrong! If you want to have a good time and have money enough, you
+can steal and lie and marry people like Kenneth Saunders; there's no
+law that you can't break--pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony,
+envy and sloth! That IS society! And yet, if you want to be decent, you
+can slave away a thousand years, mending and patching and teaching and
+keeping books, and nothing beautiful or easy ever comes your way!"
+
+"I don't agree with you at all," said Miss Baker, in disapproval. "I
+hope I'm not bad," she went on brightly, "but I have a lovely time!
+Everyone here is lovely to me, and once a month I go home to my sister.
+We're the greatest chums ever, and her baby, Marguerite, is named for
+me, and she's a perfect darling! And Beek--that's her husband--is the
+most comical thing I ever saw; he'll go up and get Mrs. Tully--my
+sister rents one of her rooms,--and we have a little supper, and more
+cutting-UP! Or else Beek'll sit with the baby, and we girls go to the
+theater!"
+
+"Yes, that's lovely," Susan said, but Miss Baker accepted the words and
+not the tone, and went on to innocent narratives of Lily, Beek and the
+little Marguerite.
+
+"And now, I wonder what a really good, conscientious woman would do,"
+thought Susan in the still watches of the night. Go home to Auntie, of
+course. He might follow her there, but, even if he did, she would have
+made the first right step, and could then plan the second. Susan
+imagined Bocqueraz in Auntie's sitting-room and winced in the dark.
+Perhaps the most definite stand she took in all these bewildering days
+was when she decided, with a little impatient resentment, that she was
+quite equal to meeting the situation with dignity here.
+
+But there must be no hesitation, no compromise. Susan fell asleep
+resolving upon heroic extremes.
+
+Just before dinner, on the evening following, she was at the grand
+piano in the big drawing-room, her fingers lazily following the score
+of "Babes in Toyland," which Ella had left open upon the rack. Susan
+felt tired and subdued, wearily determined to do her duty, wearily sure
+that life, for the years to come, would be as gray and sad as to-day
+seemed. She had been crying earlier in the day and felt the better for
+the storm. Susan had determined upon one more talk with Bocqueraz,--the
+last.
+
+And presently he was leaning on the piano, facing her in the dim light.
+Susan's hands began to tremble, to grow cold. Her heart beat high with
+nervousness; some primitive terror assailed her even here, in the
+familiar room, within the hearing of a dozen maids.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked, as she did not smile.
+
+Susan still watched him seriously. She did not answer.
+
+"My fault?" he asked.
+
+"No-o." Susan's lip trembled. "Or perhaps it is, in a way," she said
+slowly and softly, still striking almost inaudible chords. "I can't--I
+can't seem to see things straight, whichever way I look!" she confessed
+as simply as a troubled child.
+
+"Will you come across the hall into the little library with me and talk
+about it for two minutes?" he asked.
+
+"No." Susan shook her head.
+
+"Susan! Why not?"
+
+"Because we must stop it all," the girl said steadily, "ALL, every bit
+of it, before we--before we are sorry! You are a married man, and I
+knew it, and it is ALL WRONG--"
+
+"No, it's not all wrong, I won't admit that," he said quickly. "There
+has been no wrong."
+
+It was a great weight lifted from Susan's heart to think that this was
+true. Ended here, the friendship was merely an episode.
+
+"If we stop here," she said almost pleadingly.
+
+"If we stop here," he agreed, slowly. "If we end it all here. Well. And
+of course, Sue, chance might, MIGHT set me free, you know, and then--"
+
+Again the serious look, followed by the sweet and irresistible smile.
+Susan suddenly felt the hot tears running down her cheeks.
+
+"Chance won't," she said in agony. And she began to fumble blindly for
+a handkerchief.
+
+In an instant he was beside her, and as she stood up he put both arms
+about her, and she dropped her head on his shoulder, and wept silently
+and bitterly. Every instant of this nearness stabbed her with new joy
+and new pain; when at last he gently tipped back her tear-drenched
+face, she was incapable of resisting the great flood of emotion that
+was sweeping them both off their feet.
+
+"Sue, you do care! My dearest, you DO care?"
+
+Susan, panting, clung to him.
+
+"Oh, yes--yes!" she whispered. And, at a sound from the hall, she
+crushed his handkerchief back into his hand, and walked to the deep
+archway of a distant window. When he joined her there, she was still
+breathing hard, and had her hand pressed against her heart, but she was
+no longer crying.
+
+"I am mad I think!" smiled Susan, quite mistress of herself.
+
+"Susan," he said eagerly, "I was only waiting for this! If you knew--if
+you only knew what an agony I've been in yesterday and to-day--! And
+I'm not going to distress you now with plans, my dearest. But, Sue, if
+I were a divorced man now, would you let it be a barrier?"
+
+"No," she said, after a moment's thought. "No, I wouldn't let anything
+that wasn't a legal barrier stand in the way. Even though divorce has
+always seemed terrible to me. But--but you're not free, Mr. Bocqueraz."
+
+He was standing close behind her, as she stood staring out into the
+night, and now put his arm about her, and Susan, looking up over her
+shoulder, raised childlike blue eyes to his.
+
+"How long are you going to call me that?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know--Stephen," she said. And suddenly she wrenched herself
+free, and turned to face him.
+
+"I can't seem to keep my senses when I'm within ten feet of you!" Susan
+declared, half-laughing and half-crying.
+
+"But Sue, if my wife agrees to a divorce," he said, catching both her
+hands.
+
+"Don't touch me, please," she said, loosening them.
+
+"I will not, of course!" He took firm hold of a chair-back. "If
+Lillian--" he began again, very gravely.
+
+Susan leaned toward him, her face not twelve inches away from his face,
+her hand laid lightly for a second on his arm.
+
+"You know that I will go with you to the end of the world, Stephen!"
+she said, scarcely above a whisper, and was gone.
+
+It became evident, in a day or two, that Kenneth Saunders' illness had
+taken a rather alarming turn. There was a consultation of doctors;
+there was a second nurse. Ella went to the extreme point of giving up
+an engagement to remain with her mother while the worst was feared;
+Emily and Susan worried and waited, in their rooms. Stephen Bocqueraz
+was a great deal in the sick-room; "a real big brother," as Mrs.
+Saunders said tearfully.
+
+The crisis passed; Kenneth was better, was almost normal again. But the
+great specialist who had entered the house only for an hour or two had
+left behind him the little seed that was to vitally affect the lives of
+several of these people.
+
+"Dr. Hudson says he's got to get away," said Ella to Susan, "I wish I
+could go with him. Kenneth's a lovely traveler."
+
+"I wish I could," Emily supplemented, "but I'm no good."
+
+"And doctor says that he'll come home quite a different person," added
+his mother. Susan wondered if she fancied that they all looked in a
+rather marked manner at her. She wondered, if it was not fancy, what
+the look meant.
+
+They were all in the upstairs sitting-room in the bright morning light
+when this was said. They had drifted in there one by one, apparently by
+accident. Susan, made a little curious and uneasy by a subtle sense of
+something unsaid--something pending, began to wonder, too, if it had
+really been accident that assembled them there.
+
+But she was still without definite suspicions when Ella, upon the
+entrance of Chow Yew with Mr. Kenneth's letters and the new magazines,
+jumped up gaily, and said:
+
+"Here, Sue! Will you run up with these to Ken--and take these violets,
+too?"
+
+She put the magazines in Susan's hands, and added a great bunch of dewy
+wet violets that had been lying on the table. Susan, really glad to
+escape from the over-charged atmosphere of the room, willingly went on
+her way.
+
+Kenneth was sitting up to-day, very white, very haggard,--clean-shaven
+and hollow-eyed, and somehow very pitiful. He smiled at Susan, as she
+came in, and laid a thin hand on a chair by the bed. Susan sat down,
+and as she did so the watching nurse went out.
+
+"Well, had you ordered a pillow of violets with shaky doves?" he asked,
+in a hoarse thin echo of his old voice. "No, but I guess you were
+pretty sick," the girl said soberly. "How goes it to-day?"
+
+"Oh, fine!" he answered hardily, "as soon as I am over the ether I'll
+feel like a fighting cock! Hudson talked a good deal with his mouth,"
+said Kenneth coughing. "But the rotten thing about me, Susan," he went
+on, "is that I can't booze,--I really can't do it! Consequently, when
+some old fellow like that gets a chance at me, he thinks he ought to
+scare me to death!" He sank back, tired from coughing. "But I'm all
+right!" he finished, comfortably, "I'll be alright again after a while."
+
+"Well, but now, honestly, from now on---" Susan began, timidly but
+eagerly, "won't you truly TRY--"
+
+"Oh, sure!" he said simply. "I promised. I'm going to cut it out, ALL
+of it. I'm done. I don't mean to say that I've ever been a patch on
+some of the others," said Kenneth. "Lord, you ought to see some of the
+men who really DRINK! At the same time, I've had enough. It's me to the
+simple joys of country life--I'm going to try farming. But first they
+want me to try France for awhile, and then take this German treatment,
+whatever it is. Hudson wants me to get off by the first of the year."
+
+"Oh, really! France!" Susan's eyes sparkled. "Oh, aren't you wild!"
+
+"I'm not so crazy about it. Not Paris, you know, but some dinky resort."
+
+"Oh, but fancy the ocean trip--and meeting the village people--and New
+York!" Susan exclaimed. "I think every instant of traveling would be a
+joy!" And the vision of herself in all these places, with Stephen
+Bocqueraz as interpreter, wrung her heart with longing.
+
+Kenneth was watching her closely. A dull red color had crept into his
+face.
+
+"Well, why don't you come?" he laughed awkwardly.
+
+Something in his tone made Susan color uncomfortably too.
+
+"That DID sound as if I were asking myself along!" she smiled.
+
+"Oh, no, it didn't!" he reassured her. "But--but I mean it. Why don't
+you come?"
+
+They were looking steadily at each other now. Susan tried to laugh.
+
+"A scandal in high life!" she said, in an attempt to make the
+conversation farcical. "Elopement surprises society!"
+
+"That's what I mean--that's what I mean!" he said eagerly, yet
+bashfully too. "What's the matter with our--our getting married, Susan?
+You and I'll get married, d'ye see?"
+
+And as, astonished and frightened and curiously touched she stood up,
+he caught at her skirt. Susan put her hand over his with a reassuring
+and soothing gesture.
+
+"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" he said, beginning to cough again.
+"You said you would. And I--I am terribly fond of you--you could do
+just as you like. For instance, if you wanted to take a little trip off
+anywhere, with friends, you know," said Kenneth with boyish, smiling
+generosity, "you could ALWAYS do it! I wouldn't want to tie you down to
+me!" He lay back, after coughing, but his bony hand still clung to
+hers. "You're the only woman I ever asked to undertake such a bad job,"
+he finished, in a whisper.
+
+"Why--but honestly---" Susan began. She laughed out nervously and
+unsteadily. "This is so sudden," said she. Kenneth laughed too.
+
+"But, you see, they're hustling me off," he complained. "This weather
+is so rotten! And El's keen for it," he urged, "and Mother too. If
+you'll be so awfully, awfully good--I know you aren't crazy about
+me--and you know some pretty rotten things about me--"
+
+The very awkwardness of his phrasing won her as no other quality could.
+Susan felt suddenly tender toward him, felt old and sad and wise.
+
+"Mr. Saunders," she said, gently, "you've taken my breath away. I don't
+know what to say to you. I can't pretend that I'm in love with you--"
+
+"Of course you're not!" he said, very much embarrassed, "but if there's
+no one else, Sue--"
+
+"There is someone else," said Susan, her eyes suddenly watering.
+"But--but that's not going--right, and it never can! If you'll give me
+a few days to think about it, Kenneth--"
+
+"Sure! Take your time!" he agreed eagerly.
+
+"It would be the very quietest and quickest and simplest wedding that
+ever was, wouldn't it?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, absolutely!" Kenneth seemed immensely relieved. "No riot!"
+
+"And you will let me think it over?" the girl asked, "because--I know
+other girls say this, but it's true!--I never DREAMED--"
+
+"Sure, you think it over. I'll consider you haven't given me the
+faintest idea of how you feel," said Kenneth. They clasped hands for
+good-by. Susan fancied that his smile might have been an invitation for
+a little more affectionate parting, but if it was she ignored it. She
+turned at the door to smile back at him before she went downstairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Susan went straight downstairs, and, with as little self-consciousness
+as if the house had been on fire, tapped at and opened the door of
+Stephen Bocqueraz's study. He half rose, with a smile of surprise and
+pleasure, as she came in, but his own face instantly reflected the
+concern and distress on hers, and he came to her, and took her hand in
+his.
+
+"What is it, Susan?" he asked, sharply.
+
+Susan had closed the door behind her. Now she drew him swiftly to the
+other side of the room, as far from the hall as possible. They stood in
+the window recess, Susan holding tight to the author's hand; Stephen
+eyeing her anxiously and eagerly.
+
+"My very dear little girl, what IS it?"
+
+"Kenneth wants me to marry him," Susan said panting. "He's got to go to
+France, you know. They want me to go with him."
+
+"What?" Bocqueraz asked slowly. He dropped her hands.
+
+"Oh, don't!" Susan said, stung by his look. "Would I have come straight
+to you, if I had agreed?"
+
+"You said 'no'?" he asked quickly.
+
+"I didn't say anything!" she answered, almost with anger. "I don't know
+what to do--or what to say!" she finished forlornly.
+
+"You don't know what to do?" echoed Stephen, in his clear, decisive
+tones. "What do you mean? Of course, it's monstrous! Ella never should
+have permitted it. There's only one thing for you to do?"
+
+"It's not so easy as that," Susan said.
+
+"How do you mean that it's not easy? You can't care for him?"
+
+"Care for him!" Susan's scornful voice was broken by tears. "Of course
+I don't care for him!" she said. "But--can't you see? If I displease
+them, if I refuse to do this, that they've all thought out evidently,
+and planned, I'll have to go back to my aunt's!"
+
+Stephen Bocqueraz, his hands in his coat-pockets, stood silently
+watching her.
+
+"And fancy what it would mean to Auntie," Susan said, beginning to pace
+the floor in agony of spirit. "Comfort for the rest of her life! And
+everything for the girls! I would do anything else in the world," she
+said distressfully, "for one tenth the money, for one twentieth of it!
+And I believe he would be kind to me, and he SAYS he is positively
+going to stop--and it isn't as if you and I--you and-I---" she stopped
+short, childishly.
+
+"Of course you would be extremely rich," Stephen said quietly.
+
+"Oh, rich--rich--rich!" Susan pressed her locked hands to her heart
+with a desperate gesture. "Sometimes I think we are all crazy, to make
+money so important!" she went on passionately. "What good did it ever
+bring anyone! Why aren't we taught when we're little that it doesn't
+count, that it's only a side-issue! I've seen more horrors in the past
+year-and-a-half than I ever did in my life before;--disease and lying
+and cruelty, all covered up with a layer of flowers and rich food and
+handsome presents! Nobody enjoys anything; even wedding-presents are
+only a little more and a little better than the things a girl has had
+all her life; even children don't count; one can't get NEAR them!
+Stephen," Susan laid her hand upon his arm, "I've seen the horribly
+poor side of life,--the poverty that is worse than want, because it's
+hopeless,--and now I see the rich side, and I don't wonder any longer
+that sometimes people take violent means to get away from it!"
+
+She dropped into the chair that faced his, at the desk, and cupped her
+face in her hands, staring gloomily before her. "If any of my own
+people knew that I refused to marry Kenneth Saunders," she went on
+presently, "they would simply think me mad; and perhaps I am! But,
+although he was his very sweetest and nicest this morning,--and I know
+how different he can be!--somehow, when I leaned over him, the little
+odor of ether!--" She broke off short, with a little shudder.
+
+There was a silence. Then Susan looked at her companion uncomfortably.
+
+"Why don't you talk to me?" she asked, with a tremulous smile.
+
+Bocqueraz sat down at the desk opposite her, and stared at her across
+folded arms.
+
+"Nothing to say," he said quietly. But instantly some sudden violent
+passion shook him; he pressed both palms to his temples, and Susan
+could see that the fingers with which he covered his eyes were shaking.
+"My God! What more can I do?" he said aloud, in a low tone. "What more
+can I do? You come to me with this, little girl," he said, gripping her
+hands in his. "You turn to me, as your only friend just now. And I'm
+going to be worthy of your trust in me!"
+
+He got up and walked to the window, and Susan followed him there.
+
+"Sweetheart," he said to her, and in his voice was the great relief
+that follows an ended struggle, "I'm only a man, and I love you! You
+are the dearest and truest and wittiest and best woman I ever knew.
+You've made all life over for me, Susan, and you've made me believe in
+what I always thought was only the fancy of writers and poets;--that a
+man and woman are made for each other by God, and can spend all their
+lives,--yes, and other lives elsewhere--in glorious companionship,
+wanting nothing but each other. I've seen a good many women, but I
+never saw one like you. Will you let me take care of you, dear? Will
+you trust me? You know what I am, Sue; you know what my work stands
+for. I couldn't lie to you. You say you know the two extremes of life,
+dear, but I want to show you a third sort; where money ISN'T paramount,
+where rich people have souls, and where poor people get all the
+happiness that there is in life!"
+
+His arm was about her now; her senses on fire; her eyes brimming.
+
+"But do you love me?" whispered Susan.
+
+"Love you!" His face had grown pale. "To have you ask me that," he said
+under his breath, "is the most heavenly--the most wonderful thing that
+ever came into my life! I'm not worthy of it. But God knows that I will
+take care of you, Sue, and, long before I take you to New York, to my
+own people, these days will be only a troubled dream. You will be my
+wife then--"
+
+The wonderful word brought the happy color to her face.
+
+"I believe you," she said seriously, giving him both her hands, and
+looking bravely into his eyes. "You are the best man I ever met--I
+can't let you go. I believe it would be wrong to let you go." She
+hesitated, groped for words. "You're the only thing in the world that
+seems real to me," Susan said. "I knew that the old days at Auntie's
+were all wrong and twisted somehow, and here--" She indicated the house
+with a shudder. "I feel stifled here!" she said. "But--but if there is
+really some place where people are good and simple, whether they're
+rich or poor, and honest, and hard-working--I want to go there! We'll
+have books and music, and a garden," she went on hurriedly, and he felt
+that the hands in his were hot, "and we'll live so far away from all
+this sort of thing, that we'll forget it and they'll forget us! I would
+rather," Susan's eyes grew wistful, "I would rather have a garden where
+my babies could make mud-pies and play, then be married to Kenneth
+Saunders in the Cathedral with ten brides-maids!"
+
+Perhaps something in the last sentence stirred him to sudden
+compunction.
+
+"You know that it means going away with me, little girl?" he asked.
+
+"No, it doesn't mean that," she answered honestly. "I could go back to
+Auntie, I suppose. I could wait!" "I've been thinking of that," he
+said, seriously. "I want you to listen to me. I have been half planning
+a trip to Japan, Susan, I want to take you with me. We'll loiter
+through the Orient--that makes your eyes dance, my little Irishwoman;
+but wait until you are really there; no books and no pictures do it
+justice! We'll go to India, and you shall see the Taj Mahal--all lovers
+ought to see it!"
+
+"And the great desert--" Susan said dreamily.
+
+"And the great desert. We'll come home by Italy and France, and we'll
+go to London. And while we're there, I will correspond with Lillian, or
+Lillian's lawyer. There will be no reason then why she should hold me."
+
+"You mean," said Susan, scarlet-cheeked, "that--that just my going with
+you will be sufficient cause?"
+
+"It is the only ground on which she would," he assented, watching her,
+"that she could, in fact." Susan stared thoughtfully out of the window.
+"Then," he took up the narrative, "then we stay a few months in London,
+are quietly married there,--or, better yet, sail at once for home, and
+are married in some quiet little Jersey town, say, and then--then I
+bring home the loveliest bride in the world! No one need know that our
+trip around the world was not completely chaperoned. No one will ask
+questions. You shall have your circle--"
+
+"But I thought you were not going to Japan until the serial rights of
+the novel were sold?" Susan temporized.
+
+For answer he took a letter from his pocket, and with her own eyes she
+read an editor's acceptance of the new novel for what seemed to her a
+fabulous sum. No argument could have influenced her as the single
+typewritten sheet did. Why should she not trust this man, whom all the
+world admired and trusted? Heart and mind were reconciled now; Susan's
+eyes, when they were raised to his, were full of shy adoration and
+confidence.
+
+"That's my girl!" he said, very low. He put his arm about her and she
+leaned her head on his shoulder, grateful to him that he said no more
+just now, and did not even claim the kiss of the accepted lover.
+Together they stood looking down at the leafless avenue, for a long
+moment.
+
+"Stephen!" called Ella's voice at the door. Susan's heart lost a beat;
+gave a sick leap of fear; raced madly.
+
+"Just a moment," Bocqueraz said pleasantly. He stepped noiselessly to
+the door of the porch, noiselessly opened it, and Susan slipped through.
+
+"Don't let me interrupt you, but is Susan here?" called Ella.
+
+"Susan? No," Susan herself heard him say, before she went quietly about
+the corner of the house and, letting herself in at the side-door, lost
+the sound of their voices.
+
+She had entered the rear hall, close to a coat-closet; and now,
+following a sudden impulse, she put on a rough little hat and the long
+cloak she often wore for tramps, ran down the drive, crossed behind the
+stables, and was out in the quiet highway, in the space of two or three
+minutes.
+
+Quick-rising clouds were shutting out the sun; a thick fog was creeping
+up from the bay, the sunny bright morning was to be followed by a dark
+and gloomy afternoon. Everything looked dark and gloomy already;
+gardens everywhere were bare; a chilly breeze shook the ivy leaves on
+the convent wall. As Susan passed the big stone gateway, in its
+close-drawn network of bare vines, the Angelus rang suddenly from the
+tower;--three strokes, a pause, three more, a final three,--dying away
+in a silence as deep as that of a void. Susan remembered another
+convent-bell, heard years ago, a delicious assurance of meal-time. A
+sharp little hungry pang assailed her even now at the memory, and with
+the memory came just a fleeting glimpse of a little girl, eager,
+talkative, yellow of braids, leading the chattering rush of girls into
+the yard.
+
+The girls were pouring out of the big convent-doors now, some of them
+noticed the passer-by, eyed her respectfully. She knew that they
+thought of her as a "young lady." She longed for a wistful moment to be
+one of them, to be among them, to have no troubles but the possible
+"penance" after school, no concern but for the contents of her
+lunch-basket!
+
+She presently came to the grave-yard gate, and went in, and sat down on
+a tilted little filigree iron bench, near one of the graves. She could
+look down on the roofs of the village below, and the circle of hills
+beyond, and the marshes, cut by the silver ribbons of streams that went
+down to the fog-veiled bay. Cocks crowed, far and near, and sometimes
+there came to her ears the shouts of invisible children, but she was
+shut out of the world by the soft curtain of the fog.
+
+Not even now did her breath come evenly. Susan began to think that her
+heart would never beat normally again. She tried to collect her
+thoughts, tried to analyze her position, only to find herself studying,
+with amused attention, the interest of a brown bird in the tip of her
+shoe, or reflecting with distaste upon the fact that somehow she must
+go back to the house, and settle the matter of her attitude toward
+Kenneth, once and for all.
+
+Over all her musing poured the warm flood of excitement and delight
+that the thought of Stephen Bocqueraz invariably brought. Her most
+heroic effort at self-blame melted away at the memory of his words.
+What nonsense to treat this affair as a dispassionate statement of the
+facts might represent it! Whatever the facts, he was Stephen Bocqueraz,
+and she Susan Brown, and they understood each other, and were not
+afraid!
+
+Susan smiled as she thought of the romances built upon the histories of
+girls who were "led astray," girls who were "ruined," men whose
+promises of marriage did not hold. It was all such nonsense! It did not
+seem right to her even to think of these words in connection with this
+particular case; she felt as if it convicted her somehow of coarseness.
+
+She abandoned consecutive thought, and fell to happy musing. She shut
+her eyes and dreamed of crowded Oriental streets, of a great desert
+asleep under the moonlight, of New York shining clean and bright, the
+spring sunlight, and people walking the streets under the fresh green
+of tall trees. She had seen it so, in many pictures, and in all her
+dreams, she liked the big city the best. She dreamed of a little
+dining-table in a flying railway-train--
+
+But when Stephen Bocqueraz entered the picture, so near, so kind, so
+big and protecting, Susan thought as if her heart would burst, she
+opened her eyes, the color flooding her face.
+
+The cemetery was empty, dark, silent. The glowing visions faded, and
+Susan made one more conscientious effort to think of herself, what she
+was doing, what she planned to do.
+
+"Suppose I go to Auntie's and simply wait--" she began firmly. The
+thought went no further. Some little memory, drifting across the
+current, drew her after it. A moment later, and the dreams had come
+back in full force.
+
+"Well, anyway, I haven't DONE anything yet and, if I don't want to, I
+can always simply STOP at the last moment," she said to herself, as she
+began to walk home.
+
+At the great gateway of the Wallace home, two riders overtook her;
+Isabel, looking exquisitely pretty in her dashing habit and hat, and
+her big cavalier were galloping home for a late luncheon.
+
+"Come in and have lunch with us!" Isabel called gaily, reining in. But
+Susan shook her head, and refused their urging resolutely. Isabel's
+wedding was but a few weeks off now, and Susan knew that she was very
+busy. But, beside that, her heart was so full of her own trouble, that
+the sight of the other girl, radiant, adored, surrounded by her father
+and mother, her brothers, the evidences of a most unusual popularity,
+would have stabbed Susan to the heart. What had Isabel done, Susan
+asked herself bitterly, to have every path in life made so lovely and
+so straight, while to her, Susan, even the most beautiful thing in the
+world had come in so clouded and distorted a form.
+
+But he loved her! And she loved him, and that was all that mattered,
+after all, she said to herself, as she reentered the house and went
+upstairs.
+
+Ella called her into her bed-room as she passed the door, by humming
+the Wedding-march.
+
+"Tum-TUM-ti-tum! Tum TUM-ti-tum!" sang Ella, and Susan, uneasy but
+smiling, went to the doorway and looked in.
+
+"Come in, Sue," said Ella, pausing in the act of inserting a large bare
+arm into a sleeve almost large enough to accommodate Susan's head.
+"Where've you been all this time? Mama thought that you were upstairs
+with Ken, but the nurse says that he's been asleep for an hour."
+
+"Oh, that's good!" said Susan, trying to speak naturally, but turning
+scarlet. "The more he sleeps the better!"
+
+"I want to tell you something, Susan," said Ella, violently tugging at
+the hooks of her skirt,--"Damn this thing!--I want to tell you
+something, Susan. You're a very lucky girl; don't you fool yourself
+about that! Now it's none of my affair, and I'm not butting in, but, at
+the same time, Ken's health makes this whole matter a little unusual,
+and the fact that, as a family--" Ella picked up a hand-mirror, and
+eyed the fit of her skirt in the glass--"as a family," she resumed,
+after a moment, "we all think it's the wisest thing that Ken could do,
+or that you could do, makes this whole thing very different in the eyes
+of society from what it MIGHT be! I don't say it's a usual marriage; I
+don't say that we'd all feel as favorably toward it as we do if the
+circumstances were different," Ella rambled on, snapping the clasp of a
+long jeweled chain, and pulling it about her neck to a becoming
+position. "But I do say that it's a very exceptional opportunity for a
+girl in your position, and one that any sensible girl would jump at. I
+may be Ken's sister," finished Ella, rapidly assorting rings and
+slipping a selected few upon her fingers, "but I must say that!"
+
+"I know," said Susan, uncomfortably. Ella, surprised perhaps at the
+listless tone, gave her a quick glance.
+
+"Mama," said Miss Saunders, with a little color, "Mama is the very
+mildest of women, but as Mama said, 'I don't see what more any girl
+could wish!' Ken has got the easiest disposition in the world, if he's
+let alone, and, as Hudson said, there's nothing really the matter with
+him, he may live for twenty or thirty years, probably will!"
+
+"Yes, I know," Susan said quickly, wishing that some full and
+intelligent answer would suggest itself to her.
+
+"And finally," Ella said, quite ready to go downstairs for an informal
+game of cards, but not quite willing to leave the matter here.
+"Finally, I must say, Sue, that I think this shilly-shallying is
+very--very unbecoming. I'm not asking to be in your confidence, _I_
+don't care one way or the other, but Mama and the Kid have always been
+awfully kind to you--"
+
+"You've all been angels," Susan was glad to say eagerly.
+
+"Awfully kind of you," Ella pursued, "and all I say is this, make up
+your mind! It's unexpected, and it's sudden, and all that,--very well!
+But you're of age, and you've nobody to please but yourself, and, as I
+say--as I say--while it's nothing to me, I like you and I hate to have
+you make a fool of yourself!"
+
+"Did Ken say anything to you?" Susan asked, with flaming cheeks.
+
+"No, he just said something to Mama about it's being a shame to ask a
+girl your age to marry a man as ill as he. But that's all sheer
+nonsense," Ella said briskly, "and it only goes to show that Ken is a
+good deal more decent than people might think! What earthly objection
+any girl could have I can't imagine myself!" Ella finished pointedly.
+
+"Nobody could!" Susan said loyally.
+
+"Nobody could,--exactly!" Ella said in a satisfied tone. "For a month
+or two," she admitted reasonably, "you may have to watch his health
+pretty closely. I don't deny it. But you'll be abroad, you'll have
+everything in the world that you want. And, as he gets stronger, you
+can go about more and more. And, whatever Hudson says, I think that the
+day will come when he can live where he chooses, and do as he likes,
+just like anyone else! And I think---" Ella, having convinced herself
+entirely unaided by Susan, was now in a mellowed mood. "I think you're
+doing much the wisest thing!" she said. "Go up and see him later,
+there's a nice child! The doctor's coming at three; wait until he goes."
+
+And Ella was gone.
+
+Susan shut the door of Ella's room, and took a deep chair by a window.
+It was perhaps the only place in the house in which no one would think
+of looking for her, and she still felt the need of being alone.
+
+She sat back in the chair, and folded her arms across her chest, and
+fell to deep thinking. She had let Ella leave her under a
+misunderstanding, not because she did not know how to disabuse Ella's
+mind of the idea that she would marry Kenneth, and not because she was
+afraid of the result of such a statement, but because, in her own mind,
+she could not be sure that Kenneth Saunders, with his millions, was not
+her best means of escape from a step even more serious in the eyes of
+the world than this marriage would have been.
+
+If she would be pitied by a few people for marrying Kenneth, she would
+be envied by a thousand. The law, the church, the society in which they
+moved could do nothing but approve. On the other hand, if she went away
+with Stephen Bocqueraz, all the world would rise up to blame her and to
+denounce her. A third course would be to return to her aunt's
+house,--with no money, no work, no prospects of either, and to wait,
+years perhaps----
+
+No, no, she couldn't wait. Rebellion rose in her heart at the mere
+thought. "I love him!" said Susan to herself, thrilled through and
+through by the mere words. What would life be without him now--without
+the tall and splendid figure, the big, clever hands, the rich and
+well-trained voice, without his poetry, his glowing ideals, his
+intimate knowledge of that great world in whose existence she had
+always had a vague and wistful belief?
+
+And how he wanted her---! Susan could feel the nearness of his
+eagerness, without sharing it.
+
+She herself belonged to that very large class of women for whom passion
+is only a rather-to-be-avoided word. She was loving, and generous where
+she loved, but far too ignorant of essential facts regarding herself,
+and the world about her, to either protect herself from being
+misunderstood, or to give even her thoughts free range, had she desired
+to do so. What knowledge she had had come to her,--in Heaven alone
+knows what distorted shape!--from some hazily remembered passage in a
+play, from some joke whose meaning had at first entirely escaped her,
+or from some novel, forbidden by Auntie as "not nice," but read
+nevertheless, and construed into a hundred vague horrors by the
+mystified little brain.
+
+Lately all this mass of curiously mixed information had had new light
+thrown upon it because of the sudden personal element that entered into
+Susan's view. Love became the great Adventure, marriage was no longer
+merely a question of gifts and new clothes and a honeymoon trip, and a
+dear little newly furnished establishment. Nothing sordid, nothing
+sensual, touched Susan's dreams even now, but she began to think of the
+constant companionship, the intimacy of married life, the miracle of
+motherhood, the courage of the woman who can put her hand in any man's
+hand, and walk with him out from the happy, sheltered pale of girlhood,
+and into the big world!
+
+She was interrupted in her dreaming by Ella's maid, who put her head
+into the room with an apologetic:
+
+"Miss Saunders says she's sorry, Miss Brown, but if Mrs. Richardson
+isn't here, and will you come down to fill the second table?"
+
+Downstairs went Susan, to be hastily pressed into service.
+
+"Heaven bless you, Sue," said Ella, the cards already being dealt.
+"Kate Richardson simply hasn't come, and if you'll fill in until she
+does----You say hearts?" Ella interrupted herself to say to her nearest
+neighbor. "Well, I can't double that. I lead and you're down, Elsa--"
+
+To Susan it seemed a little flat to sit here seriously watching the
+fall of the cards, deeply concerned in the doubled spade or the dummy
+for no trump. When she was dummy she sat watching the room dreamily,
+her thoughts drifting idly to and fro. It was all curiously
+unreal,--Stephen gone to a club dinner in the city, Kenneth lying
+upstairs, she, sitting here, playing cards! When she thought of Kenneth
+a little flutter of excitement seized her; with Stephen's memory a warm
+flood of unreasoning happiness engulfed her.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" said Susan, suddenly aroused.
+
+"Your lead, Miss Brown---"
+
+"Mine? Oh, surely. You made it---?"
+
+"I bridged it. Mrs. Chauncey made it diamonds."
+
+"Oh, surely!" Susan led at random. "Oh, I didn't mean to lead that!"
+she exclaimed. She attempted to play the hand, and the following hand,
+with all her power, and presently found herself the dummy again.
+
+Again serious thought pressed in upon her from all sides. She could not
+long delay the necessity of letting Kenneth, and Kenneth's family, know
+that she would not do her share in their most recent arrangement for
+his comfort. And after that---? Susan had no doubt that it would be the
+beginning of the end of her stay here. Not that it would be directly
+given as the reason for her going; they had their own ways of bringing
+about what suited them, these people.
+
+But what of Stephen? And again warmth and confidence and joy rose in
+her heart. How big and true and direct he was, how far from everything
+that flourished in this warm and perfumed atmosphere! "It must be right
+to trust him," Susan said to herself, and it seemed to her that even to
+trust him supremely, and to brave the storm that would follow, would be
+a step in the right direction. Out of the unnatural atmosphere of this
+house, gone forever from the cold and repressing poverty of her aunt's,
+she would be out in the open air, free to breathe and think and love
+and work----
+
+"Oh, that nine is the best, Miss Brown! You trumped it---"
+
+Susan brought her attention to the game again. When the cards were
+finally laid down, tea followed, and Susan must pour it. After that she
+ran up to her room to find Emily there, dressing for dinner.
+
+"Oh, Sue, there you are! Listen, Mama wants you to go in and see her a
+minute before dinner," Emily said.
+
+"I am dead!" Susan began flinging off her things, loosened the masses
+of her hair, and shook it about her, tore off her tight slippers and
+flung them away.
+
+"Should think you would be," Emily said sympathetically. She was
+evidently ready for confidences, but Susan evaded them. At least she
+owed no explanation to Emily!
+
+"El wants to put you up for the club," called Emily above the rush of
+hot water into the bathtub.
+
+"Why should she?" Susan called back smiling, but uneasy, but Emily
+evidently did not hear.
+
+"Don't forget to look in on Mama," she said again, when Susan was
+dressed. Susan nodded.
+
+"But, Lord, this is a terrible place to try to THINK in!" the girl
+thought, knocking dutifully on Mrs. Saunders' door.
+
+The old lady, in a luxurious dressing-gown, was lying on the wide couch
+that Miss Baker had drawn up before the fire.
+
+"There's the girl I thought had forgotten all about me!" said Mrs.
+Saunders in tremulous, smiling reproach. Susan went over and, although
+uncomfortably conscious of the daughterliness of the act, knelt down
+beside her, and squeezed the little shell-like hand. Miss Baker smiled
+from the other side of the room where she was folding up the day-covers
+of the bed with windmill sweeps of her arms.
+
+"Well, now, I didn't want to keep you from your dinner," murmured the
+old lady. "I just wanted to give you a little kiss, and tell you that
+I've been thinking about you!"
+
+Susan gave the nurse, who was barely out of hearing, a troubled look.
+If Miss Baker had not been there, she would have had the courage to
+tell Kenneth's mother the truth. As it was, Mrs. Saunders
+misinterpreted her glance.
+
+"We won't say ONE WORD!" she whispered with childish pleasure in the
+secret. The little claw-like hands drew Susan down for a kiss; "Now,
+you and Doctor Cooper shall just have some little talks about my boy,
+and in a year he'll be just as well as ever!" whispered the foolish,
+fond little mother, "and we'll go into town next week and buy all sorts
+of pretty things, shall we? And we'll forget all about this bad
+sickness! Now, run along, lovey, it's late!"
+
+Susan, profoundly apprehensive, went slowly out of the room. She turned
+to the stairway that led to the upper hall to hear Ella's voice from
+her own room:
+
+"Sue! Going up to see Ken?"
+
+"Yes," Susan said without turning back.
+
+"That's a good child," Ella called gaily. "The kid's gone down to
+dinner, but don't hurry. I'm dining out."
+
+"I'll be down directly," Susan said, going on. She crossed the dimly
+lighted, fragrant upper hall, and knocked on Kenneth's door.
+
+It was instantly opened by the gracious and gray-haired Miss Trumbull,
+the night nurse. Kenneth, in a gorgeous embroidered Mandarin coat, was
+sitting up and enjoying his supper.
+
+"Come in, woman," he said, smiling composedly. Susan felt warmed and
+heartened by his manner, and came to take her chair by the bed. Miss
+Trumbull disappeared, and the two had the big, quiet room to themselves.
+
+"Well," said Kenneth, laying down a wish-bone, and giving her a shrewd
+smile. "You can't do it, and you're afraid to say so, is that it?"
+
+A millstone seemed lifted from Susan's heart. She smiled, and the tears
+rushed into her eyes.
+
+"I--honestly, I'd rather not," she said eagerly.
+
+"That other fellow, eh?" he added, glancing at her before he attacked
+another bone with knife and fork.
+
+Taken unawares, she could not answer. The color rushed into her face.
+She dropped her eyes.
+
+"Peter Coleman, isn't it?" Kenneth pursued.
+
+"Peter Coleman!" Susan might never have heard the name before, so
+unaffected was her astonishment.
+
+"Well, isn't it?"
+
+Susan felt in her heart the first stirring of a genuine affection for
+Kenneth Saunders. He seemed so bright, so well to-night, he was so kind
+and brotherly.
+
+"It's Stephen," said she, moved by a sudden impulse to confide. He eyed
+her in blank astonishment, and Susan saw in it a sort of respect. But
+he only answered by a long whistle.
+
+"Gosh, that is tough," he said, after a few moments of silence. "That
+is the limit, you poor kid! Of course his wife is particularly well and
+husky?"
+
+"Particularly!" echoed Susan with a shaky laugh. For the first time in
+their lives she and Kenneth talked together with entire naturalness and
+with pleasure. Susan's heart felt lighter than it had for many a day.
+
+"Stephen can't shake his wife, I suppose?" he asked presently.
+
+"Not--not according to the New York law, I believe," Susan said.
+
+"Well--that's a case where virtue is its own reward,--NOT," said
+Kenneth. "And he--he cares, does he?" he asked, with shy interest.
+
+A rush of burning color, and the light in Susan's eyes, were her only
+answer.
+
+"Shucks, what a rotten shame!" Kenneth said regretfully. "So he goes
+away to Japan, does he? Lord, what a shame---"
+
+Susan really thought he was thinking more of her heart-affair than his
+own, when she finally left him. Kenneth was heartily interested in the
+ill-starred romance. He bade her good-night with real affection and
+sympathy.
+
+Susan stood bewildered for a moment, outside the door, listening to the
+subdued murmurs that came up from the house, blinking, after the bright
+glow of Kenneth's lamps, in the darkness of the hall. Presently she
+crossed to a wide window that faced across the village, toward the
+hills. It was closed; the heavy glass gave back only a dim reflection
+of herself, bare-armed, bare-throated, with spangles winking dully on
+her scarf.
+
+She opened the window and the sweet cold night air came in with a rush,
+and touched her hot cheeks and aching head with an infinite coolness.
+Susan knelt down and drank deep of it, raised her eyes to the silent
+circle of the hills, the starry arch of the sky.
+
+There was no moon, but Tamalpais' great shoulder was dimly outlined
+against darker blackness, and moving, twinkling dots showed where
+ferryboats were crossing and recrossing the distant bay. San
+Francisco's lights glittered like a chain of gems, but San Rafael,
+except for a half-concealed household light, here and there under the
+trees, was in darkness. Faint echoes of dance-music came from the
+hotel, the insistent, throbbing bass of a waltz; Susan shuddered at the
+thought of it; the crowd and the heat, the laughing and flirting, the
+eating and drinking. Her eyes searched the blackness between the
+stars;--oh, to plunge into those infinite deeps, to breathe the
+untainted air of those limitless great spaces!
+
+Garden odors, wet and sweet, came up to her; she got the exquisite
+breath of drenched violets, of pinetrees. Susan thought of her mother's
+little garden, years ago, of the sunken stone ale-bottles that framed
+the beds, of alyssum and marigolds and wall-flowers and hollyhocks
+growing all together. She remembered her little self, teasing for
+heart-shaped cookies, or gravely attentive to the bargain driven
+between her mother and the old Chinese vegetable-vendor, with his
+loaded, swinging baskets. It went dimly through Susan's mind that she
+had grown too far away from the good warm earth. It was years since she
+had had the smell of it and the touch of it, or had lain down in its
+long grasses. At her aunt's house, in the office, and here, it seemed
+so far away! Susan had a hazy vision of some sensible linen gardening
+dresses--of herself out in the spring sunshine, digging, watering,
+getting happier and dirtier and hotter every minute----
+
+Somebody was playing Walther's song from "Die Meistersinger" far
+downstairs, and the plaintive passionate notes drew Susan as if they
+had been the cry of her name. She went down to find Emily and Peter
+Coleman laughing and flirting over a box of chocolates, at the
+inglenook seat in the hall, and Stephen Bocqueraz alone in the
+drawing-room, at the piano. He stopped playing as she came in, and they
+walked to the fire and took opposite chairs beside the still brightly
+burning logs.
+
+"Anything new?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, lots!" Susan said wearily. "I've seen Kenneth. But they don't know
+that I can't--can't do it. And they're rather taking it for granted
+that I am going to!"
+
+"Going to marry him!" he asked aghast. "Surely you haven't equivocated
+about it, Susan?" he asked sharply.
+
+"Not with him!" she answered in quick self-defense, with a thrill for
+the authoritative tone. "I went up there, tired as I am, and told him
+the absolute truth," said Susan. "But they may not know it!"
+
+"I confess I don't see why," Bocqueraz said, in disapproval. "It would
+seem to me simple enough to---"
+
+"Oh, perhaps it does seem simple, to you!" Susan defended herself
+wearily, "but it isn't so easy! Ella is dreadful when she's angry,--I
+don't know quite what I will do, if this ends my being here---"
+
+"Why should it?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Because it's that sort of a position. I'm here as long as I'm wanted,"
+Susan said bitterly, "and when I'm not, there'll be a hundred ways to
+end it all. Ella will resent this, and Mrs. Saunders will resent it,
+and even if I was legally entitled to stay, it wouldn't be very
+pleasant under those circumstances!" She rested her head against the
+curved back of her chair, and he saw tears slip between her lashes.
+
+"Why, my darling! My dearest little girl, you mustn't cry!" he said, in
+distress. "Come to the window and let's get a breath of fresh air!"
+
+He crossed to a French window, and held back the heavy curtain to let
+her step out to the wide side porch. Susan's hand held his tightly in
+the darkness, and he knew by the sound of her breathing that she was
+crying.
+
+"I don't know what made me go to pieces this way," she said, after a
+moment. "But it has been such a day!" And she composedly dried her
+eyes, and restored his handkerchief to him.
+
+"You poor little girl!" he said tenderly. "---Is it going to be too
+cold out here for you, Sue?"
+
+"No-o!" said Susan, smiling, "it's heavenly!"
+
+"Then we'll talk. And we must make the most of this too, for they may
+not give us another chance! Cheer up, sweetheart, it's only a short
+time now! As you say, they're going to resent the fact that my girl
+doesn't jump at the chance to ally herself with all this splendor, and
+to-morrow may change things all about for every one of us. Now, Sue, I
+told Ella to-day that I sail for Japan on Sunday---"
+
+"Oh, my God!" Susan said, taken entirely unawares.
+
+He was near enough to put his arm about her shoulders.
+
+"My little girl," he said, gravely, "did you think that I was going to
+leave you behind?"
+
+"I couldn't bear it," Susan said simply.
+
+"You could bear it better than I could," he assured her. "But we'll
+never be separated again in this life, I hope! And every hour of my
+life I'm going to spend in trying to show you what it means to me to
+have you--with your beauty and your wit and your charm--trust me to
+straighten out all this tangle! You know you are the most remarkable
+woman I ever knew, Susan," he interrupted himself to say, seriously.
+"Oh, you can shake your head, but wait until other people agree with
+me! Wait until you catch the faintest glimpse of what our life is going
+to be! And how you'll love the sea! And that reminds me," he was all
+business-like again, "the Nippon Maru sails on Sunday. You and I sail
+with her."
+
+He paused, and in the gradually brightening gloom Susan's eyes met his,
+but she did not speak nor stir.
+
+"It's the ONLY way, dear!" he said urgently. "You see that? I can't
+leave you here and things cannot go on this way. It will be hard for a
+little while, but we'll make it a wonderful year, Susan, and when it's
+over, I'll take my wife home with me to New York."
+
+"It seems incredible," said Susan slowly, "that it is ever RIGHT to do
+a thing like this. You--you think I'm a strong woman, Stephen," she
+went on, groping for the right words, "but I'm not--in this way. I
+think I COULD be strong," Susan's eyes were wistful, "I could be strong
+if my husband were a pioneer, or if I had an invalid husband, or if I
+had to--to work at anything," she elucidated. "I could even keep a
+store or plow, or go out and shoot game! But my life hasn't run that
+way, I can't seem to find what I want to do, I'm always bound by
+conditions I didn't make---"
+
+"Exactly, dear! And now you are going to make conditions for yourself,"
+he added eagerly, as she hesitated. Susan sighed.
+
+"Not so soon as Sunday," she said, after a pause.
+
+"Sunday too soon? Very well, little girl. If you want to go Sunday,
+we'll go. And, if you say not, I'll await your plans," he agreed.
+
+"But, Stephen--what about tickets?"
+
+"The tickets are upstairs," he told her. "I reserved the prettiest
+suite on board for Miss Susan Bocqueraz, my niece, who is going with me
+to meet her father in India, and a near-by stateroom for myself. But,
+of course, I'll forfeit these reservations rather than hurry or
+distress you now. When I saw the big liner, Susan, the cleanness and
+brightness and airiness of it all; and when I thought of the
+deliciousness of getting away from the streets and smells and sounds of
+the city, out on the great Pacific, I thought I would be mad to prolong
+this existence here an unnecessary day. But that's for you to say."
+
+"I see," she said dreamily. And through her veins, like a soothing
+draught, ran the premonition of surrender. Delicious to let herself go,
+to trust him, to get away from all the familiar sights and faces! She
+turned in the darkness and laid both hands on his shoulders. "I'll be
+ready on Sunday," said she gravely. "I suppose, as a younger girl, I
+would have thought myself mad to think of this. But I have been wrong
+about so many of those old ideas; I don't feel sure of anything any
+more. Life in this house isn't right, Stephen, and certainly the old
+life at Auntie's,--all debts and pretense and shiftlessness,--isn't
+right either."
+
+"You'll not be sorry, dear," he told her, holding her hands.
+
+An instant later they were warned, by a sudden flood of light on the
+porch, that Mr. Coleman had come to the open French window.
+
+"Come in, you idiots!" said Peter. "We're hunting for something to eat!"
+
+"You come out, it's a heavenly night!" Stephen said readily.
+
+"Nothing stirring," Mr. Coleman said, sauntering toward them
+nevertheless. "Don't you believe a word she says, Mr. Bocqueraz, she's
+an absolute liar!"
+
+"Peter, go back, we're talking books," said Susan, unruffled.
+
+"Well, I read a book once, Susan," he assured her proudly. "Say, let's
+go over to the hotel and have a dance, what?"
+
+"Madman!" the writer said, in indulgent amusement, as Peter went back.
+"We'll be in directly, Coleman!" he called. Then he said quickly, and
+in a low tone to Susan. "Shall you stay here until Sunday, or would you
+rather be with your own people?"
+
+"It just depends upon what Ella and Emily do," Susan answered. "Kenneth
+may not tell them. If he does, it might be better to go. This is
+Tuesday. Of course I don't know, Stephen, they may be very generous
+about it, they may make it as pleasant as they can. But certainly Emily
+isn't sorry to find some reason for terminating my stay here.
+We've--perhaps it's my fault, but we've been rather grating on each
+other lately. So I think it's pretty safe to say that I will go home on
+Wednesday or Thursday."
+
+"Good," he said. "I can see you there!"
+
+"Oh, will you?" said Susan, pleased.
+
+"Oh, will I! And another thing, dear, you'll need some things. A big
+coat for the steamer, and some light gowns--but we can get those. We'll
+do some shopping in Paris---"
+
+He had touched a wrong chord, and Susan winced.
+
+"I have some money," she assured him, hastily, "and I'd rather--rather
+get those things myself!"
+
+"You shall do as you like," he said gravely. Silently and thoughtfully
+they went back to the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Susan lay awake almost all night, quiet and wide-eyed in the darkness,
+thinking, thinking, thinking. She arraigned herself mentally before a
+jury of her peers, and pleaded her own case. She did not think of
+Stephen Bocqueraz to-night,--thought of him indeed did not lead to
+rational argument!--but she confined her random reflections to the
+conduct of other women. There was a moral code of course, there were
+Commandments. But by whose decree might some of these be set aside, and
+ignored, while others must still be observed in the letter and the
+spirit? Susan knew that Ella would discharge a maid for stealing
+perfumery or butter, and within the hour be entertaining a group of her
+friends with the famous story of her having taken paste jewels abroad,
+to be replaced in London by real stones and brought triumphantly home
+under the very eyes of the custom-house inspectors. She had heard Mrs.
+Porter Pitts, whose second marriage followed her divorce by only a few
+hours, addressing her respectful classes in the Correction Home for
+Wayward Girls. She had heard Mrs. Leonard Orvis congratulated upon her
+lineage and family connections on the very same occasion when Mrs.
+Orvis had entertained a group of intimates with a history of her
+successful plan for keeping the Orvis nursery empty.
+
+It was to the Ellas, the Pitts, the Orvises, that Susan addressed her
+arguments. They had broken laws. She was only temporarily following
+their example. She heard the clock strike four, before she went to
+sleep, and was awakened by Emily at nine o'clock the next morning.
+
+It was a rainy, gusty morning, with showers slapping against the
+windows. The air in the house was too warm, radiators were purring
+everywhere, logs crackled in the fireplaces of the dining-room and
+hall. Susan, looking into the smaller library, saw Ella in a wadded
+silk robe, comfortably ensconced beside the fire, with the newspapers.
+
+"Good-morning, Sue," said Ella politely. Susan's heart sank. "Come in,"
+said Ella. "Had your breakfast?"
+
+"Not yet," said Susan, coming in.
+
+"Well, I just want to speak to you a moment," said Ella, and Susan
+knew, from the tone, that she was in for an unpleasant half-hour.
+Emily, following Susan, entered the library, too, and seated herself on
+the window-seat. Susan did not sit down.
+
+"I've got something on my mind, Susan," Ella said, frowning as she
+tossed aside her papers, "and,--you know me. I'm like all the Roberts,
+when I want to say a thing, I say it!" Ella eyed her groomed fingers a
+moment, bit at one before she went on. "Now, there's only one important
+person in this house, Sue, as I always tell everyone, and that's Mamma!
+'Em and I don't matter,' I say, 'but Mamma's old, and she hasn't very
+much longer to live, and she DOES count!' I--you may not always see
+it," Ella went on with dignity, "but I ALWAYS arrange my engagements so
+that Mamma shall be the first consideration, she likes to have me go
+places, and I like to go, but many and many a night when you and Em
+think that I am out somewhere I'm in there with Mamma---"
+
+Susan knew that they were in the realm of pure fiction now, but she
+could only listen. She glanced at Emily, but Emily only looked
+impressed and edified.
+
+"So--" Ella, unchallenged, went on. "So when I see anyone inclined to
+be rude to Mamma, Sue---"
+
+"As you certainly were---" Emily began.
+
+"Keep out of this, Baby," Ella said. Susan asked in astonishment;
+
+"But, good gracious, Ella! When was I ever rude to your mother?"
+
+"Just--one--moment, Sue," Ella said, politely declining to be hurried.
+"Well! So when I realize that you deceived Mamma, Sue, it--I've always
+liked you, and I've always said that there was a great deal of
+allowance to be made for you," Ella interrupted herself to say kindly,
+"but, you know, that is the one thing I can't forgive!--In just a
+moment---" she added, as Susan was about to speak again. "Well, about a
+week ago, as you know, Ken's doctor said that he must positively
+travel. Mamma isn't well enough to go, the kid can't go, and I can't
+get away just now, even," Ella was deriving some enjoyment from her new
+role of protectress, "even if I would leave Mamma. What Ken suggested,
+you know, seemed a suitable enough arrangement at the time, although I
+think, and I know Mamma thinks, that it was just one of the poor boy's
+ideas which might have worked very well, and might not! One never can
+tell about such things. Be that as it may, however---"
+
+"Oh, Ella, what on earth are you GETTING at!" asked Susan, in sudden
+impatience.
+
+"Really, Sue!" Emily said, shocked at this irreverence, but Ella,
+flushing a little, proceeded with a little more directness.
+
+"I'm getting at THIS--please shut up, Baby! You gave Mamma to
+understand that it was all right between you and Ken, and Mamma told me
+so before I went to the Grahams' dinner, and I gave Eva Graham a pretty
+strong hint! Now Ken tells Mamma that that isn't so at all,--I must say
+Ken, for a sick boy, acted very well! And really, Sue, to have you
+willing to add anything to Mamma's natural distress and worry now
+it,--well, I don't like it, and I say so frankly!"
+
+Susan, angered past the power of reasonable speech, remained silent for
+half-a-minute, holding the back of a chair with both hands, and looking
+gravely into Ella's face.
+
+"Is that all?" she asked mildly.
+
+"Except that I'm surprised at you," Ella said a little nettled.
+
+"I'm not going to answer you," Susan said, "because you know very well
+that I have always loved your Mother, and that I deceived nobody! And
+you can't make me think SHE has anything to do with this! It isn't my
+fault that I don't want to marry your brother, and Emily knows how
+utterly unfair this is!"
+
+"Really, I don't know anything about it!" Emily said airily.
+
+"Oh, very well," Susan said, at white heat. She turned and went quietly
+from the room.
+
+She went upstairs, and sat down crosswise on a small chair, and stared
+gloomily out of the window. She hated this house, she said to herself,
+and everyone in it! A maid, sympathetically fluttering about, asked
+Miss Brown if she would like her breakfast brought up.
+
+"Oh, I would!" said Susan gratefully. Lizzie presently brought in a
+tray, and arranged an appetizing little meal.
+
+"They're something awful, that's what I say," said Lizzie presently in
+a cautious undertone. "But I've been here twelve years, and I say
+there's worse places! Miss Ella may be a little raspy now, Miss Brown,
+but don't you take it to heart!" Susan, the better for hot coffee and
+human sympathy, laughed out in cheerful revulsion of feeling.
+
+"Things are all mixed up, Lizzie, but it's not my fault," she said
+gaily.
+
+"Well, it don't matter," said the literal Lizzie, referring to the
+tray. "I pile 'em up anyhow to carry 'em downstairs!"
+
+Breakfast over, Susan still loitered in her own apartments. She wanted
+to see Stephen, but not enough to risk encountering someone else in the
+halls. At about eleven o'clock, Ella knocked at the door, and came in.
+
+"I'm in a horrible rush," said Ella, sitting down on the bed and
+interesting herself immediately in a silk workbag of Emily's that hung
+there. "I only want to say this, Sue," she began. "It has nothing to do
+with what we were talking of this morning, but--I've just been
+discussing it with Mamma!--but we all feel, and I'm sure you do, too,
+that this is an upset sort of time. Emily, now," said Ella, reaching
+her sister's name with obvious relief, "Em's not at all well, and she
+feels that she needs a nurse,--I'm going to try to get that nurse Betty
+Brock had,--Em may have to go back to the hospital, in fact, and Mamma
+is so nervous about Ken, and I---" Ella cleared her throat, "I feel
+this way about it," she said. "When you came here it was just an
+experiment, wasn't it?"
+
+"Certainly," Susan agreed, very red in the face.
+
+"Certainly, and a most successful one, too," Ella conceded relievedly.
+"But, of course, if Mamma takes Baby abroad in the spring,--you see how
+it is? And of course, even in case of a change now, we'd want you to
+take your time. Or,--I'll tell you, suppose you go home for a visit
+with your aunt, now. Monday is Christmas, and then, after New Year's,
+we can write about it, if you haven't found anything else you want to
+do, and I'll let you know---"
+
+"I understand perfectly," Susan said quietly, but with a betraying
+color. "Certainly, I think that would be wisest."
+
+"Well, I think so," said Ella with a long breath. "Now, don't be in a
+hurry, even if Miss Polk comes, because you could sleep upstairs---"
+
+"Oh, I'd rather go at once-to-day," Susan said.
+
+"Indeed not, in this rain," Ella said with her pleasant, half-humorous
+air of concern. "Mamma and Baby would think I'd scared you away.
+Tomorrow, Sue, if you're in such a hurry. But this afternoon some
+people are coming in to meet Stephen--he's really going on Sunday, he
+says,--stay and pour!"
+
+It would have been a satisfaction to Susan's pride to refuse. She knew
+that Ella really needed her this afternoon, and would have liked to
+punish that lady to that extent. But hurry was undignified and
+cowardly, and Stephen's name was a charm, and so it happened that Susan
+found herself in the drawing-room at five o'clock, in the center of a
+chattering group, and stirred, as she was always stirred, by Stephen's
+effect on the people he met. He found time to say to her only a few
+words, "You are more adorable than ever!" but they kept Susan's heart
+singing all evening, and she and Emily spent the hours after dinner in
+great harmony; greater indeed than they had enjoyed for months.
+
+The next day she said her good-byes, agitated beyond the capacity to
+feel any regret, for Stephen Bocqueraz had casually announced his
+intention to take the same train that she did for the city. Ella gave
+her her check; not for the sixty dollars that would have been Susan's
+had she remained to finish out her month, but for ten dollars less.
+
+Emily chattered of Miss Polk, "she seemed to think I was so funny and
+so odd, when we met her at Betty's," said Emily, "isn't she crazy? Do
+YOU think I'm funny and odd, Sue?"
+
+Stephen put her in a carriage at the ferry and they went shopping
+together. He told her that he wanted to get some things "for a small
+friend," and Susan, radiant in the joy of being with him, in the
+delicious bright winter sunshine, could not stay his hand when he
+bought the "small friend" a delightful big rough coat, which Susan
+obligingly tried on, and a green and blue plaid, for steamer use, a
+trunk, and a parasol "because it looked so pretty and silly," and in
+Shreve's, as they loitered about, a silver scissors and a gold thimble,
+a silver stamp-box and a traveler's inkwell, a little silver watch no
+larger than a twenty-five-cent piece, a little crystal clock, and,
+finally, a ring, with three emeralds set straight across it, the
+loveliest great bright stones that Susan had ever seen, "green for an
+Irish gir-rl," said Stephen.
+
+Then they went to tea, and Susan laughed at him because he remembered
+that Orange Pekoe was her greatest weakness, and he laughed at Susan
+because she was so often distracted from what she was saying by the
+flash of her new ring.
+
+"What makes my girl suddenly look so sober?"
+
+Susan smiled, colored.
+
+"I was thinking of what people will say."
+
+"I think you over-estimate the interest that the world is going to take
+in our plans, Susan," he said, gravely, after a thoughtful moment. "We
+take our place in New York, in a year or two, as married people. 'Mrs.
+Bocqueraz'"--the title thrilled Susan unexpectedly,--"'Mrs. Bocqueraz
+is his second wife,' people will say. 'They met while they were both
+traveling about the world, I believe.' And that's the end of it!"
+
+"But the newspapers may get it," Susan said, fearfully.
+
+"I don't see how," he reassured her. "Ella naturally can't give it to
+them, for she will think you are at your aunt's. Your aunt---"
+
+"Oh, I shall write the truth to Auntie," Susan said, soberly. "Write
+her from Honolulu, probably. And wild horses wouldn't get it out of
+HER. But if the slightest thing should go wrong---"
+
+"Nothing will, dear. We'll drift about the world awhile, and the first
+thing you know you'll find yourself married hard and tight, and being
+invited to dinners and lunches and things in New York!"
+
+Susan's dimples came into view.
+
+"I forget what a very big person you are," she smiled. "I begin to
+think you can do anything you want to do!"
+
+She had a reminder of his greatness even before they left the tea-room,
+for while they were walking up the wide passage toward the arcade, a
+young woman, an older woman, and a middle-aged man, suddenly addressed
+the writer.
+
+"Oh, do forgive me!" said the young woman, "but AREN'T you Stephen
+Graham Bocqueraz? We've been watching you--I just couldn't HELP--"
+
+"My daughter is a great admirer---" the man began, but the elder woman
+interrupted him.
+
+"We're ALL great admirers of your books, Mr. Bocqueraz," said she, "but
+it was Helen, my daughter here!--who was sure she recognized you. We
+went to your lecture at our club, in Los Angeles---"
+
+Stephen shook hands, smiled and was very gracious, and Susan, shyly
+smiling, too, felt her heart swell with pride. When they went on
+together the little episode had subtly changed her attitude toward him;
+Susan was back for the moment in her old mood, wondering gratefully
+what the great man saw in HER to attract him!
+
+A familiar chord was touched when an hour later, upon getting out of a
+carriage at her aunt's door, she found the right of way disputed by a
+garbage cart, and Mary Lou, clad in a wrapper, holding the driver in
+spirited conversation through a crack in the door. Susan promptly
+settled a small bill, kissed Mary Lou, and went upstairs in harmonious
+and happy conversation.
+
+"I was just taking a bath!" said Mary Lou, indignantly. Mary Lou never
+took baths easily, or as a matter of course. She always made an event
+of them, choosing an inconvenient hour, assembling soap, clothing and
+towels with maddening deliberation, running about in slippered feet for
+a full hour before she locked herself into, and everybody else out of,
+the bathroom. An hour later she would emerge from the hot and
+steam-clouded apartment, to spend another hour in her room in leisurely
+dressing. She was at this latter stage now, and regaled Susan with all
+the family news, as she ran her hand into stocking after stocking in
+search of a whole heel, and forced her silver cuff-links into the
+starched cuffs of her shirtwaist.
+
+Ferd Eastman's wife had succumbed, some weeks before, to a second
+paralytic stroke, and Mary Lou wept unaffectedly at the thought of poor
+Ferd's grief. She said she couldn't help hoping that some sweet and
+lovely girl,--"Ferd knows so many!" said Lou, sighing,--would fill the
+empty place. Susan, with an unfavorable recollection of Ferd's fussy,
+important manner and red face, said nothing. Georgie, Mary Lou
+reported, was a very sick woman, in Ma's and Mary Lou's opinion. Ma had
+asked the young O'Connors to her home for Christmas dinner; "perhaps
+they expected us to ask the old lady," said Mary Lou, resentfully,
+"anyway, they aren't coming!" Georgie's baby, it appeared, was an
+angel, but Joe disciplined the poor little thing until it would make
+anyone's heart sick.
+
+Of Alfie the report was equally discouraging: "Alfie's wife is
+perfectly awful," his sister said, "and their friends, Sue,--barbers
+and butchers! However, Ma's asked 'em here for Christmas dinner, and
+then you'll see them!" Virginia was still at the institution, but of
+late some hope of eventual restoration of her sight had been given her.
+"It would break your heart to see her in that place, it seems like a
+poorhouse!" said Mary Lou, with trembling lips, "but Jinny's an angel.
+She gets the children about her, and tells them stories; they say she's
+wonderful with them!"
+
+There was really good news of the Lord sisters, Susan was rejoiced to
+hear. They had finally paid for their lot in Piedmont Hills, and a new
+trolley-car line, passing within one block of it, had trebled its
+value. This was Lydia's chance to sell, in Mary Lou's opinion, but
+Lydia intended instead to mortgage the now valuable property, and build
+a little two-family house upon it with the money thus raised. She had
+passed the school-examinations, and had applied for a Berkeley school.
+"But better than all," Mary Lou announced, "that great German muscle
+doctor has been twice to see Mary,--isn't that amazing? And not a cent
+charged---"
+
+"Oh, God bless him!" said Susan, her eyes flashing through sudden mist.
+"And will she be cured?"
+
+"Not ever to really be like other people, Sue. But he told her, last
+time, that by the time that Piedmont garden was ready for her, she'd be
+ready to go out and sit in it every day! Lydia fainted away when he
+said it,--yes, indeed she did!"
+
+"Well, that's the best news I've heard for many a day!" Susan rejoiced.
+She could not have explained why, but some queer little reasoning
+quality in her brain made her own happiness seem the surer when she
+heard of the happiness of other people.
+
+The old odors in the halls, the old curtains and chairs and dishes, the
+old, old conversation; Mrs. Parker reading a clean, neatly lined,
+temperate little letter from Loretta, signed "Sister Mary Gregory";
+Major Watts anxious to explain to Susan just the method of building an
+army bridge that he had so successfully introduced during the Civil
+War,--"S'ee, 'Who is this boy, Cutter?' 'Why, sir, I don't know,' says
+Captain Cutter, 'but he says his name is Watts!' 'Watts?' says the
+General, 'Well,' s'ee, 'If I had a few more of your kind, Watts, we'd
+get the Yanks on the run, and we'd keep 'em on the run.'"
+
+Lydia Lord came down to get Mary's dinner, and again Susan helped the
+watery vegetable into a pyramid of saucers, and passed the green glass
+dish of pickles, and the pink china sugar-bowl. But she was happy
+to-night, and it seemed good to be home, where she could be her natural
+self, and put her elbows on the table, and be listened to and laughed
+at, instead of playing a role.
+
+"Gosh, we need you in this family, Susie!" said William Oliver, won
+from fatigue and depression to a sudden appreciation of her gaiety.
+
+"Do you, Willie darling?"
+
+"Don't you call me Willie!" he looked up to say scowlingly.
+
+"Well, don't you call me Susie, then!" retorted Susan. Mrs. Lancaster
+patted her hand, and said affectionately, "Don't it seem good to have
+the children scolding away at each other again!"
+
+Susan and William had one of their long talks, after dinner, while they
+cracked and ate pine-nuts, and while Mary Lou, at the other end of the
+dining-room table, painstakingly wrote a letter to a friend of her
+girlhood. Billy was frankly afraid that his men were reaching the point
+when a strike would be the natural step, and as president of their
+new-formed union, and spokesman for them whenever the powers had to be
+approached, he was anxious to delay extreme measures as long as he
+could. Susan was inclined to regard the troubles of the workingman as
+very largely of his own making. "You'll simply lose your job," said
+Susan, "and that'll be the end of it. If you made friends with the
+Carpenters, on the other hand, you'd be fixed for life. And the
+Carpenters are perfectly lovely people. Mrs. Carpenter is on the
+hospital board, and a great friend of Ella's. And she says that it's
+ridiculous to think of paying those men better wages when their homes
+are so dirty and shiftless, and they spend their money as they do! You
+know very well there will always be rich people and poor people, and
+that if all the money in the world was divided on Monday morning---"
+
+"Don't get that old chestnut off!" William entreated.
+
+"Well, I don't care!" Susan said, a little more warmly for the
+interruption. "Why don't they keep their houses clean, and bring their
+kids up decently, instead of giving them dancing lessons and white
+stockings!"
+
+"Because they've had no decent training themselves, Sue---"
+
+"Oh, decent training! What about the schools?"
+
+"Schools don't teach anything! But if they had fair play, and decent
+hours, and time to go home and play with the kids, and do a little
+gardening, they'd learn fast enough!"
+
+"The poor you have always with you," said Mary Lou, reverently. Susan
+laughed outright, and went around the table to kiss her cousin.
+
+"You're an old darling, Mary Lou!" said she. Mary Lou accepted the
+tribute as just.
+
+"No, but I don't think we ought to forget the IMMENSE good that rich
+people do, Billy," she said mildly. "Mrs. Holly's daughters gave a
+Christmas-tree party for eighty children yesterday, and the Saturday
+Morning Club will have a tree for two hundred on the twenty-eighth!"
+
+"Holly made his money by running about a hundred little druggists out
+of the business," said Billy, darkly.
+
+"Bought and paid for their businesses, you mean," Susan amended sharply.
+
+"Yes, paid about two years' profits," Billy agreed, "and would have run
+them out of business if they hadn't sold. If you call that honest!"
+
+"It's legally honest," Susan said lazily, shuffling a pack for
+solitaire. "It's no worse than a thousand other things that people do!"
+
+"No, I agree with you there!" Billy said heartily, and he smiled as if
+he had had the best of the argument.
+
+Susan followed her game for awhile in silence. Her thoughts were glad
+to escape to more absorbing topics, she reviewed the happy afternoon,
+and thrilled to a hundred little memories. The quiet, stupid evening
+carried her back, in spirit, to the Susan of a few years ago, the
+shabby little ill-dressed clerk of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter, who had
+been such a limited and suppressed little person. The Susan of to-day
+was an erect, well-corseted, well-manicured woman of the world; a
+person of noticeable nicety of speech, accustomed to move in the very
+highest society. No, she could never come back to this, to the old
+shiftless, penniless ways. Any alternative rather!
+
+"And, besides, I haven't really done anything yet," Susan said to
+herself, uneasily, when she was brushing her hair that night, and Mary
+Lou was congratulating her upon her improved appearance and manner.
+
+On Saturday she introduced her delighted aunt and cousin to Mr.
+Bocqueraz, who came to take her for a little stroll.
+
+"I've always thought you were quite an unusual girl, Sue," said her
+aunt later in the afternoon, "and I do think it's a real compliment for
+a man like that to talk to a girl like you! I shouldn't know what to
+say to him, myself, and I was real proud of the way you spoke up; so
+easy and yet so ladylike!"
+
+Susan gave her aunt only an ecstatic kiss for answer. Bread was needed
+for dinner, and she flashed out to the bakery for it, and came flying
+back, the bread, wrapped in paper and tied with pink string, under her
+arm. She proposed a stroll along Filmore Street to Mary Lou, in the
+evening, and they wrapped up for their walk under the clear stars.
+There was a holiday tang to the very air; even the sound of a premature
+horn, now and then; the shops were full of shoppers.
+
+Mary Lou had some cards to buy, at five cents apiece, or two for five
+cents, and they joined the gently pushing groups in the little
+stationery stores. Insignificant little shoppers were busily making
+selections from the open trays of cards; school-teachers,
+stenographers, bookkeepers and clerks kept up a constant little murmur
+among themselves.
+
+"How much are these? Thank you!" "She says these are five, Lizzie; do
+you like them better than the little holly books?" "I'll take these
+two, please, and will you give me two envelopes?--Wait just a moment, I
+didn't see these!" "This one was in the ten-cent box, but it's marked
+five, and that lady says that there were some just like it for five. If
+it's five, I want it!" "Aren't these cunnin', Lou?" "Yes, I noticed
+those, did you see these, darling?" "I want this one--I want these,
+please,--will you give me this one?"
+
+"Are you going to be open at all to-morrow?" Mary Lou asked, unwilling
+to be hurried into a rash choice. "Isn't this little one with a baby's
+face sweet?" said a tall, gaunt woman, gently, to Susan.
+
+"Darling!" said Susan.
+
+"But I want it for an unmarried lady, who isn't very fond of children,"
+said the woman delicately. "So perhaps I had better take these two
+funny little pussies in a hat!"
+
+They went out into the cold street again, and into a toy-shop where a
+lamb was to be selected for Georgie's baby. And here was a roughly
+dressed young man holding up a three-year-old boy to see the elephants
+and horses. Little Three, a noisy little fellow, with cold red little
+hands, and a worn, soiled plush coat, selected a particularly charming
+shaggy horse, and shouted with joy as his father gave it to him.
+
+"Do you like that, son? Well, I guess you'll have to have it; there's
+nothing too good for you!" said the father, and he signaled a
+saleswoman. The girl looked blankly at the change in her hand.
+
+"That's two dollars, sir," she said, pleasantly, displaying the tag.
+
+"What?" the man stammered, turning red. "Why--why, sure--that's right!
+But I thought---" he appealed to Susan. "Don't that look like twenty
+cents?" he asked.
+
+Mary Lou tugged discreetly at Susan's arm, but Susan would not desert
+the baby in the plush coat.
+
+"It IS!" she agreed warmly.
+
+"Oh, no, ma'am! These are the best German toys," said the salesman
+firmly.
+
+"Well, then, I guess---" the man tried gently to disengage the horse
+from the jealous grip of its owner, "I guess we'd better leave this
+horse here for some other little feller, Georgie," said he, "and we'll
+go see Santa Claus."
+
+"I thess want my horse that Dad GAVE me!" said Georgie, happily.
+
+"Shall I ask Santa Claus to send it?" asked the saleswoman, tactfully.
+
+"No-o-o!" said Georgie, uneasily. "Doncher letter have it, Dad!"
+
+"Give the lady the horse, old man," said the father, "and we'll go find
+something pretty for Mamma and the baby!" The little fellow's lips
+quivered, but even at three some of the lessons of poverty had been
+learned. He surrendered the horse obediently, but Susan saw the little
+rough head go down tight against the man's collar, and saw the clutch
+of the grimy little hand.
+
+Two minutes later she ran after them, and found them seated upon the
+lowest step of an out-of-the-way stairway; the haggard, worried young
+father vainly attempting to console the sobbing mite upon his knee.
+
+"Here, darling," said Susan. And what no words could do, the touch of
+the rough-coated pony did for her; up came the little face, radiant
+through tears; Georgie clasped his horse again.
+
+"No, ma'am, you mustn't--I thank you very kindly, ma'am, but----" was
+all that Susan heard before she ran away.
+
+She would do things like that every day of her life, she thought, lying
+awake in the darkness that night. Wasn't it better to do that sort of
+thing with money than to be a Mary Lou, say, without? She was going to
+take a reckless and unwise step now. Admitted. But it would be the only
+one. And after busy and blameless years everyone must come to see that
+it had been for the best.
+
+Every detail was arranged now. She and Stephen had visited the big
+liner that afternoon; Susan had had her first intoxicating glimpse of
+the joy of sea-travel, had peeped into the lovely little cabin that was
+to be her own, had been respectfully treated by the steward as the
+coming occupant of that cabin. She had seen her new plaid folded on a
+couch, her new trunk in place, a great jar of lovely freesia lilies
+already perfuming the fresh orderliness of the place.
+
+Nothing to do now but to go down to the boat in the morning. Stephen
+had both tickets in his pocket-book. A careful scrutiny of the
+first-cabin list had assured Susan that no acquaintances of hers were
+sailing. If, in the leave-taking crowd, she met someone that she knew,
+what more natural than that Miss Brown had been delegated by the
+Saunders family to say good-bye to their charming cousin? Friends had
+promised to see Stephen off, but, if Ella appeared at all, it would be
+but for a moment, and Susan could easily avoid her. She was not afraid
+of any mishap.
+
+But three days of the pure, simple old atmosphere had somewhat affected
+Susan, in spite of herself. She could much more easily have gone away
+with Stephen Bocqueraz without this interval. Life in the Saunders home
+stimulated whatever she had of recklessness and independence, frivolity
+and irreverence of law. She would be admired for this step by the
+people she had left; she could not think without a heartache of her
+aunt's shame and distress.
+
+However there seemed nothing to do now but to go to sleep. Susan's last
+thought was that she had not taken the step YET,--in so much, at least,
+she was different from the girls who moved upon blind and passionate
+impulses. She could withdraw even now.
+
+The morning broke like many another morning; sunshine and fog battling
+out-of-doors, laziness and lack of system making it generally
+characteristic of a Sunday morning within. Susan went to Church at
+seven o'clock, because Mary Lou seemed to expect it of her, and because
+it seemed a good thing to do, and was loitering over her breakfast at
+half-past-eight, when Mrs. Lancaster came downstairs.
+
+"Any plan for to-day, Sue?" asked her aunt. Susan jumped nervously.
+
+"Goodness, Auntie! I didn't see you there! Yes, you know I have to go
+and see Mr. Bocqueraz off at eleven."
+
+"Oh, so you do! But you won't go back with the others, dear? Tell them
+we want you for Christmas!"
+
+"With the others?"
+
+"Miss Ella and Emily," her aunt supplied, mildly surprised.
+
+"Oh! Oh, yes! Yes, I suppose so. I don't know," Susan said in great
+confusion.
+
+"You'll probably see Lydia Lord there," pursued Mrs. Lancaster,
+presently. "She's seeing Mrs. Lawrence's cousins off."
+
+"On the Nippon Maru?" Susan asked nervously.
+
+"How you do remember names, Sue! Yes, Lydia's going down."
+
+"I'd go with you, Sue, if it wasn't for those turkeys to stuff," said
+Mary Lou. "I do love a big ship!"
+
+"Oh, I wish you could!" Susan said.
+
+She went upstairs with a fast-beating heart. Her heart was throbbing so
+violently, indeed, that, like any near loud noise, it made thought very
+difficult. Mary Lou came in upon her packing her suitcase.
+
+"I suppose they may want you to go right back," said Mary Lou
+regretfully, in reference to the Saunders, "but why don't you leave
+that here in case they don't?"
+
+"Oh, I'd rather take it," said Susan.
+
+She kissed her cousin good-bye, gave her aunt a particularly fervent
+hug, and went out into the doubtful morning. The fog-horn was booming
+on the bay, and when Susan joined the little stream of persons filing
+toward the dock of the great Nippon Maru, fog was already shutting out
+all the world, and the eaves of the pier dripped with mist. Between the
+slow-moving motor-cars and trucks on the dock, well-dressed men and
+women were picking their way through the mud.
+
+Susan went unchallenged up the gang-plank, with girls in big coats,
+carrying candy-boxes and violets, men with cameras, elderly persons who
+watched their steps nervously. The big ship was filled with chattering
+groups, young people raced through cabins and passageways, eager to
+investigate.
+
+Stevedores were slinging trunks and boxes on board; everywhere were
+stir and shouting and movement. Children shrieked and romped in the
+fitful sunlight; there were tears and farewells, on all sides;
+postal-writers were already busy about the tables in the writing-room,
+stewards were captured on their swift comings and goings, and
+interrogated and importuned. Fog lay heavy and silent over San
+Francisco; and the horn still boomed down the bay.
+
+Susan, standing at the rail looking gravely on at the vivid and
+exciting picture, felt an uneasy and chilling little thought clutch at
+her heart. She had always said that she could withdraw, at this
+particular minute she could withdraw. But in a few moments more the
+dock would be moving steadily away from her; the clock in the
+ferry-tower, with gulls wheeling about it, the ferry-boats churning
+long wakes in the smooth surface of the bay, the stir of little craft
+about the piers, the screaming of a hundred whistles, in a hundred
+keys, would all be gone. Alcatraz would be passed, Black Point and the
+Golden Gate; they would be out beyond the rolling head-waters of the
+harbor. No withdrawing then.
+
+Her attention was attracted by the sudden appearance of guards at the
+gang-plank, no more visitors would be allowed on board. Susan smiled at
+the helpless disgust of some late-comers, who must send their candy and
+books up by the steward. Twenty-five minutes of twelve, said the ferry
+clock.
+
+"Are you going as far as Japan, my dear?" asked a gentle little lady at
+Susan's shoulder.
+
+"Yes, we're going even further!" said friendly Susan.
+
+"I'm going all alone," said the little lady, "and old as I am, I so
+dread it! I tell Captain Wolseley---"
+
+"I'm making my first trip, too," said Susan, "so we'll stand by each
+other!"
+
+A touch on her arm made her turn suddenly about; her heart thundering.
+But it was only Lydia Lord.
+
+"Isn't this thrilling, Sue?" asked Lydia, excited and nervous. "What
+WOULDN'T you give to be going? Did you go down and see the cabins;
+aren't they dear? Have you found the Saunders party?"
+
+"Are the Saunders here?" asked Susan.
+
+"Miss Ella was, I know. But she's probably gone now. I didn't see the
+younger sister. I must get back to the Jeromes," said Lydia; "they
+began to take pictures, and I'd thought I run away for a little peep at
+everything, all to myself! They say that we shore people will have to
+leave the ship at quarter of twelve."
+
+She fluttered away, and a second later Susan found her hand covered by
+the big glove of Stephen Bocqueraz.
+
+"Here you are, Susan," he said, with business-like satisfaction. "I was
+kept by Ella and some others, but they've gone now. Everything seems to
+be quite all right."
+
+Susan turned a rather white and strained face toward him, but even now
+his bracing bigness and coolness were acting upon her as a tonic.
+
+"We're at the Captain's table," he told her, "which you'll appreciate
+if you're not ill. If you are ill, you've got a splendid
+stewardess,--Mrs. O'Connor. She happens to be an old acquaintance of
+mine; she used to be on a Cunarder, and she's very much interested in
+my niece, and will look out for you very well." He looked down upon the
+crowded piers. "Wonderful sight, isn't it?" he asked. Susan leaned
+beside him at the rail, her color was coming back, but she saw nothing
+and heard nothing of what went on about her.
+
+"What's he doing that for?" she asked suddenly. For a blue-clad coolie
+was working his way through the crowded docks, banging violently on a
+gong. The sound disturbed Susan's overstrained nerves.
+
+"I don't know," said Stephen. "Lunch perhaps. Would you like to have a
+look downstairs before we go to lunch?"
+
+"That's a warning for visitors to go ashore," volunteered a
+bright-faced girl near them, who was leaning on the rail, staring down
+at the pier. "But they'll give a second warning," she added, "for we're
+going to be a few minutes late getting away. Aren't you glad you don't
+have to go?" she asked Susan gaily.
+
+"Rather!" said Susan huskily.
+
+Visitors were beginning now to go reluctantly down the gang-plank, and
+mass themselves on the deck, staring up at the big liner, their faces
+showing the strained bright smile that becomes so fixed during the long
+slow process of casting off. Handkerchiefs began to wave, and to wipe
+wet eyes; empty last promises were exchanged between decks and pier. A
+woman near Susan began to cry,--a homely little woman, but the big
+handsome man who kissed her was crying, too.
+
+Suddenly the city whistles, that blow even on Sunday in San Francisco,
+shrilled twelve. Susan thought of the old lunch-room at Hunter, Baxter
+& Hunter's, of Thorny and the stewed tomatoes, and felt the bitter
+tears rise in her throat.
+
+Various passengers now began to turn their interest to the life of the
+ship. There was talk of luncheon, of steamer chairs, of asking the
+stewardess for jars to hold flowers. Susan had drawn back from the
+rail, no one on the ship knew her, but somebody on the pier might.
+
+"Now let us go find Mrs. O'Connor," Stephen said, in a matter-of-fact
+tone. "Then you can take off your hat and freshen up a bit, and we can
+look over the ship." He led her cleverly through the now wildly
+churning crowds, into the comparative quiet of the saloon.
+
+Here they found Mrs. O'Connor, surrounded by an anxious group of
+travelers. Stephen put Susan into her charge, and the two women studied
+each other with interest.
+
+Susan saw a big-boned, gray-haired, capable-looking Irishwoman, in a
+dress of dark-blue duck, with a white collar and white cuffs, heard a
+warming, big voice, and caught a ready and infectious smile. In all the
+surrounding confusion Mrs. O'Connor was calm and alert; so normal in
+manner and speech indeed that merely watching her had the effect of
+suddenly cooling Susan's blood, of reducing her whirling thoughts to
+something like their old, sane basis. Travel was nothing to Mrs.
+O'Connor; farewells were the chief of her diet; and her manner with
+Stephen Bocqueraz was crisp and quiet. She fixed upon him shrewd, wise
+eyes that had seen some curious things in their day, but she gave Susan
+a motherly smile.
+
+"This is my niece, Mrs. O'Connor," said Stephen, introducing Susan.
+"She's never made the trip before, and I want you to help me turn her
+over to her Daddy in Manila, in first-class shape."
+
+"I will that," agreed the stewardess, heartily.
+
+"Well, then I'll have a look at my own diggings, and Mrs. O'Connor will
+take you off to yours. I'll be waiting for you in the library, Sue,"
+Stephen said, walking off, and Susan followed Mrs. O'Connor to her own
+cabin.
+
+"The very best on the ship, as you might know Mr. Bocqueraz would get
+for anyone belonging to him," said the stewardess, shaking pillows and
+straightening curtains with great satisfaction, when they reached the
+luxurious little suite. "He's your father's brother, he tells me. Was
+that it?"
+
+She was only making talk, with the kindliest motives, for a nervous
+passenger, but the blood rushed into Susan's face. Somehow it cut her
+to the heart to have to remember her father just at this instant; to
+make him, however distantly, a party to this troubled affair.
+
+"And you've lost your dear mother," Mrs. O'Connor said,
+misunderstanding the girl's evident distress. "Well, my dear, the trip
+will do you a world of good, and you're blessed in this--you've a good
+father left, and an uncle that would lay down and die for you. I leave
+my own two girls, every time I go," she pursued, comfortably. "Angela's
+married,--she has a baby, poor child, and she's not very strong,--and
+Regina is still in boarding-school, in San Rafael. It's hard to leave
+them---"
+
+Simple, kindly talk, such as Susan had heard from her babyhood. And the
+homely honest face was not strange, nor the blue, faded eyes, with
+their heartening assurance of good-fellowship.
+
+But suddenly it seemed to Susan that, with a hideous roaring and
+rocking, the world was crashing to pieces about her. Her soul sickened
+and shrank within her. She knew nothing of this good woman, who was
+straightening blankets and talking--talking--talking, three feet from
+her, but she felt she could not bear--she could not BEAR this kindly
+trust and sympathy--she could not bear the fear that some day she would
+be known to this woman for what she was!
+
+A gulf yawned before her. She had not foreseen this. She had known that
+there were women in the world, plenty of them, Stephen said, who would
+understand what she was doing and like her in spite of it, even admire
+her.
+
+But what these blue eyes would look when they knew it, she very well
+knew. Whatever glories and heights awaited Susan Brown in the days to
+come, she could never talk as an equal with Ann O'Connor or her like
+again, never exchange homely, happy details of babies and
+boarding-school and mothers and fathers again!
+
+Plenty of women in the world who would understand and excuse her,--but
+Susan had a mad desire to get among these sheltering women somehow,
+never to come in contact with these stupid, narrow-visioned others---!
+
+"Leo--that's my son-in-law, is an angel to her," Mrs. O'Connor was
+saying, "and it's not everyone would be, as you know, for poor Angela
+was sick all the time before Raymond came, and she's hardly able to
+stir, even yet. But Leo gets his own breakfasts----"
+
+Susan was at the washstand busy with brush and comb. She paused.
+
+Life stretched before her vision a darkened and wearisome place. She
+had a sudden picture of Mrs. O'Connor's daughter,--of Georgie--of all
+helpless women upon whom physical weakness lays its heavy load. Pale,
+dispirited women, hanging over the little cradles, starting up at
+little cries in the night, comforted by the boyish, sympathetic
+husbands, and murmuring tired thanks and appreciations----
+
+She, Susan, would be old some day, might be sick and weak any day;
+there might be a suffering child. What then? What consolation for a
+woman who set her feet deliberately in the path of wrong? Not even a
+right to the consolation these others had, to the strong arm and the
+heartening voice at the day's end. And the child--what could she teach
+a child of its mother?
+
+"But I might not have one," said Susan to herself. And instantly tears
+of self-pity bowed her head over the little towel-rack, and turned her
+heart to water. "I love children so--and I couldn't have children!"
+came the agonized thought, and she wept bitterly, pressing her eyes
+against the smooth folds of the towel.
+
+"Come now, come now," said Ann O'Connor, sympathetic but not surprised.
+"You mustn't feel that way. Dry your eyes, dear, and come up on deck.
+We'll be casting off any moment now. Think of meeting your good
+father---"
+
+"Oh, Daddy!---" The words were a long wail. Then Susan straightened up
+resolutely.
+
+"I mustn't do this," she said sensibly. "I must find Mr. Bocqueraz."
+
+Suddenly it seemed to her that she must have just the sight and touch
+of Stephen or she would lose all self-control. "How do I get to the
+library?" she asked, white lipped and breathing hard.
+
+Sympathetic Mrs. O'Connor willingly directed her, and Susan went
+quickly and unseeingly through the unfamiliar passageway and up the
+curving staircase. Stephen--said her thoughts over and over again--just
+to get to him,--to put herself in his charge, to awaken from the
+nightmare of her own fears. Stephen would understand--would make
+everything right. People noticed her, for even in that self-absorbed
+crowd, she was a curious figure,--a tall, breathless girl, whose eyes
+burned feverishly blue in her white face. But Susan saw nobody, noticed
+nothing. Obstructions she put gently aside; voices and laughter she did
+not hear; and when suddenly a hand was laid upon her arm, she jumped in
+nervous fright.
+
+It was Lydia Lord who clutched her eagerly by the wrist, homely,
+excited, shabbily dressed Lydia who clung to her, beaming with relief
+and satisfaction.
+
+"Oh, Sue,--what a piece of good fortune to find you!" gasped the little
+governess. "Oh, my dear, I've twisted my ankle on one of those awful
+deck stairways!" she panted. "I wonder a dozen people a day don't get
+killed on them! And, Sue, did you know, the second gong has been rung?
+I didn't hear it, but they say it has! We haven't a second to
+lose--seems so dreadful--and everyone so polite and yet in such a
+hurry--this way, dear, he says this way--My! but that is painful!"
+
+Dashed in an instant from absolute security to this terrible danger of
+discovery, Susan experienced something like vertigo. Her senses seemed
+actually to fail her. She could do only the obvious thing. Dazed, she
+gave Lydia her arm, and automatically guided the older woman toward the
+upper deck. But that this astounding enterprise of hers should be
+thwarted by Lydia Lord! Not an earthquake, not a convulsed conspiracy
+of earth and sea, but this little teacher, in her faded little best,
+with her sprained ankle!
+
+That Lydia Lord, smiling in awkward deprecation, and giving apologetic
+glances to interested bystanders who watched their limping progress,
+should consider herself the central interest of this terrible
+hour!---It was one more utterly irreconcilable note in this time of
+utter confusion and bewilderment. Terror of discovery, mingled in the
+mad whirl of Susan's thoughts with schemes of escape; and under all ran
+the agonizing pressure for time--minutes were precious now--every
+second was priceless!
+
+Lydia Lord was the least manageable woman in the world. Susan had
+chafed often enough at her blunt, stupid obstinacy to be sure of that!
+If she once suspected what was Susan's business on the Nippon
+Maru--less, if she so much as suspected that Susan was keeping
+something, anything, from her, she would not be daunted by a hundred
+captains, by a thousand onlookers. She would have the truth, and until
+she got it, Susan would not be allowed out of her arm's reach. Lydia
+would cheerfully be bullied by the ship's authorities, laughed at,
+insulted, even arrested in happy martyrdom, if it once entered into her
+head that Mrs. Lancaster's niece, the bright-headed little charge of
+the whole boarding-house, was facing what Miss Lord, in virtuous
+ignorance, was satisfied to term "worse than death." Lydia would be
+loyal to Mrs. Lancaster, and true to the simple rules of morality by
+which she had been guided every moment of her life. She had sometimes
+had occasion to discipline Susan in Susan's naughty and fascinating
+childhood; she would unsparingly discipline Susan now.
+
+Mary Lou might have been evaded; the Saunders could easily have been
+silenced, as ladies are easily silenced; but Lydia was neither as
+unsuspecting as Mary Lou, nor was she a lady. Had Susan been rude and
+cold to this humble friend throughout her childhood, she might have
+successfully defied and escaped Lydia now. But Susan had always been
+gracious and sympathetic with Lydia, interested in her problems, polite
+and sweet and kind. She could not change her manner now; as easily
+change her eyes or hair as to say, "I'm sorry you've hurt your foot,
+you'll have to excuse me,--I'm busy!" Lydia would have stopped short in
+horrified amazement, and, when Susan sailed on the Nippon Maru, Lydia
+would have sailed, too.
+
+Guided by various voices, breathless and unseeing, they limped on. Past
+staring men and women, through white-painted narrow doorways, in a
+general hush of shocked doubt, they made their way.
+
+"We aren't going to make it!" gasped Lydia. Susan felt a sick throb at
+her heart. What then?
+
+"Oh, yes we are!" she murmured as they came out on the deck near the
+gang-plank. Embarrassment overwhelmed her; everyone was watching
+them--suppose Stephen was watching--suppose he called her----
+
+Susan's one prayer now was that she and Lydia might reach the
+gang-plank, and cross it, and be lost from sight among the crowd on the
+dock. If there was a hitch now!----
+
+"The shore gong rang ten minutes ago, ladies!" said a petty officer at
+the gang-plank severely.
+
+"Thank God we're in time!" Lydia answered amiably, with her honest,
+homely smile.
+
+"You've got to hurry; we're waiting!" added the man less disapprovingly.
+
+Susan, desperate now, was only praying for oblivion. That Lydia and
+Stephen might not meet--that she might be spared only that--that
+somehow they might escape this hideous publicity--this noise and blare,
+was all she asked. She did not dare raise her eyes; her face burned.
+
+"She's hurt her foot!" said pitying voices, as the two women went
+slowly down the slanting bridge to the dock.
+
+Down, down, down they went! And every step carried Susan nearer to the
+world of her childhood, with its rigid conventions, its distrust of
+herself, its timidity of officials, and in crowded places! The
+influence of the Saunders' arrogance and pride failed her suddenly; the
+memory of Stephen's bracing belief in the power to make anything
+possible forsook her. She was only little Susan Brown, not rich and not
+bold and not independent, unequal to the pressure of circumstances.
+
+She tried, with desperate effort, to rally her courage. Men were
+waiting even now to take up the gang-plank when she and Lydia left it;
+in another second it would be too late.
+
+"Is either of you ladies sailing?" asked the guard at its foot.
+
+"No, indeed!" said Lydia, cheerfully. Susan's eye met his
+miserably--but she could not speak.
+
+They went slowly along the pier, Susan watching Lydia's steps, and
+watching nothing else. Her face burned, her heart pounded, her hands
+and feet were icy cold. She merely wished to get away from this scene
+without a disgraceful exposition of some sort, to creep somewhere into
+darkness, and to die. She answered Lydia's cheerful comments briefly;
+with a dry throat.
+
+Suddenly beside one of the steamer's great red stacks there leaped a
+plume of white steam, and the prolonged deep blast of her whistle
+drowned all other sounds.
+
+"There she goes!" said Lydia pausing.
+
+She turned to watch the Nippon Maru move against the pier like a moving
+wall, swing free, push slowly out into the bay. Susan did not look.
+
+"It makes me sick," she said, when Lydia, astonished, noticed she was
+not watching.
+
+"Why, I should think it did!" Lydia exclaimed, for Susan's face was
+ashen, and she was biting her lips hard to keep back the deadly rush of
+faintness that threatened to engulf her.
+
+"I'm afraid--air--Lyd---" whispered Susan. Lydia forgot her own injured
+ankle.
+
+"Here, sit on these boxes, darling," she said. "Well, you poor little
+girl you! There, that's better. Don't worry about anyone watching you,
+just sit there and rest as long as you feel like it! I guess you need
+your lunch!"
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+Service
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+December was unusually cold and bleak, that year, and after the
+holidays came six long weeks during which there were but a few glimpses
+of watery sunlight, between long intervals of fogs and rains. Day after
+day broke dark and stormy, day after day the office-going crowds
+jostled each other under wet umbrellas, or, shivering in wet shoes and
+damp outer garments, packed the street-cars.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster's home, like all its type, had no furnace, and moisture
+and cold seemed to penetrate it, and linger therein. Wind howled past
+the dark windows, rain dripped from the cornice above the front door,
+the acrid odor of drying woolens and wet rubber coats permeated the
+halls. Mrs. Lancaster said she never had known of so much sickness
+everywhere, and sighed over the long list of unknown dead in the
+newspaper every morning.
+
+"And I shouldn't be one bit surprised if you were sickening for
+something, Susan," her aunt said, in a worried way, now and then. But
+Susan, stubbornly shaking her head, fighting against tears, always
+answered with ill-concealed impatience:
+
+"Oh, PLEASE don't, auntie! I'M all right!"
+
+No such welcome event as a sudden and violent and fatal illness was
+likely to come her way, she used bitterly to reflect. She was here, at
+home again, in the old atmosphere of shabbiness and poverty; nothing
+was changed, except that now her youth was gone, and her heart broken,
+and her life wrecked beyond all repairing. Of the great world toward
+which she had sent so many hopeful and wistful and fascinated glances,
+a few years ago, she now stood in fear. It was a cruel world, cold and
+big and selfish; it had torn her heart out of her, and cast her aside
+like a dry husk. She could not keep too far enough away from it to
+satisfy herself in future, she only prayed for obscurity and solitude
+for the rest of her difficult life.
+
+She had been helped through the first dreadful days that had followed
+the sailing of the Nippon Maru, by a terrified instinct of
+self-protection. Having failed so signally in this venture, her only
+possible course was concealment. Mary Lord did not guess--Mrs. Saunders
+did not guess--Auntie did not guess! Susan spent every waking hour, and
+many of the hours when she was supposedly asleep, in agonized search
+for some unguarded move by which she might be betrayed.
+
+A week went by, two weeks--life resumed its old aspect outwardly. No
+newspaper had any sensational revelation to make in connection with the
+news of the Nippon Maru's peaceful arrival in Honolulu harbor, and the
+reception given there for the eminent New York novelist. Nobody spoke
+to Susan of Bocqueraz; her heart began to resume its natural beat. And
+with ebbing terror it was as if the full misery of her heart was
+revealed.
+
+She had severed her connections with the Saunders family; she told her
+aunt quietly, and steeled herself for the scene that followed, which
+was more painful even than she had feared. Mrs. Lancaster felt
+indignantly that an injustice had been done Susan, was not at all sure
+that she herself would not call upon Miss Saunders and demand a full
+explanation. Susan combated this idea with surprising energy; she was
+very silent and unresponsive in these days, but at this suggestion she
+became suddenly her old vigorous self.
+
+"I don't understand you lately, Sue," her aunt said disapprovingly,
+after this outburst. "You don't act like yourself at all! Sometimes you
+almost make auntie think that you've got something on your mind."
+
+Something on her mind! Susan could have given a mad laugh at the
+suggestion. Madness seemed very near sometimes, between the anguished
+aching of her heart, and the chaos of shame and grief and impotent
+rebellion that possessed her soul. She was sickened with the constant
+violence of her emotions, whether anger or shame shook her, or whether
+she gave way to desperate longings for the sound of Stephen Bocqueraz's
+voice, and the touch of his hand again, she was equally miserable.
+Perhaps the need of him brought the keenest pang, but, after all, love
+with Susan was still the unknown quantity, she was too closely
+concerned with actual discomforts to be able to afford the necessary
+hours and leisure for brooding over a disappointment in love. That pain
+came only at intervals,--a voice, overheard in the street, would make
+her feel cold and weak with sudden memory, a poem or a bit of music
+that recalled Stephen Bocqueraz would ring her heart with sorrow, or,
+worst of all, some reminder of the great city where he made his home,
+and the lives that gifted and successful and charming men and women
+lived there, would scar across the dull wretchedness of Susan's
+thoughts with a touch of flame. But the steady misery of everyday had
+nothing to do with these, and, if less sharp, was still terrible to
+bear.
+
+Desperately, with deadly determination, she began to plan an escape.
+She told herself that she would not go away until she was sure that
+Stephen was not coming back for her, sure that he was not willing to
+accept the situation as she had arranged it. If he rebelled,--if he
+came back for her,--if his devotion were unaffected by what had passed,
+then she must meet that situation as it presented itself.
+
+But almost from the very first she knew that he would not come back
+and, as the days went by, and not even a letter came, however much her
+pride suffered, she could not tell herself that she was very much
+surprised. In her most sanguine moments she could dream that he had had
+news in Honolulu,--his wife was dead, he had hurried home, he would
+presently come back to San Francisco, and claim Susan's promise. But
+for the most part she did not deceive herself; her friendship with
+Stephen Bocqueraz was over. It had gone out of her life as suddenly as
+it had come, and with it, Susan told herself, had gone so much more!
+Her hope of winning a place for herself, her claim on the life she
+loved, her confidence that, as she was different, so would her life be
+different from the other lives she knew. All, all was gone. She was as
+helpless and as impotent as Mary Lou!
+
+She had her moods when planning vague enterprises in New York or Boston
+satisfied her, and other moods when she determined to change her name,
+and join a theatrical troupe. From these some slight accident might
+dash her to the bitterest depths of despondency. She would have a
+sudden, sick memory of Stephen's clear voice, of the touch of his hand,
+she would be back at the Browning dance again, or sitting between him
+and Billy at that memorable first supper----
+
+"Oh, my God, what shall I do?" she would whisper, dizzy with pain,
+stopping short over her sewing, or standing still in the street, when
+the blinding rush of recollection came. And many a night she lay
+wakeful beside Mary Lou, her hands locked tight over her fast-beating
+heart, her lips framing again the hopeless, desperate little prayer:
+"Oh, God, what shall I do!"
+
+No avenue of thought led to comfort, there was no comfort anywhere.
+Susan grew sick of her own thoughts. Chief among them was the
+conviction of failure, she had tried to be good and failed. She had
+consented to be what was not good, and failed there, too.
+
+Shame rose like a rising tide. She could not stem it; she could not
+even recall the arguments that had influenced her so readily a few
+months ago, much less be consoled by them. Over and over again the
+horrifying fact sprang from her lulled reveries: she was bad--she was,
+at heart at least, a bad woman--she was that terrible, half-understood
+thing of which all good women stood in virtuous fear.
+
+Susan rallied to the charge as well as she could. She had not really
+sinned in actual fact, after all, and one person only knew that she had
+meant to do so. She had been blinded and confused by her experience in
+a world where every commandment was lightly broken, where all sacred
+matters were regarded as jokes.
+
+But the stain remained, rose fresh and dreadful through her covering
+excuses. Consciousness of it influenced every moment of her day and
+kept her wakeful far into the night. Susan's rare laughter was cut
+short by it, her brave resolves were felled by it, her ambition sank
+defeated before the memory of her utter, pitiable weakness. A hundred
+times a day she writhed with the same repulsion and shock that she
+might have felt had her offense been a well-concealed murder.
+
+She had immediately written Stephen Bocqueraz a shy, reserved little
+letter, in the steamship company's care at Yokohama. But it would be
+two months before an answer to that might be expected, and meanwhile
+there was great financial distress at the boarding-house. Susan could
+not witness it without at least an effort to help.
+
+Finally she wrote Ella a gay, unconcerned note, veiling with nonsense
+her willingness to resume the old relationship. The answer cut her to
+the quick. Ella had dashed off only a few lines of crisp news; Mary
+Peacock was with them now, they were all crazy about her. If Susan
+wanted a position why didn't she apply to Madame Vera? Ella had heard
+her say that she needed girls. And she was sincerely Susan's, Ella
+Cornwallis Saunders.
+
+Madame Vera was a milliner; the most popular of her day. Susan's cheeks
+flamed as she read the little note. But, meditating drearily, it
+occurred to her that it might be as well to go and see the woman. She,
+Susan, had a knowledge of the social set that might be valuable in that
+connection. While she dressed, she pleased herself with a vision of
+Mademoiselle Brown, very dignified and severely beautiful, in black
+silk, as Madame Vera's right-hand woman.
+
+The milliner was rushing about the back of her store at the moment that
+Susan chanced to choose for her nervously murmured remarks, and had to
+have them repeated several times. Then she laughed heartily and
+merrily, and assured Susan in very imperfect and very audible English,
+that forty girls were already on her list waiting for positions in her
+establishment.
+
+"I thought perhaps--knowing all the people--" Susan stammered very low.
+
+"How--why should that be so good?" Madame asked, with horrible
+clearness. "Do I not know them myself?"
+
+Susan was glad to escape without further parley.
+
+"See, now," said Madame Vera in a low tone, as she followed Susan to
+the door, "You do not come into my workshop, eh?"
+
+"How much?" asked Susan, after a second's thought.
+
+"Seven dollars," said the other with a quick persuasive nod, "and your
+dinner. That is something, eh? And more after a while."
+
+But Susan shook her head. And, as she went out into the steadily
+falling rain again, bitter tears blinded her eyes.
+
+She cried a great deal in these days, became nervous and sensitive and
+morbid. She moped about the house, restless and excited, unwilling to
+do anything that would take her away from the house when the postman
+arrived, reading the steamship news in every morning's paper.
+
+Yet, curiously enough, she never accepted this experience as similar to
+what poor Mary Lou had undergone so many years ago,--this was not a
+"disappointment in love,"--this was only a passing episode. Presently
+she would get herself in hand again and astonish them with some
+achievement brilliant enough to sweep these dark days from everyone's
+memory.
+
+She awaited her hour, impatiently at first, later with a sort of
+resentful calm. Susan's return home, however it affected them
+financially, was a real delight to her aunt and Mary Lou. The cousins
+roomed together, were together all day long.
+
+Susan presently flooded the house with the circulars of a New York
+dramatic school, wrote mysterious letters pertaining to them. After a
+while these disappeared, and she spent a satisfied evening or two in
+filling blanks of application for admission into a hospital
+training-school. In February she worked hard over a short story that
+was to win a hundred dollar prize. Mary Lou had great confidence in it.
+
+The two loitered over their toast and coffee, after the boarders'
+breakfast, made more toast to finish the coffee, and more coffee to
+finish the toast. The short winter mornings were swiftly gone; in the
+afternoon Susan and Mary Lou dressed with great care and went to
+market. They would stop at the library for a book, buy a little bag of
+candy to eat over their solitaire in the evening, perhaps pay a call on
+some friend, whose mild history of financial difficulties and helpless
+endurance matched their own.
+
+Now and then, on Sundays, the three women crossed the Oakland ferry and
+visited Virginia, who was patiently struggling back to the light. They
+would find her somewhere in the great, orderly, clean institution, with
+a knot of sweet-faced, vague-eyed children clustered about her.
+"Good-bye, Miss 'Ginia!" the unearthly, happy little voices would call,
+as the uncertain little feet echoed away. Susan rather liked the
+atmosphere of the big institution, and vaguely envied the brisk
+absorbed attendants who passed them on swift errands. Stout Mrs.
+Lancaster, for all her panting and running, invariably came within half
+a second of missing the return train for the city; the three would
+enter it laughing and gasping, and sink breathless into their seats,
+unable for sheer mirth to straighten their hats, or glance at their
+fellow-passengers.
+
+In March Georgie's second little girl, delicate and tiny, was born too
+soon, and the sturdy Myra came to her maternal grandmother for an
+indefinite stay. Georgie's disappointment over the baby's sex was
+instantly swallowed up in anxiety over the diminutive Helen's weight
+and digestion, and Susan and Mary Lou were delighted to prolong Myra's
+visit from week to week. Georgie's first-born was a funny, merry little
+girl, and Susan developed a real talent for amusing her and caring for
+her, and grew very fond of her. The new baby was well into her second
+month before they took Myra home,--a dark, crumpled little thing Susan
+thought the newcomer, and she thought that she had never seen Georgie
+looking so pale and thin. Georgie had always been freckled, but now the
+freckles seemed fairly to stand out on her face. But in spite of the
+children's exactions, and the presence of grim old Mrs. O'Connor, Susan
+saw a certain strange content in the looks that went between husband
+and wife.
+
+"Look here, I thought you were going to be George Lancaster O'Connor!"
+said Susan, threateningly, to the new baby.
+
+"I don't know why a boy wouldn't have been named Joseph Aloysius, like
+his father and grandfather," said the old lady disapprovingly.
+
+But Georgie paid no heed. The baby's mother was kneeling beside the bed
+where little Helen lay, her eyes fairly devouring the tiny face.
+
+"You don't suppose God would take her away from me, Sue, because of
+that nonsense about wanting a boy?" Georgie whispered.
+
+Susan's story did not win the hundred dollar prize, but it won a fifth
+prize of ten dollars, and kept her in pocket money for some weeks.
+After that Mary Lord brought home an order for twenty place-cards for a
+child's Easter Party, and Susan spent several days happily fussing with
+water colors and so earned five dollars more.
+
+Time did not hang at all heavily on her hands; there was always an
+errand or two to be done for auntie, and always a pack of cards and a
+library book with which to fill the evening. Susan really enjoyed the
+lazy evenings, after the lazy days. She and Mary Lou spent the first
+week in April in a flurry of linens and ginghams, making shirtwaists
+for the season; for three days they did not leave the house, nor dress
+fully, and they ate their luncheons from the wing of the sewing-machine.
+
+Spring came and poured over the whole city a bath of warmth and
+perfume. The days lengthened, the air was soft and languid. Susan loved
+to walk to market now, loved to loiter over calls in the late
+after-noon, and walk home in the lingering sunset light. If a poignant
+regret smote her now and then, its effect was not lasting, she
+dismissed it with a bitter sigh.
+
+But constant humiliation was good for neither mind nor body; Susan felt
+as pinched in soul as she felt actually pinched by the old cheerless,
+penniless condition, hard and bitter elements began to show themselves
+in her nature. She told herself that one great consolation in her
+memories of Stephen Bocqueraz was that she was too entirely obscure a
+woman to be brought to the consideration of the public, whatever her
+offense might or might not be. Cold and sullen, Susan saw herself as
+ill-used, she could not even achieve human contempt--she was not worthy
+of consideration. Just one of the many women who were weak----
+
+And sometimes, to escape the desperate circling of her thoughts, she
+would jump up and rush out for a lonely walk, through the wind-blown,
+warm disorder of the summer streets, or sometimes, dropping her face
+suddenly upon a crooked arm, she would burst into bitter weeping.
+
+Books and pictures, random conversations overheard, or contact with
+human beings all served, in these days, to remind her of herself.
+Susan's pride and self-confidence and her gay ambition had sustained
+her through all the self-denial of her childhood. Now, failing these,
+she became but an irritable, depressed and discouraged caricature of
+her old self. Her mind was a distressed tribunal where she defended
+herself day and night; convincing this accuser--convincing that
+one--pleading her case to the world at large. Her aunt and cousin,
+entirely ignorant of its cause, still were aware that there was a great
+change in her, and watched her with silent and puzzled sympathy.
+
+But they gave her no cause to feel herself a failure. They thought
+Susan unusually clever and gifted, and, if her list of actual
+achievements were small, there seemed to be no limit to the things that
+she COULD do. Mary Lou loved to read the witty little notes she could
+dash off at a moment's notice, Lydia Lord wiped her eyes with emotion
+that Susan's sweet, untrained voice aroused when she sang "Once in a
+Purple Twilight," or "Absent." Susan's famous eggless ginger-bread was
+one of the treats of Mrs. Lancaster's table.
+
+"How do you do it, you clever monkey!" said Auntie, watching over
+Susan's shoulder the girl's quick fingers, as Susan colored Easter
+cards or drew clever sketches of Georgie's babies, or scribbled a
+jingle for a letter to amuse Virginia. And when Susan imitated Mrs.
+Patrick Campbell as Paula, or Mrs. Fiske as Becky Sharp, even William
+had to admit that she was quite clever enough to be a professional
+entertainer.
+
+"But I wish I had one definite big gift, Billy," said Susan, on a July
+afternoon, when she and Mr. Oliver were on the ferry boat, going to
+Sausalito. It was a Sunday, and Susan thought that Billy looked
+particularly well to-day, felt indeed, with some discomfort, that he
+was better groomed and better dressed than she was, and that there was
+in him some new and baffling quality, some reserve that she could not
+command. His quick friendly smile did not hide the fact that his
+attention was not all hers; he seemed pleasantly absorbed in his own
+thoughts. Susan gave his clean-shaven, clear-skinned face many a
+half-questioning look as she sat beside him on the boat. He was more
+polite, more gentle, more kind that she remembered him--what was
+missing, what was wrong to-day?
+
+It came to her suddenly, half-astonished and half-angry, that he was no
+longer interested in her. Billy had outgrown her, he had left her
+behind. He did not give her his confidence to-day, nor ask her advice.
+He scowled now and then, as if some under-current of her chatter
+vaguely disturbed him, but offered no comment. Susan felt, with a
+little, sick pressure at her heart, that somehow she had lost an old
+friend!
+
+He was stretched out comfortably, his long legs crossed before him, his
+hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, and his half-shut, handsome
+eyes fixed on the rushing strip of green water that was visible between
+the painted ropes of the deck-rail.
+
+"And what are your own plans, Sue?" he presently asked, unsmilingly.
+
+Susan was chilled by the half-weary tone.
+
+"Well, I'm really just resting and helping Auntie, now," Susan said
+cheerfully. "But in the fall---" she made a bold appeal to his
+interest, "--in the fall I think I shall go to New York?"
+
+"New York?" he echoed, aroused. "What for?"
+
+"Oh, anything!" Susan answered confidently. "There are a hundred
+chances there to every one here," she went on, readily, "institutions
+and magazines and newspapers and theatrical agencies--Californians
+always do well in New York!"
+
+"That sounds like Mary Lou," said Billy, drily. "What does she know
+about it?"
+
+Susan flushed resentfully.
+
+"Well, what do you!" she retorted with heat.
+
+"No, I've never been there," admitted Billy, with self-possession. "But
+I know more about it than Mary Lou! She's a wonder at pipe-dreams,--my
+Lord, I'd rather have a child of mine turned loose in the street than
+be raised according to Mary Lou's ideas! I don't mean," Billy
+interrupted himself to say seriously, "that they weren't all perfectly
+dandy to me when I was a kid--you know how I love the whole bunch! But
+all that dope about not having a chance here, and being 'unlucky' makes
+me weary! If Mary Lou would get up in the morning, and put on a clean
+dress, and see how things were going in the kitchen, perhaps she'd know
+more about the boarding-house, and less about New York!"
+
+"It may never have occurred to you, Billy, that keeping a
+boarding-house isn't quite the ideal occupation for a young
+gentlewoman!" Susan said coldly.
+
+"Oh, darn everything!" Billy said, under his breath. Susan eyed him
+questioningly, but he did not look at her again, or explain the
+exclamation.
+
+The always warm and welcoming Carrolls surrounded them joyfully, Susan
+was kissed by everybody, and Billy had a motherly kiss from Mrs.
+Carroll in the unusual excitement of the occasion.
+
+For there was great news. Susan had it from all of them at once; found
+herself with her arms linked about the radiant Josephine while she said
+incredulously:
+
+"Oh, you're NOT! Oh, Jo, I'm so glad! Who is it--and tell me all about
+it--and where's his picture---"
+
+In wild confusion they all straggled out to the lawn, and Susan sat
+down with Betsey at her feet, Anna sitting on one arm of her low chair,
+and Josephine kneeling, with her hands still in Susan's.
+
+He was Mr. Stewart Frothingham, and Josephine and his mother and sister
+had gone up to Yale for his graduation, and "it" had been
+instantaneous, "we knew that very day," said Josephine, with a lovely
+awe in her eyes, "but we didn't say anything to Mrs. Frothingham or
+Ethel until later." They had all gone yachting together, and to Bar
+Harbor, and then Stewart had gone into his uncle's New York office, "we
+shall have to live in New York," Josephine said, radiantly, "but one of
+the girls or Mother will ALWAYS be there!"
+
+"Jo says it's the peachiest house you ever saw!" Betsey contributed.
+
+"Oh, Sue--right down at the end of Fifth Avenue--but you don't know
+where that is, do you? Anyway, it's wonderful---"
+
+It was all wonderful, everybody beamed over it. Josephine already wore
+her ring, but no announcement was to be made until after a trip she
+would make with the Frothinghams to Yellowstone Park in September. Then
+the gallant and fortunate and handsome Stewart would come to
+California, and the wedding would be in October.
+
+"And you girls will all fall in love with him!" prophesied Josephine.
+
+"Fall?" echoed Susan studying photographs. "I head the waiting list!
+You grab-all! He's simply perfection--rich and stunning, and an old
+friend--and a yacht and a motor---"
+
+"And a fine, hard-working fellow, Sue," added Josephine's mother.
+
+"I begin to feel old and unmarried," mourned Susan. "What did you say,
+William dear?" she added, suddenly turning to Billy, with a honeyed
+smile.
+
+They all shouted. But an hour or two later, in the kitchen, Mrs.
+Carroll suddenly asked her of her friendship with Peter Coleman.
+
+"Oh, we've not seen each other for months, Aunt Jo!" Susan said
+cheerfully. "I don't even know where he is! I think he lives at the
+club since the crash."
+
+"There was a crash?"
+
+"A terrible crash. And now the firm's reorganized; it's Hunter, Hunter
+& Brauer. Thorny told me about it. And Miss Sherman's married, and Miss
+Cottle's got consumption and has to live in Arizona, or somewhere.
+However,---" she returned to the original theme, "Peter seems to be
+still enjoying life! Did you see the account of his hiring an electric
+delivery truck, and driving it about the city on Christmas Eve, to
+deliver his own Christmas presents, dressed up himself as an
+expressman? And at the Bachelor's dance, they said it was his idea to
+freeze the floor in the Mapleroom, and skate the cotillion!"
+
+"Goose that he is!" Mrs. Carroll smiled. "How hard he works for his
+fun! Well, after all that's Peter--one couldn't expect him to change!"
+
+"Does anybody change?" Susan asked, a little sadly. "Aren't we all born
+pretty much as we're going to be? There are so many lives---" She had
+tried to keep out the personal note, but suddenly it crept in, and she
+saw the kitchen through a blur of tears. "There are so many lives," she
+pursued, unsteadily, "that seem to miss their mark. I don't mean poor
+people. I mean strong, clever young women, who could do things, and who
+would love to do certain work,--yet who can't get hold of them! Some
+people are born to be busy and happy and prosperous, and others, like
+myself," said Susan bitterly, "drift about, and fail at one thing after
+another, and never get anywhere!"
+
+Suddenly she put her head down on the table and burst into tears.
+
+"Why Sue--why Sue!" The motherly arm was about her, she felt Mrs.
+Carroll's cheek against her hair. "Why, little girl, you musn't talk of
+failure at your age!" said Mrs. Carroll, tenderly.
+
+"I'll be twenty-six this fall," Susan said, wiping her eyes, "and I'm
+not started yet! I don't know how to begin. Sometimes I think," said
+Susan, with angry vigor, "that if I was picked right out of this city
+and put down anywhere else on the globe, I could be useful and happy!
+But here I can't! How---" she appealed to the older woman passionately,
+"How can I take an interest in Auntie's boarding-house when she herself
+never keeps a bill, doesn't believe in system, and likes to do things
+her own way?"
+
+"Sue, I do think that things at home are very hard for you," Mrs.
+Carroll said with quick sympathy. "It's too bad, dear, it's just the
+sort of thing that I think you fine, energetic, capable young creatures
+ought to be saved! I wish we could think of just the work that would
+interest you."
+
+"But that's it--I have no gift!" Susan said, despondingly.
+
+"But you don't need a gift, Sue. The work of the world isn't all for
+girls with gifts! No, my dear, you want to use your energies--you won't
+be happy until you do. You want happiness, we all do. And there's only
+one rule for happiness in this world, Sue, and that's service. Just to
+the degree that they serve people are happy, and no more. It's an
+infallible test. You can try nations by it, you can try kings and
+beggars. Poor people are just as unhappy as rich people, when they're
+idle; and rich people are really happy only when they're serving
+somebody or something. A millionaire--a multimillionaire--may be
+utterly wretched, and some poor little clerk who goes home to a sick
+wife, and to a couple of little babies, may be absolutely
+content--probably is."
+
+"But you don't think that the poor, as a class, are happier than the
+rich?"
+
+"Why, of course they are!"
+
+"Lots of workingmen's wives are unhappy," submitted Susan.
+
+"Because they're idle and shiftless and selfish, Sue. But there are
+some among them who are so busy mixing up spice cake, and making
+school-aprons, and filling lamps and watering gardens that they can't
+stop to read the new magazines,--and those are the happiest people in
+the world, I think. No, little girl, remember that rule. Not money, or
+success, or position or travel or love makes happiness,--service is the
+secret."
+
+Susan was watching her earnestly, wistfully. Now she asked simply:
+
+"Where can I serve?"
+
+"Where can you serve--you blessed child!" Mrs. Carroll said, ending her
+little dissertation with a laugh. "Well, let me see--I've been thinking
+of you lately, Sue, and wondering why you never thought of settlement
+work? You'd be so splendid, with your good-nature, and your buoyancy,
+and your love for children. Of course they don't pay much, but money
+isn't your object, is it?"
+
+"No-o, I suppose it isn't," Susan said uncertainly. "I--I don't see why
+it should be!" And she seemed to feel her horizon broadening as she
+spoke.
+
+She and Billy did not leave until ten o'clock, fare-wells, as always,
+were hurried, but Josephine found time to ask Susan to be her
+bridesmaid, Betsey pleaded for a long visit after the wedding, "we'll
+simply die without Jo!" and Anna, with her serious kiss, whispered,
+"Stand by us, Sue--it's going to break Mother's heart to have her go so
+far away!"
+
+Susan could speak of nothing but Josephine's happiness for awhile, when
+she and Billy were on the boat. They had the dark upper deck almost to
+themselves, lights twinkled everywhere about them, on the black waters
+of the bay. There was no moon. She presently managed a delicately
+tentative touch upon his own feeling in the matter. "He--he was glad,
+wasn't he? He hadn't been seriously hurt?"
+
+Bill, catching her drift, laughed out joyously.
+
+"That's so--I was crazy about her once, wasn't I?" Billy asked,
+smilingly reminiscent. "But I like Anna better now. Only I've sort of
+thought sometimes that Anna has a crush on someone--Peter Coleman,
+maybe."
+
+"No, not on him," Susan hesitated. "There's a doctor at the hospital,
+but he's awfully rich and important---" she admitted.
+
+"Oh." Billy withdrew. "And you--are you still crazy about that mutt?"
+he asked.
+
+"Peter? I've not seen him for months. But I don't see why you call him
+a mutt!"
+
+"Say, did you ever know that he made a pretty good thing out of Mrs.
+Carroll's window washer?" Billy asked confidentally, leaning toward her
+in the dark.
+
+"He paid her five hundred dollars for it!" Susan flashed back. "Did YOU
+know that?"
+
+"Sure I knew that," Billy said.
+
+"Well--well, did he make more than THAT?" Susan asked.
+
+"He sold it to the Wakefield Hardware people for twenty-five thousand
+dollars," Billy announced.
+
+"For WHAT!"
+
+"For twenty-five thousand," he repeated. "They're going to put them
+into lots of new apartments. The National Duplex, they call it. Yep,
+it's a big thing, I guess."
+
+"Bill, you mean twenty-five hundred!"
+
+"Twenty-five thousand, I tell you! It was in the 'Scientific American,'
+I can show it to you!"
+
+Susan kept a moment's shocked silence.
+
+"Billy, I don't believe he would do that!" she said at last.
+
+"Oh, shucks," Billy said good-naturedly, "it was rotten, but it wasn't
+as bad as that! It was legal enough. She was pleased with her five
+hundred, and I suppose he told himself that, but for him, she mightn't
+have had that! Probably he meant to give her a fat check---."
+
+"Give her? Why, it was hers!" Susan burst out. "What did Peter Coleman
+have to do with it, anyway!"
+
+"Well, that's the way all big fortunes are built up," Billy said. "You
+happen to see this, though, and that's why it seems so rotten!"
+
+"I'll never speak to Peter Coleman again!" Susan declared, outraged.
+
+"You'll have to cut out a good many of your friends in the Saunders set
+if you want to be consistent," Billy said. "This doesn't seem to me
+half as bad as some others! What I think is rotten is keeping hundreds
+of acres of land idle, for years and years, or shutting poor little
+restless kids up in factories, or paying factory girls less than they
+can live on, and drawing rent from the houses where they are ruined,
+body and soul! The other day some of our men were discharged because of
+bad times, and as they walked out they passed Carpenter's
+eighteen-year-old daughter sitting in the motor, with a chauffeur in
+livery in front, and with her six-hundred-dollar Pekingese sprawling in
+her lap, in his little gold collar. Society's built right on that sort
+of thing, Sue! you'd be pretty surprised if you could see a map of the
+bad-house district, with the owners' names attached."
+
+"They can't be held responsible for the people who rent their
+property!" Susan protested.
+
+"Bocqueraz told me that night that in New York you'll see nice-looking
+maids, nice-looking chauffeurs, and magnificent cars, any afternoon,
+airing the dogs in the park," said Billy.
+
+The name silenced Susan; she felt her breath come short.
+
+"He was a dandy fellow," mused Billy, not noticing. "Didn't you like
+him?"
+
+"Like him!" burst from Susan's overcharged heart. An amazed question or
+two from him brought the whole story out. The hour, the darkness, the
+effect of Josephine's protected happiness, and above all, the desire to
+hold him, to awaken his interest, combined to break down her guard.
+
+She told him everything, passionately and swiftly, dwelling only upon
+the swift rush of events that had confused her sense of right and
+wrong, and upon the writer's unparalleled devotion.
+
+Billy, genuinely shocked at her share of the affair, was not inclined
+to take Bocqueraz's protestations very seriously. Susan found herself
+in the odious and unforeseen position of defending Stephen Bocqueraz's
+intentions.
+
+"What a dirty rotter he must be, when he seemed such a prince!" was
+William's summary. "Pretty tough on you, Sue," he added, with fraternal
+kindly contempt, "Of course you would take him seriously, and believe
+every word! A man like that knows just how to go about it,--and Lord,
+you came pretty near getting in deep!"
+
+Susan's face burned and she bit her lip in the darkness. It was
+unbearable that Billy should think Bocqueraz less in earnest than she
+had been, should imagine her so easily won! She wished heartily that
+she had not mentioned the affair.
+
+"He probably does that everywhere he goes," said Billy, thoughtfully.
+"You had a pretty narrow escape, Sue, and I'll bet he thought he got
+out of it pretty well, too! After the thing had once started, he
+probably began to realize that you are a lot more decent than most, and
+you may bet he felt pretty rotten about it---"
+
+"Do you mean to say that he DIDN'T mean to---" began Susan hotly, stung
+even beyond anger by outraged pride. But, as the enormity of her
+question smote her suddenly, she stopped short, with a sensation almost
+of nausea.
+
+"Marry you?" Billy finished it for her. "I don't know--probably he
+would. Lord, Lord, what a blackguard! What a skunk!" And Billy got up
+with a short breath, as if he were suffocating, walked away from her,
+and began to walk up and down across the broad dark deck.
+
+Susan felt bitter remorse and shame sweep her like a flame as he left
+her. She felt, sitting there alone in the darkness, as if she would die
+of the bitterness of knowing herself at last. In beginning her
+confidence, she had been warmed by the thought of the amazing and
+romantic quality of her news, she had thought that Bocqueraz's
+admiration would seem a great thing in Billy's eyes. Now she felt sick
+and cold and ashamed, the glamour fell, once and for all, from what she
+had done and, as one hideous memory after another roared in her ears,
+Susan felt as if her thoughts would drive her mad.
+
+Billy came suddenly back to his seat beside her, and laid his hand over
+hers. She knew that he was trying to comfort her.
+
+"Never you mind, Sue," he said, "it's not your fault that there are men
+rotten enough to take advantage of a girl like you. You're easy, Susan,
+you're too darned easy, you poor kid. But thank God, you got out in
+time. It would have killed your aunt," said Billy, with a little
+shudder, "and I would never have forgiven myself. You're like my own
+sister, Sue, and I never saw it coming! I thought you were wise to dope
+like that---"
+
+"Wise to dope like that!" Susan could have risen up and slapped him, in
+the darkness. She could have burst into frantic tears; she would gladly
+have felt the boat sinking--sinking to hide her shame and his contempt
+for her under the friendly, quiet water.
+
+For long years the memory of that trip home from Sausalito, the boat,
+the warm and dusty ferry-place, the jerking cable-car, the grimy,
+wilted street, remained vivid and terrible in her memory.
+
+She found herself in her room, talking to the aroused Mary Lou. She
+found herself in bed, her heart beating fast, her eyes wide and bright.
+Susan meant to stop thinking of what could not be helped, and get to
+sleep at once.
+
+The hours went by, still she lay wakeful and sick at heart. She turned
+and tossed, sighed, buried her face in her pillow, turned and tossed
+again. Shame shook her, worried her in dreams, agonized her when she
+was awake. Susan felt as if she would lose her mind in the endless
+hours of this terrible night.
+
+There was a little hint of dawn in the sky when she crept wearily over
+Mary Lou's slumbering form.
+
+"Ha! What is it?" asked Mary Lou.
+
+"It's early--I'm going out--my head aches!" Susan said. Mary Lou sank
+back gratefully, and Susan dressed in the dim light. She crept
+downstairs, and went noiselessly out into the chilly street.
+
+Her head ached, and her skin felt dry and hot. She took an early car
+for North Beach, sat mute and chilled on the dummy until she reached
+the terminal, and walked blindly down to the water. Little waves
+shifted wet pebbles on the shore, a cool wind sighed high above her.
+
+Susan found a sheltered niche among piles of lumber--and sat staring
+dully ahead of her. The water was dark, but the fog was slowly lifting,
+to show barges at anchor, and empty rowboats rocking by the pier. The
+tide was low, piles closely covered with shining black barnacles rose
+lank from the water; odorous webs of green seaweed draped the wooden
+cross-bars and rusty iron cleats of the dock.
+
+Susan remembered the beaches she had known in her childhood, when, a
+small skipping person, she had run ahead of her father and mother, wet
+her shoes in the sinking watery sand, and curved away from the path of
+the waves in obedience to her mother's voice. She remembered walks home
+beside the roaring water, with the wind whistling in her ears, the
+sunset full in her eyes, her tired little arms hooked in the arms of
+the parents who shouted and laughed at each other over the noisy
+elements.
+
+"My good, dear, hungry, little, tired Mouse!" her mother had called
+her, in the blissful hour of supper and warmth and peace that followed.
+
+Her mother had always been good--her father good. Every one was
+good,--even impractical, absurd Mary Lou, and homely Lydia Lord, and
+little Miss Sherman at the office, with her cold red hands, and her
+hungry eyes,--every one was good, except Susan.
+
+Dawn came, and sunrise. The fog lifted like a curtain, disappeared in
+curling filaments against the sun. Little brown-sailed fishing-smacks
+began to come dipping home, sunlight fell warm and bright on the roofs
+of Alcatraz, the blue hills beyond showed soft against the bluer sky.
+Ferry boats cut delicate lines of foam in the sheen of the bay, morning
+whistles awakened the town. Susan felt the sun's grateful warmth on her
+shoulders and, watching the daily miracle of birth, felt vaguely some
+corresponding process stir her own heart. Nature cherishes no
+yesterdays; the work of rebuilding and replenishing goes serenely on.
+Punctual dawn never finds the world unready, April's burgeoning colors
+bury away forever the memories of winter wind and deluge.
+
+"There is some work that I may still do, in this world, there is a
+place somewhere for me," thought Susan, walking home, hungry and weary,
+"Now the question is to find them!"
+
+Early in October came a round-robin from the Carrolls. Would Susan come
+to them for Thanksgiving and stay until Josephine's wedding on December
+third? "It will be our last time all together in one sense," wrote Mrs.
+Carroll, "and we really need you to help us over the dreadful day after
+Jo goes!"
+
+Susan accepted delightedly for the wedding, but left the question of
+Thanksgiving open; her aunt felt the need of her for the anniversary.
+Jinny would be at home from Berkeley and Alfred and his wife Freda were
+expected for Thanksgiving Day. Mrs. Alfred was a noisy and assertive
+little person, whose complacent bullying of her husband caused his
+mother keen distress. Alfred was a bookkeeper now, in the bakery of his
+father-in-law, in the Mission, and was a changed man in these days; his
+attitude toward his wife was one of mingled fear and admiration. It was
+a very large bakery, and the office was neatly railed off, "really like
+a bank," said poor Mrs. Lancaster, but Ma had nearly fainted when first
+she saw her only son in this enclosure, and never would enter the
+bakery again. The Alfreds lived in a five-room flat bristling with
+modern art papers and shining woodwork; the dining-room was papered in
+a bold red, with black wood trimmings and plate-rail; the little
+drawing-room had a gas-log surrounded with green tiles. Freda made
+endless pillows for the narrow velour couch, and was very proud of her
+Mission rocking-chairs and tasseled portieres. Her mother's
+wedding-gift had been a piano with a mechanical player attached; the
+bride was hospitable and she loved to have groups of nicely dressed
+young people listening to the music, while she cooked for them in the
+chafing-dish. About once a month, instead of going to "Mama's" for an
+enormous Sunday dinner, she and Alfred had her fat "Mama" and her small
+wiry "Poppa" and little Augusta and Lulu and Heinie come to eat a
+Sunday dinner with them. And when this happened stout Mrs. Hultz always
+sent her own cook over the day before with a string of sausages and a
+fowl and a great mocha cake, and cheese and hot bread, so that Freda's
+party should not "cost those kits so awful a lot," as she herself put
+it.
+
+And no festivity was thought by Freda to warrant Alfred's approach to
+his old habits. She never allowed him so much as a sherry sauce on his
+pudding. She frankly admitted that she "yelled bloody murder" if he
+suggested absenting himself from her side for so much as a single
+evening. She adored him, she thought him the finest type of man she
+knew, but she allowed him no liberty.
+
+"A doctor told Ma once that when a man drank, as Alfie did, he couldn't
+stop right off short, without affecting his heart," said Mary Lou,
+gently.
+
+"All right, let it affect his heart then!" said the twenty-year-old
+Freda hardily. Ma herself thought this disgustingly cold-blooded; she
+said it did not seem refined for a woman to admit that her husband had
+his failings, and Mary Lou said frankly that it was easy enough to see
+where THAT marriage would end, but Susan read more truly the little
+bride's flashing blue eyes and the sudden scarlet in her cheeks, and
+she won Freda's undying loyalty by a surreptitious pressure of her
+fingers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+One afternoon in mid-November Susan and Mary Lou chanced to be in the
+dining-room, working over a puzzle-card that had been delivered as an
+advertisement of some new breakfast food. They had intended to go to
+market immediately after lunch, but it was now three o'clock, and still
+they hung over the fascinating little combination of paper angles and
+triangles, feeling that any instant might see the problem solved.
+
+Suddenly the telephone rang, and Susan went to answer it, while Mary
+Lou, who had for some minutes been loosening her collar and belt
+preparatory to changing for the street, trailed slowly upstairs,
+holding her garments together.
+
+Outside was a bright, warm winter day, babies were being wheeled about
+in the sunshine, and children, just out of school, were shouting and
+running in the street. From where Susan sat at the telephone she could
+see a bright angle of sunshine falling through the hall window upon the
+faded carpet of the rear entry, and could hear Mrs. Cortelyou's
+cherished canary, Bobby, bursting his throat in a cascade of song
+upstairs. The canary was still singing when she hung up the receiver,
+two minutes later,--the sound drove through her temples like a knife,
+and the placid sunshine in the entry seemed suddenly brazen and harsh.
+
+Susan went upstairs and into Mary Lou's room.
+
+"Mary Lou---" she began.
+
+"Why, what is it?" said Mary Lou, catching her arm, for Susan was very
+white, and she was staring at her cousin with wide eyes and parted lips.
+
+"It was Billy," Susan answered. "Josephine Carroll's dead."
+
+"WHAT!" Mary Lou said sharply.
+
+"That's what he said," Susan repeated dully. "There was an
+accident,--at Yellowstone--they were going to meet poor Stewart--and
+when he got in--they had to tell him--poor fellow! Ethel Frothingham's
+arm was broken, and Jo never moved--Phil has taken Mrs. Carroll on
+to-day--Billy just saw them off!" Susan sat down at the bureau, and
+rested her head in her hands. "I can't believe it!" she said, under her
+breath. "I simply CANNOT believe it!"
+
+"Josephine Carroll killed! Why--it's the most awful thing I ever
+heard!" Mary Lou exclaimed. Her horror quieted Susan.
+
+"Billy didn't know anything more than that," Susan said, beginning
+hastily to change her dress. "I'll go straight over there, I guess. He
+said they only had a wire, but that one of the afternoon papers has a
+short account. My goodness--goodness--goodness--when they were all so
+happy! And Jo always the gayest of them all--it doesn't seem possible!"
+
+Still dazed, she crossed the bay in the pleasant afternoon sunlight,
+and went up to the house. Anna was already there, and the four spent a
+quiet, sad evening together. No details had reached them, the full
+force of the blow was not yet felt. When Anna had to go away the next
+day Susan stayed; she and Betsy got the house ready for the mother's
+home-coming, put away Josephine's dresses, her tennis-racket, her
+music----
+
+"It's not right!" sobbed the rebellious little sister. "She was the
+best of us all--and we've had so much to bear! It isn't fair!"
+
+"It's all wrong," Susan said, heavily.
+
+Mrs. Carroll, brave and steady, if very tired, came home on the third
+day, and with her coming the atmosphere of the whole house changed.
+Anna had come back again; the sorrowing girls drew close about their
+mother, and Susan felt that she was not needed.
+
+"Mrs. Carroll is the most wonderful woman in the world!" she said to
+Billy, going home after the funeral. "Yes," Billy answered frowningly.
+"She's too darn wonderful! She can't keep this up!"
+
+Georgie and Joe came to Mrs. Lancaster's house for an afternoon visit
+on Thanksgiving Day, arriving in mid-afternoon with the two babies, and
+taking Myra and Helen home again before the day grew too cold. Virginia
+arrived, using her own eyes for the first time in years, and the
+sisters and their mother laughed and cried together over the miracle of
+the cure. When Alfie and Freda came there was more hilarity. Freda very
+prettily presented her mother-in-law, whose birthday chanced to fall on
+the day, with a bureau scarf. Alfred, urged, Susan had no doubt, by his
+wife, gave his mother ten dollars, and asked her with a grin to buy
+herself some flowers. Virginia had a lace collar for Ma, and the
+white-coated O'Connor babies, with much pushing and urging, bashfully
+gave dear Grandma a tissue-wrapped bundle that proved to be a silk
+gown. Mary Lou unexpectedly brought down from her room a box containing
+six heavy silver tea-spoons.
+
+Where Mary Lou ever got the money to buy this gift was rather a mystery
+to everyone except Susan, who had chanced to see the farewells that
+took place between her oldest cousin and Mr. Ferd Eastman, when the
+gentleman, who had been making a ten-days visit to the city, left a day
+or two earlier for Virginia City.
+
+"Pretty soon after his wife's death!" Susan had accused Mary Lou,
+vivaciously.
+
+"Ferd has often kissed me--like a brother---" stammered Mary Lou,
+coloring painfully, and with tears in her kind eyes. And, to Susan's
+amazement, her aunt, evidently informed of the event by Mary Lou, had
+asked her not to tease her cousin about Ferd. Susan felt certain that
+the spoons were from Ferd.
+
+She took great pains to make the holiday dinner unusually festive,
+decorated the table, and put on her prettiest evening gown. There were
+very few boarders left in the house on this day, and the group that
+gathered about the big turkey was like one large family. Billy carved,
+and Susan with two paper candle-shades pinned above her ears, like
+enormous rosettes, was more like her old silly merry self than these
+people who loved her had seen her for years.
+
+It was nearly eight o'clock when Mrs. Lancaster, pushing back an
+untasted piece of mince pie, turned to Susan a strangely flushed and
+swollen face, and said thickly:
+
+"Air--I think I must--air!"
+
+She went out of the dining-room, and they heard her open the street
+door, in the hall. A moment later Virginia said "Mama!" in so sharp a
+tone that the others were instantly silenced, and vaguely alarmed.
+
+"Hark!" said Virginia, "I thought Mama called!" Susan, after a
+half-minute of nervous silence, suddenly jumped up and ran after her
+aunt.
+
+She never forgot the dark hall, and the sensation when her foot struck
+something soft and inert that lay in the doorway. Susan gave a great
+cry of fright as she knelt down, and discovered it to be her aunt.
+
+Confusion followed. There was a great uprising of voices in the
+dining-room, chairs grated on the floor. Someone lighted the hall gas,
+and Susan found a dozen hands ready to help her raise Mrs. Lancaster
+from the floor.
+
+"She's just fainted!" Susan said, but already with a premonition that
+it was no mere faint.
+
+"We'd better have a doctor though---" she heard Billy say, as they
+carried her aunt in to the dining-room couch. Mrs. Lancaster's breath
+was coming short and heavy, her eyes were shut, her face dark with
+blood.
+
+"Oh, why did we let Joe go home!" Mary Lou burst out hysterically.
+
+Her mother evidently caught the word, for she opened her eyes and
+whispered to Susan, with an effort:
+
+"Georgia--good, good man--my love---"
+
+"You feel better, don't you, darling?" Susan asked, in a voice rich
+with love and tenderness.
+
+"Oh, yes!" her aunt whispered, earnestly, watching her with the
+unwavering gaze of a child.
+
+"Of course she's better--You're all right, aren't you?" said a dozen
+voices. "She fainted away!--Didn't you hear her fall?--I didn't hear a
+thing!--Well, you fainted, didn't you?--You felt faint, didn't you?"
+
+"Air---" said Mrs. Lancaster, in a thickened, deep voice. Her eyes
+moved distressedly from one face to another, and as Virginia began to
+unfasten the pin at her throat, she added tenderly, "Don't prick
+yourself, Bootsy!"
+
+"Oh, she's very sick--she's very sick!" Susan whispered, with white
+lips, to Billy who was at the telephone.
+
+"What do you think of sponging her face off with ice-water?" he asked
+in a low tone. Susan fled to the kitchen. Mary Lou, seated by the table
+where the great roast stood in a confusion of unwashed plates and
+criss-crossed silver, was sobbing violently.
+
+"Oh, Sue--she's dying!" whispered Mary Lou, "I know it! Oh, my God,
+what will we do!"
+
+Susan plunged her hand in a tall pitcher for a lump of ice and wrapped
+it in a napkin. A moment later she knelt by her aunt's side. The
+sufferer gave a groan at the touch of ice, but a moment later she
+caught Susan's wrist feverishly and muttered "Good!"
+
+"Make all these fools go upstairs!" said Alfie's wife in a fierce
+whisper. She was carrying out plates and clearing a space about the
+couch. Virginia, kneeling by her mother, repeated over and over again,
+in an even and toneless voice, "Oh God, spare her--Oh God, spare her!"
+
+The doctor was presently among them, dragged, Susan thought, from the
+faint odor of wine about him, from his own dinner. He helped Billy
+carry the now unconscious woman upstairs, and gave Susan brisk orders.
+
+"There has undoubtedly been a slight stroke," said he.
+
+"Oh, doctor!" sobbed Mary Lou, "will she get well?"
+
+"I don't anticipate any immediate change," said the doctor to Susan,
+after a dispassionate look at Mary Lou, "and I think you had better
+have a nurse."
+
+"Yes, doctor," said Susan, very efficient and calm.
+
+"Had you a nurse in mind?" asked the doctor.
+
+"Well, no," Susan answered, feeling as if she had failed him.
+
+"I can get one," said the doctor thoughtfully.
+
+"Oh, doctor, you don't know what she's BEEN to us!" wailed Mary Lou.
+
+"Don't, darling!" Susan implored her.
+
+And now, for the first time in her life, she found herself really busy,
+and, under all sorrow and pain, there was in these sad hours for Susan
+a genuine satisfaction and pleasure. Capable, tender, quiet, she went
+about tirelessly, answering the telephone, seeing to the nurse's
+comfort, brewing coffee for Mary Lou, carrying a cup of hot soup to
+Virginia. Susan, slim, sympathetic, was always on hand,--with clean
+sheets on her arm or with hot water for the nurse or with a message for
+the doctor. She penciled a little list for Billy to carry to the
+drugstore, she made Miss Foster's bed in the room adjoining Auntie's,
+she hunted up the fresh nightgown that was slipped over her aunt's
+head, put the room in order; hanging up the limp garments with a
+strange sense that it would be long before Auntie's hand touched them
+again.
+
+"And now, why don't you go to bed, Jinny darling?" she asked, coming in
+at midnight to the room where her cousins were grouped in mournful
+silence. But Billy's foot touched hers with a significant pressure, and
+Susan sat down, rather frightened, and said no more of anyone's going
+to bed.
+
+Two long hours followed. They were sitting in a large front bedroom
+that had been made ready for boarders, but looked inexpressibly grim
+and cheerless, with its empty mantel and blank, marble-topped bureau.
+Georgie cried constantly and silently, Virginia's lips moved, Mary Lou
+alone persisted that Ma would be herself again in three days.
+
+Susan, sitting and staring at the flaring gas-lights, began to feel
+that in the midst of life was death, indeed, and that the term of human
+existence is as brief as a dream. "We will all have to die too," she
+said, awesomely to herself, her eyes traveling about the circle of
+faces.
+
+At two o'clock Miss Foster summoned them and they went into the
+invalid's room; to Susan it was all unreal and unconvincing. The figure
+in the bed, the purple face, the group of sobbing watchers. No word was
+said: the moments slipped by. Her eyes were wandering when Miss Foster
+suddenly touched her aunt's hand.
+
+A heavy, grating breath--a silence--Susan's eyes met Billy's in
+terror--but there was another breath--and another--and another silence.
+
+Silence.
+
+Miss Foster, who had been bending over her patient, straightened up,
+lowered the gray head gently into the pillow.
+
+"Gone," said Dr. O'Connor, very low, and at the word a wild protest of
+grief broke out. Susan neither cried nor spoke; it was all too unreal
+for tears, for emotion of any kind.
+
+"You stay," said Miss Foster when she presently banished the others.
+Susan, surprised, complied.
+
+"Sorry to ask you to help me," said Miss Foster then briskly, "but I
+can't do this alone. They'll want to be coming back here, and we must
+be ready for them. I wonder if you could fix her hair like she wore it,
+and I'll have to get her teeth---"
+
+"Her what?" asked Susan.
+
+"Her teeth, dear. Do you know where she kept them?"
+
+Appalled, sickened, Susan watched the other woman's easy manipulation
+of what had been a loving, breathing woman only a few hours before. But
+she presently did her own share bravely and steadily, brushing and
+coiling the gray-brown locks as she had often seen her aunt coil them.
+Lying in bed, a small girl supposedly asleep, years before, she had
+seen these pins placed so--and so--seen this short end tucked under,
+this twist skilfully puffed.
+
+This was not Auntie. So wholly had the soul fled that Susan could feel
+sure that Auntie--somewhere, was already too infinitely wise to resent
+this fussing little stranger and her ministrations. A curious lack of
+emotion in herself astonished her. She longed to grieve, as the others
+did, blamed herself that she could not. But before she left the room
+she put her lips to her aunt's forehead.
+
+"You were always good to me!" Susan whispered.
+
+"I guess she was always good to everyone," said the little nurse,
+pinning a clever arrangement of sheets firmly, "she has a grand face!"
+The room was bright and orderly now, Susan flung pillows and blankets
+into the big closet, hung her aunt's white knitted shawl on a hook.
+
+"You're a dear good little girl, that's what YOU are!" said Miss
+Foster, as they went out. Susan stepped into her new role with
+characteristic vigor. She was too much absorbed in it to be very sorry
+that her aunt was dead. Everybody praised her, and a hundred times a
+day her cousins said truthfully that they could not see how these
+dreadful days would have been endurable at all without Susan. Susan
+could sit up all night, and yet be ready to brightly dispense hot
+coffee at seven o'clock, could send telegrams, could talk to the men
+from Simpson and Wright's, could go downtown with Billy to select plain
+black hats and simple mourning, could meet callers, could answer the
+telephone, could return a reassuring "That's all attended to, dear," to
+Mary Lou's distracted "I haven't given one THOUGHT to dinner!" and
+then, when evening came again, could quietly settle herself in a big
+chair, between Billy and Dr. O'Connor, for another vigil.
+
+"Never a thought for her own grief!" said Georgie, to a caller. Susan
+felt a little prick of guilt. She was too busy and too absorbed to feel
+any grief. And presently it occurred to her that perhaps Auntie knew
+it, and understood. Perhaps there was no merit in mere grieving. "But I
+wish I had been better to her while she was here!" thought Susan more
+than once.
+
+She saw her aunt in a new light through the eyes of the callers who
+came, a long, silent stream, to pay their last respect to Louisianna
+Ralston. All the old southern families of the city were represented
+there; the Chamberlains and the Lloyds, the Duvals and Fairfaxes and
+Carters. Old, old ladies came, stout matrons who spoke of the dead
+woman as "Lou," rosy-faced old men. Some of them Susan had never seen
+before.
+
+To all of them she listened with her new pretty deference and dignity.
+She heard of her aunt's childhood, before the war, "Yo' dea' auntie and
+my Fanny went to they' first ball togethah," said one very old lady.
+"Lou was the belle of all us girls," contributed the same Fanny, now
+stout and sixty, with a smile. "I was a year or two younger, and, my
+laws, how I used to envy Miss Louis'anna Ralston, flirtin' and laughin'
+with all her beaux!"
+
+Susan grew used to hearing her aunt spoken of as "your cousin," "your
+mother," even "your sister,"--her own relationship puzzled some of Mrs.
+Lancaster's old friends. But they never failed to say that Susan was "a
+dear, sweet girl--she must have been proud of you!"
+
+She heard sometimes of her own mother too. Some large woman, wiping the
+tears from her eyes, might suddenly seize upon Susan, with:
+
+"Look here, Robert, this is Sue Rose's girl--Major Calhoun was one of
+your Mama's great admirers, dear!"
+
+Or some old lady, departing, would kiss her with a whispered "Knew your
+mother like my own daughter,--come and see me!"
+
+They had all been young and gay and sheltered together, Susan thought,
+just half a century ago. Now some came in widow's black, and some with
+shabby gloves and worn shoes, and some rustled up from carriages, and
+patronized Mary Lou, and told Susan that "poor Lou" never seemed to be
+very successful!
+
+"I sometimes think that it would be worth any effort in the first forty
+years of your life, to feel sure that you would at least not be an
+object of pity for the last twenty!" said Susan, upon whom these
+callers, with the contrasts they presented, had had a profound effect.
+
+It was during an all-night vigil, in the room next to the one in which
+the dead woman lay. Dr. O'Connor lay asleep on a couch, Susan and Billy
+were in deep chairs. The room was very cold, and the girl had a big
+wrapper over her black dress. Billy had wrapped himself in an Indian
+blanket, and put his feet comfortably up on a chair.
+
+"You bet your life it would be!" said Billy yawning. "That's what I
+tell the boys, over at the works," he went on, with awakening interest,
+"get INTO something, cut out booze and theaters and graphophones
+now,--don't care what your neighbors think of you now, but mind your
+own affairs, stick to your business, let everything else go, and then,
+some day, settle down with a nice little lump of stock, or a couple of
+flats, or a little plant of your own, and snap your fingers at
+everything!"
+
+"You know I've been thinking," Susan said slowly, "For all the wise
+people that have ever lived, and all the goodness everywhere, we go
+through life like ships with sealed orders. Now all these friends of
+Auntie's, they thought she made a brilliant match when she married
+Uncle George. But she had no idea of management, and no training, and
+here she is, dying at sixty-three, leaving Jinny and Mary Lou
+practically helpless, and nothing but a lot of debts! For twenty years
+she's just been drifting and drifting,--it's only a chance that Alfie
+pulled out of it, and that Georgie really did pretty well. Now, with
+Mrs. Carroll somehow it's so different. You know that, before she's
+old, she's going to own her little house and garden, she knows where
+she stands. She's worked her financial problem out on paper, she says
+'I'm a little behind this month, because of Jim's dentist. But there
+are five Saturdays in January, and I'll catch up then!'"
+
+"She's exceptional, though," he asserted.
+
+"Yes, but a training like that NEEDN'T be exceptional! It seems so
+strange that the best thing that school can give us is algebra and
+Caesar's Commentaries," Susan pursued thoughtfully. "When there's so
+MUCH else we don't know! Just to show you one thing, Billy,--when I
+first began to go to the Carrolls, I noticed that they never had to
+fuss with the building of a fire in the kitchen stove. When a meal was
+over, Mrs. Carroll opened the dampers, scattered a little wet coal on
+the top, and forgot about it until the next meal, or even overnight.
+She could start it up in two seconds, with no dirt or fuss, whenever
+she wanted to. Think what that means, getting breakfast! Now, ever
+since I was a little girl, we've built a separate fire for each meal,
+in this house. Nobody ever knew any better. You hear chopping of
+kindlings, and scratching of matches, and poor Mary Lou saying that it
+isn't going to burn, and doing it all over----
+
+"Gosh, yes!" he said laughing at the familiar picture. "Mary Lou always
+says that she has no luck with fires!"
+
+"Billy," Susan stated solemnly, "sometimes I don't believe that there
+is such a thing as luck!"
+
+"SOMETIMES you don't--why, Lord, of course there isn't!"
+
+"Oh, Billy," Susan's eyes widened childishly, "don't you honestly think
+so?"
+
+"No, I don't!" He smiled, with the bashfulness that was always
+noticeable when he spoke intimately of himself or his own ideas. "If
+you get a big enough perspective of things, Sue," he said, "everybody
+has the same chance. You to-day, and I to-morrow, and somebody else the
+day after that! Now," he cautiously lowered his voice, "in this house
+you've heard the Civil War spoken of as 'bad luck' and Alf's drinking
+spoken of as 'bad luck'"----
+
+Susan dimpled, nodded thoughtfully.
+
+"--And if Phil Carroll hadn't been whipped and bullied and coaxed and
+amused and praised for the past six or seven years, and Anna pushed
+into a job, and Jim and Betsy ruled with an iron hand, you might hear
+Mrs. Carroll talking about 'bad luck,' too!"
+
+"Well, one thing," said Susan firmly, "we'll do very differently from
+now on."
+
+"You girls, you mean," he said.
+
+"Jinny and Mary Lou and I. I think we'll keep this place going, Billy."
+
+Billy scowled.
+
+"I think you're making a big mistake, if you do. There's no money in
+it. The house is heavily mortgaged, half the rooms are empty."
+
+"We'll fill the house, then. It's the only thing we can do, Billy. And
+I've got plenty of plans," said Susan vivaciously. "I'm going to market
+myself, every morning. I'm going to do at least half the cooking. I'm
+going to borrow about three hundred dollars---"
+
+"I'll lend you all you want," he said.
+
+"Well, you're a darling! But I don't mean a gift, I mean at interest,"
+Susan assured him. "I'm going to buy china and linen, and raise our
+rates. For two years I'm not going out of this house, except on
+business. You'll see!"
+
+He stared at her for so long a time that Susan--even with
+Billy!--became somewhat embarrassed.
+
+"But it seems a shame to tie you down to an enterprise like this, Sue,"
+he said finally.
+
+"No," she said, after a short silence, turning upon him a very bright
+smile. "I've made a pretty general failure of my own happiness, Bill.
+I've shown that I'm a pretty weak sort. You know what I was willing to
+do---"
+
+"Now you're talking like a damn fool!" growled Billy.
+
+"No, I'm not! You may be as decent as you please about it, Billy," said
+Susan with scarlet cheeks, "but--a thing like that will keep me from
+ever marrying, you know! Well. So I'm really going to work, right here
+and now. Mrs. Carroll says that service is the secret of happiness, I'm
+going to try it. Life is pretty short, anyway,--doesn't a time like
+this make it seem so!--and I don't know that it makes very much
+difference whether one's happy or not!"
+
+"Well, go ahead and good luck to you!" said Billy, "but don't talk rot
+about not marrying and not being happy!"
+
+Presently he dozed in his chair, and Susan sat staring wide-eyed before
+her, but seeing nothing of the dimly lighted room, the old
+steel-engravings on the walls, the blotched mirror above the empty
+grate. Long thoughts went through her mind, a hazy drift of plans and
+resolutions, a hazy wonder as to what Stephen Bocqueraz was doing
+to-night--what Kenneth Saunders was doing. Perhaps they would some day
+hear of her as a busy and prosperous boarding-house keeper; perhaps,
+taking a hard-earned holiday in Europe, twenty years from now, Susan
+would meet one of them again.
+
+She got up, and went noiselessly into the hall to look at the clock.
+Just two. Susan went into the front room, to say her prayers in the
+presence of the dead.
+
+The big dim room was filled with flowers, their blossoms dull blots of
+light in the gloom, their fragrance, and the smell of wet leaves, heavy
+on the air. One window was raised an inch or two, a little current of
+air stirred the curtain. Candles burned steadily, with a little sucking
+noise; a clock ticked; there was no other sound.
+
+Susan stood, motionless herself, looking soberly down upon the quiet
+face of the dead. Some new dignity had touched the smooth forehead, and
+the closed eyes, a little inscrutable smile hovered over the sweet,
+firmly closed mouth. Susan's eyes moved from the face to the locked
+ivory fingers, lying so lightly,--yet with how terrible a weight!--upon
+spotless white satin and lace. Virginia had put the ivory-bound
+prayer-book and the lilies-of-the-valley into that quiet clasp,
+Georgie, holding back her tears, had laid at the coffin's foot the
+violets tied with a lavender ribbon that bore the legend, "From the
+Grandchildren."
+
+Flowers--flowers--flowers everywhere. And auntie had gone without them
+for so many years!
+
+"What a funny world it is," thought Susan, smiling at the still, wise
+face as if she and her aunt might still share in amusement. She thought
+of her own pose, "never gives a thought to her own grief!" everyone
+said. She thought of Virginia's passionate and dramatic protest, "Ma
+carried this book when she was married, she shall have it now!" and of
+Mary Lou's wail, "Oh, that I should live to see the day!" And she
+remembered Georgie's care in placing the lettered ribbon where it must
+be seen by everyone who came in to look for the last time at the dead.
+
+"Are we all actors? Isn't anything real?" she wondered.
+
+Yet the grief was real enough, after all. There was no sham in Mary
+Lou's faint, after the funeral, and Virginia, drooping about the
+desolate house, looked shockingly pinched and thin. There was a family
+council in a day or two, and it was at this time that Susan meant to
+suggest that the boarding-house be carried on between them all.
+
+Alfred and his wife, and Georgie and the doctor came to the house for
+this talk; Billy had been staying there, and Mr. Ferd Eastman, in
+answer to a telegram, had come down for the funeral and was still in
+the city.
+
+They gathered, a sober, black-dressed group, in the cold and dreary
+parlor, Ferd Eastman looking almost indecorously cheerful and rosy, in
+his checked suit and with his big diamond ring glittering on his fat
+hand. There was no will to read, but Billy had ascertained what none of
+the sisters knew, the exact figures of the mortgage, the value of the
+contents of Mrs. Lancaster's locked tin box, the size and number of
+various outstanding bills. He spread a great number of papers out
+before him on a small table; Alfred, who appeared to be sleepy, after
+the strain of the past week, yawned, started up blinking, attempted to
+take an intelligent interest in the conversation; Georgie, thinking of
+her nursing baby, was eager to hurry everything through.
+
+"Now, about you girls," said Billy. "Sue feels that you might make a
+good thing of it if you stayed on here. What do you think?"
+
+"Well, Billy--well, Ferd---" Everyone turned to look at Mary Lou, who
+was stammering and blushing in a most peculiar way. Mr. Eastman put his
+arm about her. Part of the truth flashed on Susan.
+
+"You're going to be married!" she gasped. But this was the moment for
+which Ferd had been waiting.
+
+"We are married, good people," he said buoyantly. "This young lady and
+I gave you all the slip two weeks ago!"
+
+Susan rushed to kiss the bride, but upon Virginia's bursting into
+hysterical tears, and Georgie turning faint, Mary Lou very sensibly set
+about restoring her sisters' composure, and, even on this occasion,
+took a secondary part.
+
+"Perhaps you had some reason---" said Georgie, faintly, turning
+reproachful eyes upon the newly wedded pair.
+
+"But, with poor Ma just gone!" Virginia burst into tears again.
+
+"Ma knew," sobbed Mary Lou, quite overcome. "Ferd--Ferd---" she began
+with difficulty, "didn't want to wait, and I WOULDN'T,--so soon after
+poor Grace!" Grace had been the first wife. "And so, just before Ma's
+birthday, he took us to lunch--we went to Swains---"
+
+"I remember the day!" said Virginia, in solemn affirmation.
+
+"And we were quietly married afterward," said Ferd, himself,
+soothingly, his arm about his wife, "and Mary Lou's dear mother was
+very happy about it. Don't cry, dear---"
+
+Susan had disliked the man once, but she could find no fault with his
+tender solicitude for the long-neglected Mary Lou. And when the first
+crying and exclaiming were over, there was a very practical
+satisfaction in the thought of Mary Lou as a prosperous man's wife, and
+Virginia provided for, for a time at least. Susan seemed to feel
+fetters slipping away from her at every second.
+
+Mr. Eastman took them all to lunch, at a modest table d'hote in the
+neighborhood, tipped the waiter munificently, asked in an aside for a
+special wine, which was of course not forthcoming. Susan enjoyed the
+affair with a little of her old spirit, and kept them all talking and
+friendly. Georgie, perhaps a little dashed by Mary Lou's recently
+acquired state, told Susan in a significant aside, as a doctor's wife,
+that it was very improbable that Mary Lou, at her age, would have
+children; "seems such a pity!" said Georgie, shrugging. Virginia, to
+her new brother-in-law's cheerful promise to find her a good husband
+within the year, responded, with a little resentful dignity, "It seems
+a little soon, to me, to be JOKING, Ferd!"
+
+But on the whole it was a very harmonious meal. The Eastmans were to
+leave the next day for a belated honeymoon; to Susan and Virginia and
+Billy would fall the work of closing up the Fulton Street house.
+
+"And what about you, Sue?" asked Billy, as they were walking home that
+afternoon.
+
+"I'm going to New York, Bill," she answered. And, with a memory of the
+times she had told him that before, she turned to him a sudden smile.
+"--But I mean it this time!" said Susan cheerfully. "I went to see Miss
+Toland, of the Alexander Toland Settlement House, a few weeks ago,
+about working there. She told me frankly that they have all they need
+of untrained help. But she said, 'Miss Brown, if you COULD take a
+year's course in New York, you'd be a treasure!' And so I'm going to
+borrow the money from Ferd, Bill. I hate to do it, but I'm going to.
+And the first thing you know I'll be in the Potrero, right near your
+beloved Iron Works, teaching the infants of that region how to make
+buttonholes and cook chuck steak!"
+
+"How much money do you want?" he asked, after a moment's silence.
+
+"Three hundred."
+
+"Three hundred! The fare is one hundred!"
+
+"I know it. But I'm going to work my way through the course, Bill, even
+if I have to go out as a nurse-girl, and study at night."
+
+Billy said nothing for awhile. But before they parted he went back to
+the subject.
+
+"I'll let you have the three hundred, Sue, or five hundred, if you
+like. Borrow it from me, you know me a good deal better than you do
+Ferd Eastman!"
+
+The next day the work of demolishing the boarding-house began. Susan
+and Virginia lived with Georgie for these days, but lunched in the
+confusion of the old home. It seemed strange, and vaguely sad, to see
+the long-crowded rooms empty and bare, with winter sunlight falling in
+clear sharp lines across the dusty, un-carpeted floors. A hundred old
+scars and stains showed on the denuded walls; there were fresher
+squares on the dark, faded old papers, where the pictures had been
+hung; Susan recognized the outline of Mary Lord's mirror, and Mrs.
+Parker's crucifix. The kitchen was cold and desolate, a pool of water
+on the cold stove, a smooth thin cake of yellow soap in a thick saucer,
+on the sink, a drift of newspapers on the floor, and old brooms
+assembled in a corner.
+
+More than the mortgage, the forced sale of the old house had brought
+only a few hundreds of dollars. It was to be torn down at once, and
+Susan felt a curious stirring of sadness as she went through the
+strange yet familiar rooms for the last time.
+
+"Lord, how familiar it all is!" said Billy, "the block and the bakery!
+I can remember the first time I saw it."
+
+The locked house was behind them, they had come down the street steps,
+and turned for a last look at the blank windows.
+
+"I remember coming here after my father died," Susan said. "You gave me
+a little cologne bottle filled with water, and one of those spools that
+one braids worsted through, do you remember?"
+
+"Do you remember Miss Fish,--the old girl whose canary we hit with a
+ball? And the second-hand type-writer we were always saving up for?"
+
+"And the day we marked up the steps with chalk and Auntie sent us out
+with wet rags?"
+
+"Lord--Lord!" They were both smiling as they walked away.
+
+"Shall you go to Nevada City with the Eastmans, Sue?"
+
+"No, I don't think so. I'll stay with Georgie for a week, and get
+things straightened out."
+
+"Well, suppose we go off and have dinner somewhere, to-morrow?"
+
+"Oh, I'd love it! It's terribly gloomy at Georgie's. But I'm going over
+to see the Carrolls to-morrow, and they may want to keep me---"
+
+"They won't!" said Billy grimly.
+
+"WON'T?" Susan echoed, astonished.
+
+"No," Billy said with a sigh. "Mrs. Carroll's been awfully queer
+since--since Jo, you know---"
+
+"Why, Bill, she was so wonderful!"
+
+"Just at first, yes. But she's gone into a sort of melancholia, now,
+Phil was telling me about it."
+
+"But that doesn't sound a bit like her," Susan said, worriedly.
+
+"No, does it? But go over and see them anyway, it'll do them all good.
+Well--look your last at the old block, Sue!"
+
+Susan got on the car, leaning back for a long, goodbye look at the
+shabby block, duller than ever in the grimy winter light, and at the
+dirt and papers and chaff drifting up against the railings, and at the
+bakery window, with its pies and bread and Nottingham lace curtains.
+Fulton Street was a thing of the past.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The next day, in a whirling rainstorm, well protected by a trim
+raincoat, overshoes, and a close-fitting little hat about which spirals
+of bright hair clung in a halo, Susan crossed the ferry and climbed up
+the long stairs that rise through the very heart of Sausalito. The sky
+was gray, the bay beaten level by the rain, and the wet gardens that
+Susan passed were dreary and bare. Twisting oak trees gave vistas of
+wind-whipped vines, and of the dark and angry water; the steps she
+mounted ran a shallow stream.
+
+The Carrolls' garden was neglected and desolate, chrysanthemum stalks
+lay across the wet flagging of the path, and wind screamed about the
+house. Susan's first knock was lost in a general creaking and banging,
+but a second brought Betsey, grave and tired-looking, to the door.
+
+"Oh, hello. Sue," said Betsey apathetically. "Don't go in there, it's
+so cold," she said, leading her caller past the closed door of the
+sitting-room. "This hall is so dark that we ought to keep a light
+here," added Betsey fretfully, as they stumbled along. "Come out into
+the dining-room, Sue, or into the kitchen. I was trying to get a fire
+started. But Jim NEVER brings up enough wood! He'll talk about it, and
+talk about it, but when you want it I notice it's never there!"
+
+Everywhere were dust and disorder and evidences of neglect. Susan
+hardly recognized the dining-room; it was unaired, yet chilly; a tall,
+milk-stained glass, and some crumbs on the green cloth, showed where
+little Betsey had had a lonely luncheon; there were paper bags on the
+sideboard and a litter of newspapers on a chair. Nothing suggested the
+old, exquisite order.
+
+The kitchen was even more desolate, as it had been more inviting
+before. There were ashes sifting out of the stove, rings of soot and
+grease on the table-top, more soot, and the prints of muddy boots on
+the floor. Milk had soured in the bottles, odds and ends of food were
+everywhere, Betsey's book was open on the table, propped against the
+streaked and stained coffee-pot.
+
+"Your mother's ill?" asked Susan. She could think of no other
+explanation.
+
+"Doesn't this kitchen look awful?" said Betsey, resuming operations
+with books and newspapers at the range. "No, Mother's all right. I'm
+going to take her up some tea. Don't you touch those things, Sue. Don't
+you bother!"
+
+"Has she been in bed?" demanded Susan.
+
+"No, she gets up every day now," Betsey said impatiently. "But she
+won't come downstairs!"
+
+"Won't! But why not!" gasped Susan.
+
+"She--" Betsey glanced cautiously toward the hall door. "She hasn't
+come down at all," she said, softly. "Not--since!"
+
+"What does Anna say?" Susan asked aghast.
+
+"Anna comes home every Saturday, and she and Phil talk to Mother," the
+little sister said, "but so far it's not done any good! I go up two or
+three times a day, but she won't talk to me.--Sue, ought this have more
+paper?"
+
+The clumsy, roughened little hands, the sad, patient little voice and
+the substitution of this weary little woman for the once-radiant and
+noisy Betsey sent a pang to Susan's heart.
+
+"Well, you poor little old darling, you!" she burst out, pitifully. "Do
+you mean that you've been facing this for a month? Betsey--it's too
+dreadful--you dear little old heroic scrap!"
+
+"Oh, I'm all right!" said Betsey, beginning to tremble. She placed a
+piece or two of kindling, fumbled for a match, and turned abruptly and
+went to a window, catching her apron to her eyes. "I'm all right--don't
+mind me!" sobbed Betsey. "But sometimes I think I'll go CRAZY! Mother
+doesn't love me any more, and everybody cried all Thanksgiving Day, and
+I loved Jo more than they think I did--they think I'm too young to
+care--but I just can't BEAR it!"
+
+"Well, you poor little darling!" Susan was crying herself, but she put
+her arms about Betsey, and felt the little thing cling to her, as they
+cried together.
+
+"And now, let me tackle this!" said Susan, when the worst of the storm
+was over a few moments later. She started the fire briskly, and tied an
+apron over her gown, to attack the disorder of the table. Betsey,
+breathing hard, but visibly cheered, ran to and fro on eager errands,
+fell upon the sink with a vigorous mop.
+
+Susan presently carried a tea-tray upstairs, and knocked on Mrs.
+Carroll's door. "Come in," said the rich, familiar voice, and Susan
+entered the dim, chilly, orderly room, her heart beyond any words
+daunted and dismayed. Mrs. Carroll, gaunt and white, wrapped in a dark
+wrapper, and idly rocking in mid-afternoon, was a sight to strike
+terror to a stouter heart than Susan's.
+
+"Oh, Susan?" said she. She said no more. Susan knew that she was
+unwelcome.
+
+"Betsey seems to have her hands full," said Susan gallantly, "so I
+brought up your tea."
+
+"Betts needn't have bothered herself at all," said Mrs. Carroll. Susan
+felt as if she were in a bad dream, but she sat down and resolutely
+plunged into the news of Georgie and Virginia and Mary Lou. Mrs.
+Carroll listened attentively, and asked a few nervous questions; Susan
+suspected them asked merely in a desperate effort to forestall the
+pause that might mean the mention of Josephine's name.
+
+"And what are your own plans, Sue?" she presently asked.
+
+"Well, New York presently, I think," Susan said. "But I'm with Georgie
+now,--unless," she added prettily, "you'll let me stay here for a day
+or two?"
+
+Instant alarm darkened the sick eyes.
+
+"Oh, no, dear!" Mrs. Carroll said quickly. "You're a sweet child to
+think of it, but we mustn't impose on you. No, indeed! This little
+visit is all we must ask now, when you are so upset and busy--"
+
+"I have nothing at all to do," Susan said eagerly. But the older woman
+interrupted her with all the cunning of a sick brain.
+
+"No, dear. Not now! Later perhaps, later we should all love it. But
+we're better left to ourselves now, Sue! Anna shall write you--"
+
+Susan presently left the room, sorely puzzled. But, once in the hall,
+she came quickly to a decision. Phil's door was open, his bed unaired,
+an odor of stale cigarette smoke still in the air. In Betsey's room the
+windows were wide open, the curtains streaming in wet air, everything
+in disorder. Susan found a little old brown gingham dress of Anna's,
+and put it on, hung up her hat, brushed back her hair. A sudden singing
+seized her heart as she went downstairs. Serving these people whom she
+loved filled her with joy. In the dining-room Betsey looked up from her
+book. Her face brightened.
+
+"Oh, Sue--you're going to stay overnight!"
+
+"I'll stay as long as you need me," said Susan, kissing her.
+
+She did not need Betsey's ecstatic welcome; the road was clear and
+straight before her now. Preparing the little dinner was a triumph;
+reducing the kitchen to something like its old order, she found
+absorbing and exhilarating. "We'll bake to-morrow--we'll clean that
+thoroughly to-morrow--we'll make out a list of necessities to-morrow,"
+said Susan.
+
+She insisted upon Philip's changing his wet shoes for slippers when the
+boys came home at six o'clock; she gave little Jim a sisterly kiss.
+
+"Gosh, this is something like!" said Jim simply, eyes upon the hot
+dinner and the orderly kitchen. "This house has been about the
+rottenest place ever, for I don't know how long!"
+
+Philip did not say anything, but Susan did not misread the look in his
+tired eyes. After dinner they kept him a place by the fire while he
+went up to see his mother. When he came down twenty minutes later he
+seemed troubled.
+
+"Mother says that we're imposing on you, Sue," he said. "She made me
+promise to make you go home tomorrow. She says you've had enough to
+bear!"
+
+Betsey sat up with a rueful exclamation, and Jimmy grunted a
+disconsolate "Gosh!" but Susan only smiled.
+
+"That's only part of her--trouble, Phil," she said, reassuringly. And
+presently she serenely led them all upstairs. "We've got to make those
+beds, Betts," said Susan.
+
+"Mother may hear us," said Betsey, fearfully.
+
+"I hope she will!" Susan said. But, if she did, no sound came from the
+mother's room. After awhile Susan noticed that her door, which had been
+ajar, was shut tight.
+
+She lay awake late that night, Betts' tear-stained but serene little
+face close to her shoulder, Betts' hand still tight in hers. The wind
+shook the casements, and the unwearied storm screamed about the house.
+Susan thought of the woman in the next room, wondered if she was lying
+awake, too, alone with sick and sorrowful memories?
+
+She herself fell asleep full of healthy planning for to-morrow's meals
+and house-cleaning, too tired and content for dreams.
+
+Anna came quietly home on the next Saturday evening, to find the little
+group just ready to gather about the dinner-table. A fire glowed in the
+grate, the kitchen beyond was warm and clean and delightfully odorous.
+She said very little then, took her share, with obvious effort at
+first, in their talk, sat behind Betsey's chair when the four presently
+were coaxed by Jim into a game of "Hearts," and advised her little
+sister how to avoid the black queen.
+
+But later, just before they went upstairs, when they were all grouped
+about the last of the fire, she laid her hands on Susan's shoulders,
+and stood Susan off, to look at her fairly.
+
+"No words for it, Sue," said Anna steadily.
+
+"Ah, don't, Nance--" Susan began. But in another instant they were in
+each other's arms, and crying, and much later that evening, after a
+long talk, Betsey confided to Susan that it was the first time Anna had
+cried.
+
+"She told me that when she got home, and saw the way that you have
+changed things," confided Betsey, "she began to think for the first
+time that we might--might get through this, you know!"
+
+Wonderful days for Susan followed, with every hour brimming full of
+working and planning. She was the first one up in the morning, the last
+one in bed at night, hers was the voice that made the last decision,
+and hers the hands for which the most critical of the household tasks
+were reserved. Always conscious of the vacant place in their circle,
+and always aware of the presence of that brooding and silent figure
+upstairs, she was nevertheless so happy sometimes as to think herself a
+hypocrite and heartless. But long afterward Susan knew that the sense
+of dramatic fitness and abiding satisfaction is always the reward of
+untiring and loving service.
+
+She and Betsey read together, walked through the rain to market, and
+came back glowing and tired, to dry their shoes and coats at the
+kitchen fire. They cooked and swept and dusted, tried the furniture in
+new positions, sent Jimmy to the White House for a special new pattern,
+and experimented with house-dresses. Susan heard the first real
+laughter in months ring out at the dinner-table, when she and Betsey
+described their experiences with a crab, who had revived while being
+carried home in their market-basket. Jimmy, silent, rough-headed and
+sweet, followed Susan about like an affectionate terrier, and there was
+another laugh when Jimmy, finishing a bowl in which cake had been
+mixed, remarked fervently, "Gosh, why do you waste time cooking it?"
+
+In the evening they played euchre, or hearts, or parchesi; Susan and
+Philip struggled with chess; there were talks about the fire, and they
+all straggled upstairs at ten o'clock. Anna, appreciative and
+affectionate and brave, came home for almost every Saturday night, and
+these were special occasions. Susan and Betsey wasted their best
+efforts upon the dinner, and filled the vases with flowers and ferns,
+and Philip brought home candy and the new magazines. It was Anna who
+could talk longest with the isolated mother, and Susan and she went
+over every word, afterwards, eager to find a ray of hope.
+
+"I told her about to-day," Anna said one Saturday night, brushing her
+long hair, "and about Billy's walking with us to the ridge. Now, when
+you go in tomorrow, Betsey, I wish you'd begin about Christmas. Just
+say, 'Mother, do you realize that Christmas is a week from to-morrow?'
+and then, if you can, just go right on boldly and say, 'Mother, you
+won't spoil it for us all by not coming downstairs?'"
+
+Betsey looked extremely nervous at this suggestion, and Susan slowly
+shook her head. She knew how hopeless the plan was. She and Betsey
+realized even better than the absent Anna how rooted was Mrs. Carroll's
+unhappy state. Now and then, on a clear day, the mother would be heard
+going softly downstairs for a few moments in the garden; now and then
+at the sound of luncheon preparations downstairs she would come out to
+call down, "No lunch for me, thank you, girls!" Otherwise they never
+saw her except sitting idle, black-clad, in her rocking-chair.
+
+But Christmas was very close now, and must somehow be endured.
+
+"When are you boys going to Mill Valley for greens?" asked Susan, on
+the Saturday before the holiday.
+
+"Would you?" Philip asked slowly. But immediately he added, "How about
+to-morrow, Jimsky?"
+
+"Gee, yes!" said Jim eagerly. "We'll trim up the house like always,
+won't we, Betts?"
+
+"Just like always," Betts answered.
+
+Susan and Betsey fussed with mince-meat and frosted cookies; Susan
+accomplished remarkably good, if rather fragile, pumpkin pies. The four
+decorated the down-stairs rooms with ropes of fragrant green. The
+expressman came and came and came again; Jimmy returned twice a day
+laden from the Post Office; everyone remembered the Carrolls this year.
+
+Anna and Philip and Billy came home together, at midday, on Christmas
+Eve. Betsey took immediate charge of the packages they brought; she
+would not let so much as a postal card be read too soon. Billy had
+spent many a Christmas Eve with the Carrolls; he at once began to run
+errands and carry up logs as a matter of course.
+
+A conference was held over the turkey, lying limp in the center of the
+kitchen table. The six eyed him respectfully.
+
+"Oughtn't this be firm?" asked Anna, fingering a flexible breast-bone.
+
+"No-o--" But Susan was not very sure. "Do you know how to stuff them,
+Anna?"
+
+"Look in the books," suggested Philip.
+
+"We did," Betsey said, "but they give chestnut and mushroom and sweet
+potato--I don't know how Mother does it!"
+
+"You put crumbs in a chopping bowl," began Susan, uncertainly, "at
+least, that's the way Mary Lou did--"
+
+"Why crumbs in a chopping bowl, crumbs are chopped already?" William
+observed sensibly.
+
+"Well--" Susan turned suddenly to Betsey, "Why don't you trot up and
+ask, Betts?" she suggested.
+
+"Oh, Sue!" Betsey's healthy color faded. "I can't!" She turned
+appealing eyes to Anna. Anna was looking at her thoughtfully.
+
+"I think that would be a good thing to do," said Anna slowly. "Just put
+your head in the door and say, 'Mother, how do you stuff a turkey?'"
+
+"But--but--" Betsey began. She got down from the table and went slowly
+on her errand. The others did not speak while they waited for her
+return.
+
+"Hot water, and butter, and herbs, and half an onion chopped fine!"
+announced Betts returning.
+
+"Did she--did she seem to think it was odd, Betts?"
+
+"No, she just answered--like she would have before. She was lying down,
+and she said 'I'm glad you're going to have a turkey---'"
+
+"What!" said Anna, turning white.
+
+"Yes, she did! She said 'You're all good, brave children!'"
+
+"Oh, Betts, she didn't!"
+
+"Honest she did, Phil--" Betsey said aggrievedly, and Anna kissed her
+between laughter and tears.
+
+"But this is quite the best yet!" Susan said, contentedly, as she
+ransacked the breadbox for crumbs.
+
+Just at dinner-time came a great crate of violets. "Jo's favorites,
+from Stewart!" said Anna softly, filling bowls with them. And, as if
+the thought of Josephine had suggested it, she added to Philip in a low
+tone:
+
+"Listen, Phil, are we going to sing to-night?"
+
+For from babyhood, on the eve of the feast, the Carrolls had gathered
+at the piano for the Christmas songs, before they looked at their gifts.
+
+"What do you think?" Philip returned, troubled.
+
+"Oh, I couldn't---" Betts began, choking.
+
+Jimmy gave them all a disgusted and astonished look.
+
+"Gee, why not?" he demanded. "Jo used to love it!"
+
+"How about it, Sue?" Philip asked. Susan stopped short in her work, her
+hands full of violets, and pondered.
+
+"I think we ought to," she said at last.
+
+"I do, too!" Billy supported her unexpectedly. "Jo'd be the first to
+say so. And if we don't this Christmas, we never will again!"
+
+"Your mother taught you to," Susan said, earnestly, "and she didn't
+stop it when your father died. We'll have other breaks in the circle
+some day, but we'll want to go right on doing it, and teaching our own
+children to do it!"
+
+"Yes, you're right," said Anna, "that settles it."
+
+Nothing more was said on the subject; the girls busied themselves with
+the dinner dishes. Phil and Billy drew the nails from the waiting
+Christmas boxes. Jim cracked nuts for the Christmas dinner. It was
+after nine o'clock when the kitchen was in order, the breakfast table
+set, and the sitting-room made ready for the evening's excitement. Then
+Susan went to the old square piano and opened it, and Phil, in absolute
+silence, found her the music she wanted among the long-unused sheets of
+music on the piano.
+
+"If we are going to DO this," said Philip then, "we mustn't break down!"
+
+"Nope," said Betts, at whom the remark seemed to be directed, with a
+gulp. Susan, whose hands were very cold, struck the opening chords, and
+a moment later the young voices rose together, through the silent house.
+
+   "Adeste, fideles,
+    Laeti triumphantes,
+    Venite, venite in Bethlehem...."
+
+Josephine had always sung the little solo. Susan felt it coming, and
+she and Betts took it together, joined on the second phrase by Anna's
+rich, deep contralto. They were all too conscious of their mother's
+overhearing to think of themselves at all. Presently the voices became
+more natural. It was just the Carroll children singing their Christmas
+hymns, as they had sung them all their lives. One of their number was
+gone now; sorrow had stamped all the young faces with new lines, but
+the little circle was drawn all the closer for that. Phil's arm was
+tight about the little brother's shoulder, Betts and Anna were clinging
+to each other.
+
+And as Susan reached the triumphant "Gloria--gloria!" a thrill shook
+her from head to foot. She had not heard a footstep, above the singing,
+but she knew whose fingers were gripping her shoulder, she knew whose
+sweet unsteady voice was added to the younger voices.
+
+She went on to the next song without daring to turn around;--this was
+the little old nursery favorite,
+
+  "Oh, happy night, that brings the morn
+     To shine above the child new-born!
+     Oh, happy star! whose radiance sweet
+     Guided the wise men's eager feet...."
+
+and after that came "Noel,"--surely never sung before, Susan thought,
+as they sang it then! The piano stood away from the wall, and Susan
+could look across it to the big, homelike, comfortable room, sweet with
+violets now, lighted by lamp and firelight, the table cleared of its
+usual books and games, and heaped high with packages. Josephine's
+picture watched them from the mantel; "wherever she is," thought Susan,
+"she knows that we are here together singing!"
+
+  "Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices!
+      Oh, night divine, oh night, when Christ was born!"
+
+The glorious triumphant melody rose like a great rising tide of faith
+and of communion; Susan forgot where she was, forgot that there are
+pain and loss in the world, and, finishing, turned about on the piano
+bench with glowing cheeks and shining eyes.
+
+"Gee, Moth', I never heard you coming down!" said Jim delightedly, as
+the last notes died away and the gap, his seniors had all been
+dreading, was bridged.
+
+"I heard you," Betts said, radiant and clinging to her mother.
+
+Mrs. Carroll was very white, and they could see her tremble.
+
+"Surely, you're going to open your presents to-night, Nance?"
+
+"Not if you'd rather we shouldn't, Mother!"
+
+"Oh, but I want you to!" Her voice had the dull, heavy quality of a
+voice used in sleep, and her eyes clung to Anna's almost with terror.
+No one dared speak of the miracle; Susan spoke with nervousness, but
+Anna bustled about cheerfully, getting her established in her big chair
+by the fire. Billy and Phil returned from the cellar, gasping and bent
+under armfuls of logs. The fire flamed up, and Jimmy, with a bashful
+and deprecatory "Gosh!" attacked the string of the uppermost bundle.
+
+So many packages, so beautifully tied! Such varied and wonderful gifts?
+Susan's big box from Virginia City was not for her alone, and from the
+other packages at least a dozen came to her. Betts, a wonderful
+embroidered kimono slipped on over her house dress, looked like a
+lovely, fantastic picture; and Susan must button her big, woolly
+field-coat up to her chin and down to her knees. "For ONCE you thought
+of a DANDY present, Billy!" said she. This must be shown to Mother;
+that must be shown to Mother; Mother must try on her black silk,
+fringed, embroidered Chinese shawl.
+
+"Jimmy, DEAR, no more candy to-night!" said Mother, in just the old
+voice, and Susan's heart had barely time for a leap of joy when she
+added:
+
+"Oh, Anna, dear, that is LOVELY. You must tell Dr. and Mrs. Jordan that
+is exactly what you've been wanting!"
+
+"And what are your plans for to-morrow, girls?" she asked, just before
+they all went up-stairs, late in the evening.
+
+"Sue and I to early ..." Anna said, "then we get back to get breakfast
+by nine, and all the others to ten o'clock."
+
+"Well, will you girls call me? I'll go with you, and then before the
+others get home we can have everything done and the turkey in."
+
+"Yes, Mother," was all that Anna said, but later she and Susan were
+almost ready to agree with Betts' last remark that night, delivered
+from bed:
+
+"I bet to-morrow's going to be the happiest Christmas we ever had!"
+
+This was the beginning of happier days, for Mrs. Carroll visibly
+struggled to overcome her sorrow now, and Susan and Betsey tried their
+best to help her. The three took long walks, in the wet wintry weather,
+their hats twisting about on their heads, their skirts ballooning in
+the gale. By the middle of March Spring was tucking little patches of
+grass and buttercups in all the sheltered corners, the sunshine gained
+in warmth, the twilights lengthened. Fruit blossoms scented the air,
+and great rain-pools, in the roadways, gave back a clear blue sky.
+
+The girls dragged Mrs. Carroll with them to the woods, to find the
+first creamy blossoms of the trillium, and scented branches of wild
+lilac. One Sunday they packed a lunch basket, and walked, boys and
+girls and mother, up to the old cemetery, high in the hills. Three
+miles of railroad track, twinkling in the sun, and a mile of country
+road, brought them to the old sunken gate. Then among the grassy paths,
+under the oaks, it was easy to find the little stone that bore
+Josephine's name.
+
+It was an April day, but far more like June. There was a wonderful
+silence in the air that set in crystal the liquid notes of the lark,
+and carried for miles the softened click of cowbells, far up on the
+ridges. Sunshine flooded buttercups and poppies on the grassy slopes,
+and where there was shade, under the oaks, "Mission bells" and scarlet
+columbine and cream and lavender iris were massed together. Everywhere
+were dazzling reaches of light, the bay far below shone blue as a
+turquoise, the marshes were threaded with silver ribbons, the sky was
+high and cloudless. Trains went by, with glorious rushes and puffs of
+rising, snowy smoke; even here they could hear the faint clang of the
+bell. A little flock of sheep had come up from the valley, and the soft
+little noises of cropping seemed only to underscore the silence.
+
+Mrs. Carroll walked home between Anna and Phil; Susan and Billy and the
+younger two engaged in spirited conversation on ahead.
+
+"Mother said 'Happiness comes back to us, doesn't it, Nance!'" Anna
+reported that night. "She said, 'We have never been happier than we
+have to-day!'"
+
+"Never been so happy," Susan said sturdily. "When has Philip ever been
+such an unmitigated comfort, or Betts so thoughtful and good?"
+
+"Well, we might have had that, and Jo too," Anna said wistfully.
+
+"Yes, but one DOESN'T, Anna. That's just it!"
+
+Susan had long before this again become a woman of business. When she
+first spoke of leaving the Carrolls, a violent protest had broken out
+from the younger members of the family. This might have been ignored,
+but there was no refusing the sick entreaty of their mother's eyes;
+Susan knew that she was still needed, and was content to delay her
+going indefinitely.
+
+"It seems unfair to you, Sue," Anna protested. But Susan, standing at
+the window, and looking down at the early spring flood of blossoms and
+leaves in the garden, dissented a little sadly.
+
+"No, it's not, Nance," she said. "I only wish I could stay here
+forever. I never want to go out into the world, and meet people again--"
+
+Susan finished with a retrospective shudder.
+
+"I think coming to you when I did saved my reason," she said presently,
+"and I'm in no hurry to go again. No, it would be different, Nance, if
+I had a regular trade or profession. But I haven't and, even if I go to
+New York, I don't want to go until after hot weather. Twenty-six,"
+Susan went on, gravely, "and just beginning! Suppose somebody had cared
+enough to teach me something ten years ago!"
+
+"Your aunt thought you would marry, and you WILL marry, Sue!" Anna
+said, coming to put her arm about her, and lay her cheek against
+Susan's.
+
+"Ah, well!" Susan said presently with a sigh, "I suppose that if I had
+a sixteen-year-old daughter this minute I'd tell her that Mother wanted
+her to be a happy girl at home; she'd be married one of these days, and
+find enough to do!"
+
+But it was only a few days after this talk that one Orville Billings,
+the dyspeptic and middle-aged owner and editor of the "Sausalito Weekly
+Democrat" offered her a position upon his editorial staff, at a salary
+of eight dollars a week. Susan promptly accepted, calmly confident that
+she could do the work, and quite justified in her confidence. For six
+mornings a week she sat in the dingy little office on the water-front,
+reading proof and answering telephone calls, re-writing contributions
+and clipping exchanges. In the afternoons she was free to attend
+weddings, club-meetings or funerals, or she might balance books or send
+out bills, word advertisements, compose notices of birth and death, or
+even brew Mr. Billings a comforting cup of soup or cocoa over the
+gas-jet. Susan usually began the day by sweeping out the office.
+Sometimes Betsey brought down her lunch and they picnicked together.
+There was always a free afternoon or two in the week.
+
+On the whole, it was a good position, and Susan enjoyed her work,
+enjoyed her leisure, enormously enjoyed the taste of life.
+
+"For years I had a good home, and a good position, and good friends and
+was unhappy," she said to Billy. "Now I've got exactly the same things
+and I'm so happy I can scarcely sleep at night. Happiness is merely a
+habit."
+
+"No, no," he protested, "the Carrolls are the most extraordinary people
+in the world, Sue. And then, anyway, you're different--you've learned."
+
+"Well, I've learned this," she said, "There's a great deal more
+happiness, everywhere, than one imagines. Every baby brings whole tons
+of it, and roast chickens and apple-pies and new lamps and husbands
+coming home at night are making people happy all the time! People are
+celebrating birthdays and moving into bigger houses, and having their
+married daughters home for visits, right straight along. But when you
+pass a dark lower flat on a dirty street, somehow it doesn't occur to
+you that the people who live in it are saving up for a home in the
+Western Addition!"
+
+"Well, Sue, unhappiness is bad enough, when there's a reason for it,"
+William said, "but when you've taken your philanthropy course, I wish
+you'd come out and demonstrate to the women at the Works that the only
+thing that keeps them from being happy and prosperous is not having the
+sense to know that they are!"
+
+"I? What could I ever teach anyone!" laughed Susan Brown.
+
+Yet she was changing and learning, as she presently had reason to see.
+It was on a hot Saturday in July that Susan, leaving the office at two
+o'clock, met the lovely Mrs. John Furlong on the shore road. Even more
+gracious and charming than she had been as Isabel Wallace, the young
+matron quite took possession of Susan. Where had Susan been hiding--and
+how wonderfully well she was looking--and why hadn't she come to see
+Isabel's new house?
+
+"Be a darling!" said Mrs. Furlong, "and come along home with me now!
+Jack is going to bring Sherwin Perry home to dinner with him, and I
+truly, truly need a girl! Run up and change your dress if you want to,
+while I'm making my call, and meet me on the four o'clock train!"
+
+Susan hesitated, filled with unreasoning dread of a plunge back into
+the old atmosphere, but in the end she did go up to change her
+dress,--rejoicing that the new blue linen was finished, and did join
+Isabel at the train, filled with an absurd regret at having to miss a
+week-end at home, and Anna.
+
+Isabel, very lovely in a remarkable gown and hat, chatted cheerfully
+all the way home, and led the guest to quite the smartest of the
+motor-cars that were waiting at the San Rafael station. Susan was
+amazed--a little saddened--to find that the beautiful gowns and
+beautiful women and lovely homes had lost their appeal; to find herself
+analyzing even Isabel's happy chatter with a dispassionate, quiet
+unbelief.
+
+The new home proved to be very lovely; a harmonious mixture of all the
+sorts of doors and windows, porches and roofs that the young owners
+fancied. Isabel, trailing her frothy laces across the cool deep
+hallway, had some pretty, matronly questions to ask of her butler,
+before she could feel free for her guest. Had Mrs. Wallace
+telephoned--had the man fixed the mirror in Mr. Furlong's bathroom--had
+the wine come?
+
+"I have no housekeeper," said Isabel, as they went upstairs, "and I
+sha'n't have one. I think I owe it to myself, and to the maids, Sue, to
+take that responsibility entirely!" Susan recognized the unchanged
+sweetness and dutifulness that had marked the old Isabel, who could
+with perfect simplicity and reason seem to make a virtue of whatever
+she did.
+
+They went into the sitting-room adjoining the young mistress' bedroom,
+an airy exquisite apartment all colonial white and gay flowered
+hangings, with French windows, near which the girls settled themselves
+for tea.
+
+"Nothing's new with me," Susan said, in answer to Isabel's smiling
+inquiry. What could she say to hold the interest of this radiant young
+princess? Isabel accordingly gave her own news, some glimpses of her
+European wedding journey, some happy descriptions of wedding gifts. The
+Saunders were abroad, she told Susan, Ella and Emily and their mother
+with Kenneth, at a German cure. "And Mary Peacock--did you know her? is
+with them," said Isabel. "I think that's an engagement!"
+
+"Doesn't that seem horrible? You know he's incurable--" Susan said,
+slowly stirring her cup. But she instantly perceived that the comment
+was not acceptable to young Mrs. Furlong. After all, thought Susan,
+Society is a very jealous institution, and Isabel was of its inner
+circle.
+
+"Oh, I think that was all very much exaggerated!" Isabel said lightly,
+pleasantly. "At least, Sue," she added kindly, "you and I are not fair
+judges of it!" And after a moment's silence, for Susan kept a passing
+sensation of irritation admirably concealed, she added, "--But I didn't
+show you my pearls!"
+
+A maid presently brought them, a perfect string, which Susan slipped
+through her fingers with real delight.
+
+"Woman, they're the size of robins' eggs!" she said. Isabel was all
+sweet gaiety again. She touched the lovely chain tenderly, while she
+told of Jack's promise to give her her choice of pearls or a motor-car
+for her birthday, and of his giving her both! She presently called the
+maid again.
+
+"Pauline, put these back, will you, please?" asked Isabel, smilingly.
+When the maid was gone she added, "I always trust the maids that way!
+They love to handle my pretty things,--and who can blame them?--and I
+let them whenever I can!"
+
+They were still lingering over tea when Isabel heard her husband in the
+adjoining room, and went in, closing the door after her, to welcome him.
+
+"He's all dirty from tennis," said the young wife, coming back and
+resuming her deep chair, with a smile, "and cross because I didn't go
+and pick him up at the courts!"
+
+"Oh, that was my fault!" Susan exclaimed, remembering that Isabel could
+not always be right, unless innocent persons would sometimes agree to
+be wrong. Mrs. Furlong smiled composedly, a lovely vision in her loose
+lacy robe.
+
+"Never mind, he'll get over it!" she said and, accompanying Susan to
+one of the handsome guest-rooms, she added confidentially, "My dear,
+when a man's first married, ANYTHING that keeps him from his wife makes
+him cross! It's no more your fault than mine!"
+
+Sherwin Perry, the fourth at dinner, was a rosy, clean-shaven, stupid
+youth, who seemed absorbed in his food, and whose occasional violent
+laughter, provoked by his host's criticism of different tennis-players,
+turned his big ears red. John Furlong told Susan a great deal of his
+new yacht, rattling off technical terms with simple pride, and quoting
+at length one of the men at the ship-builders' yard.
+
+"Gosh, he certainly is a marvelous fellow,--Haley is," said John,
+admiringly. "I wish you could hear him talk! He knows everything!"
+
+Isabel was deeply absorbed in her new delightful responsibilities as
+mistress of the house.
+
+"Excuse me just a moment, Susan----Jack, the stuff for the library
+curtains came, and I don't think it's the same," said Isabel or, "Jack,
+dear, I accepted for the Gregorys'," or "The Wilsons didn't get their
+card after all, Jack. Helen told Mama so!" All these matters were
+discussed at length between husband and wife, Susan occasionally
+agreeing or sympathizing. Lake Tahoe, where the Furlongs expected to go
+in a day or two, was also a good deal considered.
+
+"We ought to sit out-of-doors this lovely night," said Isabel, after
+dinner. But conversation languished, and they began a game of bridge.
+This continued for perhaps an hour, then the men began bidding madly,
+and doubling and redoubling, and Isabel good-naturedly terminated the
+game, and carried her guest upstairs with her.
+
+Here, in Susan's room, they had a talk, Isabel advisory and interested,
+Susan instinctively warding off sympathy and concern.
+
+"Sue,--you won't be angry?" said Isabel, affectionately "but I do so
+hate to see you drifting, and want to have you as happy as I am! Is
+there somebody?"
+
+"Not unless you count the proprietor of the 'Democrat,'" Susan laughed.
+
+"It's no laughing matter, Sue---" Isabel began, seriously. But Susan,
+laying a quick hand upon her arm, said smilingly:
+
+"Isabel! Isabel! What do you, of all women, know about the problems and
+the drawbacks of a life like mine?"
+
+"Well, I do feel this, Sue," Isabel said, just a little ruffled, but
+smiling, too, "I've had money since I was born, I admit. But money has
+never made any real difference with me. I would have dressed more
+plainly, perhaps, as a working woman, but I would always have had
+everything dainty and fresh, and Father says that I really have a man's
+mind; that I would have climbed right to the top in any position! So
+don't talk as if I didn't know ANYTHING!"
+
+Presently she heard Jack's step, and ran off to her own room. But she
+was back again in a few moments. Jack had just come up to find some
+cigars, it appeared. Jack was such a goose!
+
+"He's a dear," said Susan. Isabel agreed. "Jack was wonderful," she
+said. Had Susan noticed him with older people? And with babies----
+
+"That's all we need, now," said the happy Isabel.
+
+"Babies are darling," agreed Susan, feeling elderly and unmarried.
+
+"Yes, and when you're married," Isabel said dreamily, "they seem so--so
+sacred--but you'll see yourself, some day, I hope. Hark!"
+
+And she was gone again, only to come back. It was as if Isabel gained
+fresh pleasure in her new estate by seeing it afresh through Susan's
+eyes. She had the longing of the bride to give her less-experienced
+friend just a glimpse of the new, delicious relationship.
+
+Left alone at last, Susan settled herself luxuriously in bed, a heap of
+new books beside her, soft pillows under her head, a great light
+burning over her shoulder, and the fragrance of the summer night
+stealing in through the wide-opened windows. She gave a great sigh of
+relief, wondered, between desultory reading, at how early an hour she
+could decently excuse herself in the morning.
+
+"I SUPPOSE that, if I fell heir to a million, I might build a house
+like this, and think that a string of pearls was worth buying," said
+Susan to herself, "but I don't believe I would!"
+
+Isabel would not let her hurry away in the morning; it was too pleasant
+to have so gracious and interested a guest, so sympathetic a witness to
+her own happiness. She and Susan lounged through the long morning,
+Susan admired the breakfast service, admired the rugs, admired her
+host's character. Nothing really interested Isabel, despite her polite
+questions and assents, but Isabel's possessions, Isabel's husband,
+Isabel's genius for housekeeping and entertaining. The gentlemen
+appeared at noon, and the four went to the near-by hotel for luncheon,
+and here Susan saw Peter Coleman again, very handsome and gay, in white
+flannels, and very much inclined toward the old relationship with her.
+Peter begged them to spend the afternoon with him, trying the new
+motor-car, and Isabel was charmed to agree. Susan agreed too, after a
+hesitation she did not really understand in herself. What pleasanter
+prospect could anyone have?
+
+While they were loitering over their luncheon, in the shaded,
+delightful coolness of the lunch-room, suddenly Dolly Ripley,
+over-dressed, gay and talkative as always, came up to their table.
+
+She greeted the others negligently, but showed a certain enthusiasm for
+Susan.
+
+"Hello, Isabel," said Dolly, "I saw you all come in--'he seen that a
+mother and child was there!'"
+
+This last was the special phrase of the moment. Susan had heard it
+forty times within the past twenty-four hours, and was at no pains to
+reconcile it to this particular conversation.
+
+"But you, you villain--where've you been?" pursued Dolly, to Susan,
+"why don't you come down and spend a week with me? Do you see anything
+of our dear friend Emily in these days?"
+
+"Emily's abroad," said Susan, and Peter added:
+
+"With Ella and Mary Peacock--'he seen that a mother and child was
+there!'"
+
+"Oh, you devil!" said Dolly, laughing. "But honestly," she added gaily
+to Susan, "'how you could put up with Em Saunders as long as you did
+was a mystery to ME! It's a lucky thing you're not like me, Susan van
+Dusen, people all tell me I'm more like a boy than a girl,--when I
+think a thing I'm going to SAY it or bust! Now, listen, you're coming
+down to me for a week---"
+
+Susan left the invitation open, to Isabel's concern.
+
+"Of course, as you say, you have a position, Sue," said Isabel, when
+they were spinning over the country roads, in Peter's car, "but, my
+dear, Dolly Ripley and Con Fox don't speak now,--Connie's going on the
+stage, they say!---"
+
+"'A mother and child will be there', all right!" said John Furlong,
+leaning back from the front seat. Isabel laughed, but went on seriously,
+
+"---and Dolly really wants someone to stay with her, Sue, and think
+what a splendid thing that would be!"
+
+Susan answered absently. They had taken the Sausalito road, to get the
+cool air from the bay, and it flashed across her that if she COULD
+persuade them to drop her at the foot of the hill, she could be at home
+in five minutes,--back in the dear familiar garden, with Anna and Phil
+lazily debating the attractions of a walk and a row, and Betsey
+compounding weak, cold, too-sweet lemonade. Suddenly the only important
+thing in the world seemed to be her escape.
+
+There they were, just as she had pictured them; Mrs. Carroll,
+gray-haired, dignified in her lacy light black, was in a deep chair on
+the lawn, reading aloud from the paper; Betsey, sitting at her feet,
+twisted and folded the silky ears of the setter; Anna was lying in a
+hammock, lazily watching her mother, and Billy Oliver had joined the
+boys, sprawling comfortably on the grass.
+
+A chorus of welcome greeted Susan.
+
+"Oh, Sue, you old duck!" said Betsey, "we've just been waiting for you
+to decide what we'd do!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+These were serene and sweet days for them all, and if sometimes the old
+sorrow returned for awhile, and there were still bitter longing and
+grieving for Josephine, there were days, too, when even the mother
+admitted to herself that some new tender element had crept into their
+love for each other since the little sister's going, the invisible
+presence was the closest and strongest of the ties that bound them all.
+Happiness came back, planning and dreaming began again. Susan teased
+Anna and Betsey into wearing white again, when the hot weather came,
+Billy urged the first of the walks to the beach without Jo, and Anna
+herself it was who began to extend the old informal invitations to the
+nearest friends and neighbors for the tea-hour on Saturday. Susan was
+to have her vacation in August; Billy was to have at least a week; Anna
+had been promised the fortnight of Susan's freedom, and Jimmy and
+Betsey could hardly wait for the camping trip they planned to take all
+together to the little shooting box in the mountains.
+
+One August afternoon Susan, arriving home from the office at one
+o'clock, found Mrs. Carroll waiting to ask her a favor.
+
+"Sue, dear, I'm right in the middle of my baking," Mrs. Carroll said,
+when Susan was eating a late lunch from the end of the kitchen table,
+"and here's a special delivery letter for Billy, and Billy's not coming
+over here to-night! Phil's taking Jimmy and Betts to the circus--they
+hadn't been gone five minutes when this thing came!"
+
+"Why a special delivery--and why here--and what is it?" asked Susan,
+wiping buttery fingers carefully before she took the big envelope in
+her hands. "It's from Edward Dean," she said, examining it with
+unaffected interest. "Oh, I know what this is--it's about that
+blue-print business!" Susan finished, enlightened. "Probably Mr. Dean
+didn't have Billy's new address, but wanted him to have these to work
+on, on Sunday."
+
+"It feels as if something bulky was in there," Mrs. Carroll said. "I
+wish we could get him by telephone! As bad luck would have it, he's a
+good deal worried about the situation at the works, and told me he
+couldn't possibly leave the men this week. What ARE the blue-prints?"
+
+"Why, it's some little patent of Billy's,--a deep-petticoat,
+double-groove porcelain insulator, if that means anyone to anyone!"
+laughed Susan. "He's been raving about it for weeks! And he and Mr.
+Dean have to rush the patent, because they've been using these things
+for some time, and they have to patent them before they've been used a
+year, it seems!"
+
+"I was just thinking, Sue, that, if you didn't mind crossing to the
+city with them, you could put on a special-delivery stamp and then
+Billy would have them to-night. Otherwise, they won't leave here until
+tomorrow morning."
+
+"Why, of course, that'll do!" Susan said willingly. "I can catch the
+two-ten. Or better yet, Aunt Jo, I'll take them right out there and
+deliver them myself."
+
+"Oh, dearie, no! Not if there's any ugliness among the men, not if they
+are talking of a strike!" the older woman protested.
+
+"Oh, they're always striking," Susan said easily. "And if I can't get
+him to bring me back," she added, "don't worry, for I may go stay with
+Georgie overnight, and come back with Bill in the morning!"
+
+She was not sorry to have an errand on this exquisite afternoon. The
+water of the bay was as smooth as blue glass, gulls were flashing and
+dipping in the steamer's wake. Sailboats, waiting for the breeze,
+drifted idly toward the Golden Gate; there was not a cloud in the blue
+arch of the sky. The little McDowell whistled for her dock at Alcatraz.
+On the prison island men were breaking stone with a metallic
+clink--clink--clink.
+
+Susan found the ferry-place in San Francisco hot and deserted; the tar
+pavements were softened under-foot; gongs and bells of cars made a
+raucous clamor. She was glad to establish herself on the front seat of
+a Mission Street car and leave the crowded water-front behind her.
+
+They moved along through congested traffic, past the big docks, and
+turned in between the great ware-houses that line Mission Street. The
+hot streets were odorous of leather and machine-oils, ropes and coffee.
+Over the door of what had been Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's hung a new
+bright sign, "Hunter, Hunter & Brauer." Susan caught a glimpse, through
+the plaster ornamentation of the facade, of old Front Office, which
+seemed to be full of brightly nickeled samples now, and gave back a
+blinking flash of light to the afternoon sun.
+
+"Bathroom fixtures," thought Susan. "He always wanted to carry them!"
+What a long two years since she had known or cared what pleased or
+displeased Mr. Brauer!
+
+The car clanged out of the warehouse district, past cheap flats and
+cheap shops, and saloons, and second-hand stores, boiling over, at
+their dark doorways, with stoves and rocking-chairs, lamps and china
+ware. This neighborhood was sordid enough, but crowded, happy and full
+of life. Now the road ran through less populous streets; houses stood
+at curious angles, and were unpainted, or painted in unusual colors.
+Great ware-houses and factories shadowed little clusters of
+workingmen's homes; here and there were country-like strips of brown
+palings with dusty mallow bushes spraying about them, or a lean cow
+grazing near a bare little wooden farmhouse. Dumps, diffusing a dry and
+dreadful odor, blighted the prospect with their pyramids of cans and
+broken umbrellas; little grocery stores, each with its wide unrailed
+porch, country fashion, and its bar accessible through the shop, or by
+a side entrance, often marked the corners on otherwise vacant blocks.
+
+Susan got off the car in the very shadow of the "works," and stood for
+a moment looking at the great foundries, the dark and dirty yards, with
+their interlacing tracks and loaded cars, the enormous brick buildings
+set with rows and rows of blank and dusty windows, the brick chimneys
+and the black pipes of the blast-furnaces, the heaps of twisted old
+iron and of ashes, the blowing dust and glare of the hot summer day.
+She had been here with Billy before, had peeped into the furnace rooms,
+all a glare of white heat and silhouetted forms, had breathed the ashy
+and choking air.
+
+Now she turned and walked toward the rows of workingmen's cottages that
+had been built, solidly massed, nearby. Presenting an unbroken,
+two-story facade, the long buildings were divided into tiny houses that
+had each two flat-faced windows upstairs, and a door and one window
+downstairs. The seven or eight long buildings might have been as many
+gigantic German toys, dotted with apertures by some accurate brush, and
+finished with several hundred flights of wooden steps and several
+hundred brick chimneys. Ugly when they first were built, they were even
+uglier now, for the exterior was of some shallow plaster that chipped
+and cracked and stained and in nearly every dooryard dirt and disorder
+added a last touch to the unlovely whole.
+
+Children swarmed everywhere this afternoon; heavy, dirty-faced babies
+sat in the doorways, women talked and laughed over the low dividing
+fences. Gates hung awry, and baby carriages and garbage tins obstructed
+the bare, trampled spaces that might have been little gardens.
+
+Up and down the straight narrow streets, and loitering everywhere, were
+idle, restless men. A few were amusing babies, or joining in the idle
+chatter of the women, but for the most part they were silent, or
+talking in low tones among themselves.
+
+"Strikers!" Susan said to herself, with a thrill.
+
+Over the whole curious, exotic scene the late summer sunshine streamed
+generously; the street was hot, the talking women fanned themselves
+with their aprons.
+
+Susan, walking slowly alone, found herself attracting a good deal of
+attention, and was amazed to find that it frightened her a little. She
+was conspicuously a newcomer, and could not but overhear the comments
+that some of the watching young men made as she went by.
+
+"Say, what's that song about 'I'd leave my happy home for you,' Bert?"
+she heard them say. "Don't ask me! I'm expecting my gurl any minute!"
+and "Pretty good year for peaches, I hear!"
+
+Susan had to pretend that she did not hear, but she heartily wished
+herself back on the car. However, there was nothing to do but walk
+senselessly on, or stop and ask her way. She began to look furtively
+about for a friendly face, and finally stopped beside a dooryard where
+a slim pretty young woman was sitting with a young baby in her arms.
+
+"Excuse me," said Susan, "but do you know where Mr. William Oliver
+lives, now?"
+
+The girl studied her quietly for a minute, with a closed, composed
+mouth. Then she said evenly:
+
+"Joe!"
+
+"Huh?" said a tall young man, lathered for shaving, who came at once to
+the door.
+
+"I'm trying to find Mr. Oliver--William Oliver," Susan said smiling.
+"I'm a sort of cousin of his, and I have a special delivery letter for
+him."
+
+Joe, who had been rapidly removing the lather from his face with a
+towel, took the letter and, looking at it, gravely conceded:
+
+"Well, maybe that's right, too! Sure you can see him. We're haying a
+conference up at the office tonight," he explained, "and I have to
+clean up or I'd take you to him myself! Maybe you'd do it, Lizzie?" he
+suggested to his wife, who was all friendliness to Susan now, and
+showed even a hint of respect in her friendliness.
+
+"Well, I could nurse him later, Joe," she agreed willingly, in
+reference to the baby, "or maybe Mama--Mama!" she interrupted herself
+to call.
+
+An immense, gray-haired old woman, who had been an interested auditor
+of this little conversation, got up from the steps of the next house,
+and came to the fence. Susan liked Ellan Cudahy at first sight, and
+smiled at her as she explained her quest.
+
+"And you're Mr. Oliver's sister, I c'n see that," said Mrs. Cudahy
+shrewdly.
+
+"No, I'm not!" Susan smiled. "My name is Brown. But Mr. Oliver was a
+sort of ward of my aunt's, and so we call ourselves cousins."
+
+"Well, of course ye wud," agreed Mrs. Cudahy. "Wait till I pin on me
+hat wanst, and I'll take you up to the Hall. He's at the Hall, Joe, I
+dunno?" she asked.
+
+Joseph assenting, they set out for the Hall, under a fire of curious
+eyes.
+
+"Joe's cleaning up for the conference," said Mrs. Cudahy. "There's a
+committee going to meet tonight. The old man-that's Carpenter, the boss
+of the works, will be there, and some of the others."
+
+Susan nodded intelligently, but Saturday evening seemed to her a
+curious time to select for a conference. They walked along in silence,
+Mrs. Cudahy giving a brief yet kindly greeting to almost every man they
+met.
+
+"Hello, Dan, hello, Gene; how are ye, Jim?" said she, and one young
+giant, shouldering his scowling way home, she stopped with a fat
+imperative hand. "How's it going, Jarge?"
+
+"It's going rotten," said George, sullenly evading her eyes.
+
+"Well,--don't run by me that way--stand still!" said the old woman.
+"What d'ye mean by rotten?"
+
+"Aw, I mean rotten!" said George ungraciously. "D'ye know what the old
+man is going to do now? He says that he'll give Billy just two or three
+days more to settle this damn thing, and then he'll wire east and get a
+carload of men right straight through from Philadelphia. He said so to
+young Newman, and Frank Harris was in the room, and heard him. He says
+they're picked out, and all ready to come!"
+
+"And what does Mr. Oliver say?" asked Mrs. Cudahy, whose face had grown
+dark.
+
+"I don't know! I went up to the Hall, but at the first word he says,
+'For God's sake, George--None of that here! They'll mob the old man if
+they hear it!' They was all crowding about him, so I quit."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Cudahy, considering, "there's to be a conference at
+six-thirty, but befoor that, Mr. Oliver and Clem and Rassette and
+Weidermeyer are going to meet t'gether in Mr. Oliver's room at
+Rassette's house. Ye c'n see them there."
+
+"Well, maybe I will," said George, softening, as he left them.
+
+"What's the conference about?" asked Susan pleasantly.
+
+"What's the--don't tell me ye don't know THAT!" Mrs. Cudahy said, eying
+her shrewdly.
+
+"I knew there was a strike---" Susan began ashamedly.
+
+"Sure, there's a strike," Mrs. Cudahy agreed, with quiet grimness, and
+under her breath she added heavily, "Sure there is!"
+
+"And are Mr. Oliver's--are the men out?" Susan asked.
+
+"There's nine hundred men out," Mrs. Cudahy told her, coldly.
+
+"Nine hundred!" Susan stopped short. "But Billy's not responsible for
+all that!" she added, presently.
+
+"I don't know who is, then," Mrs. Cudahy admitted grimly.
+
+"But--but he never had more than thirty or forty men under him in his
+life!" Susan said eagerly.
+
+"Oh? Well, maybe he doesn't know anything about it, thin!" Mrs. Cudahy
+agreed with magnificent contempt.
+
+But her scorn was wasted upon another Irishwoman. Susan stared at her
+for a moment, then the dimples came into view, and she burst into her
+infectious laughter.
+
+"Aren't you ashamed to be so mean!" laughed Susan. "Won't you tell me
+about it?"
+
+Mrs. Cudahy laughed too, a little out of countenance.
+
+"I misdoubt me you're a very bad lot!" said she, in high good humor,
+"but 'tis no joke for the boys," she went on, sobering quickly. "They
+wint on strike a week ago. Mr. Oliver presided at a meeting two weeks
+come Friday night, and the next day the boys went out!"
+
+"What for?" asked Susan.
+
+"For pay, and for hours," the older woman said. "They want regular pay
+for overtime, wanst-and-a-half regular rates. And they want the
+Chinymen to go,--sure, they come in on every steamer," said Mrs. Cudahy
+indignantly, "and they'll work twelve hours for two bits! Bether
+hours," she went on, checking off the requirements on fat, square
+fingers, "overtime pay, no Chinymen, and--and--oh, yes, a risin' scale
+of wages, if you know what that is? And last, they want the union
+recognized!"
+
+"Well, that's not much!" Susan said generously. "Will they get it?"
+
+"The old man is taking his time," Mrs. Cudahy's lips shut in a worried
+line. "There's no reason they shouldn't," she resumed presently, "We're
+the only open shop in this part of the world, now. The big works has
+acknowledged the union, and there's no reason why this wan shouldn't!"
+
+"And Billy, is he the one they talk to, the Carpenters I mean--the
+authorities?" asked Susan.
+
+"They wouldn't touch Mr. William Oliver wid a ten-foot pole," said Mrs.
+Cudahy proudly. "Not they! Half this fuss is because they want to get
+rid of him--they want him out of the way, d'ye see? No, he talks to the
+committee, and thin they meet with the committee. My husband's on it,
+and Lizzie's Joe goes along to report what they do."
+
+"But Billy has a little preliminary conference in his room first?"
+Susan asked.
+
+"He does," the other assented, with a chuckle. "He'll tell thim what to
+say! He's as smart as old Carpenter himself!" said Mrs. Cudahy, "he's
+prisidint of the local; Clem says he'd ought to be King!" And Susan was
+amazed to notice that the strong old mouth was trembling with emotion,
+and the fine old eyes dimmed with tears. "The crowd av thim wud lay
+down their lives for him, so they would!" said Mrs. Cudahy.
+
+"And--and is there much suffering yet?" Susan asked a little timidly.
+This cheery, sun-bathed scene was not quite her idea of a labor strike.
+
+"Well, some's always in debt and trouble annyway," Mrs. Cudahy said,
+temperately, "and of course 'tis the worse for thim now!"
+
+She led Susan across an unpaved, deeply rutted street, and opened a
+stairway door, next to a saloon entrance.
+
+Susan was glad to have company on the bare and gloomy stairs they
+mounted. Mrs. Cudahy opened a double-door at the top, and they looked
+into the large smoke-filled room that was the "Hall."
+
+It was a desolate and uninviting room, with spirals of dirty, colored
+tissue-paper wound about the gas-fixtures, sunshine streaming through
+the dirty, specked windows, chairs piled on chairs against the long
+walls, and cuspidors set at regular intervals along the floor. There
+was a shabby table set at a platform at one end.
+
+About this table was a group of men, talking eagerly and noisily to
+Billy Oliver, who stood at the table looking abstractedly at various
+letters and papers.
+
+At the entrance of the women, the talk died away. Mrs. Cudahy was
+greeted with somewhat sheepish warmth; the vision of an extremely
+pretty girl in Mrs. Cudahy's care seemed to affect these vociferous
+laborers profoundly. They began confused farewells, and melted away.
+
+"All right, old man, so long!" "I'll see you later, Oliver," "That was
+about all, Billy, I must be getting along," "Good-night, Billy, you
+know where I am if you want me!" "I'll see you later,--good-night, sir!"
+
+"Hello, Mrs. Cudahy--hello, Susan!" said Billy, discovering them with
+the obvious pleasure a man feels when unexpectedly confronted by his
+womenkind. "I think you were a peach to do that, Sue!" he said
+gratefully, when the special delivery letter had been read. "Now I can
+get right at it, to-morrow!--Say, wait a minute, Clem---"
+
+He caught by the arm an old man,--larger, more grizzled, even more blue
+of eye than was Susan's new friend, his wife,--and presented her to Mr.
+Cudahy.
+
+"---My adopted sister, Clem! Sue, he's about as good as they come!"
+
+"Sister, is it?" asked Mrs. Cudahy, "Whin I last heard it was cousin!
+What do you know about that, Clem?"
+
+"Well, that gives you a choice!" said Susan, laughing.
+
+"Then I'll take the Irishman's choice, and have something different
+entirely!" the old woman said, in great good spirits, as they all went
+down the stairs.
+
+"I'll take me own gir'rl home, and give you two a chanst," said Clem,
+in the street. "That'll suit you, Wil'lum, I dunno?"
+
+"You didn't ask if it would suit ME," sparkled Susan Brown.
+
+"Well, that's so!" he said delightedly, stopping short to scratch his
+head, and giving her a rueful smile. "Sure, I'm that popular that there
+never was a divvle like me at all!"
+
+"You get out, and leave my girl alone!" said William, with a shove. And
+his tired face brightened wonderfully, as he slipped his hand under
+Susan's arm.
+
+"Now, Sue," he said contentedly, "we'll go straight to Rassette's--but
+wait a minute--I've got to telephone!"
+
+Susan stood alone on the corner, quite as a matter of course, while he
+dashed into a saloon. In a moment he was back, introducing her to a
+weak-looking, handsome young man, who, after a few wistful glances back
+toward the swinging door, walked away with them, and was presently left
+in the care of a busily cooking little wife and a fat baby. Billy was
+stopped and addressed on all sides. Susan found it pleasantly exciting
+to be in his company, and his pleasure in showing her this familiar
+environment was unmistakable.
+
+"Everything's rotten and upset now," said Billy, delighted with her
+friendly interest and sympathy. "You ought to see these people when
+they aren't on strike! Now, let's see, it's five thirty. I'll tell you,
+Sue, if you'll miss the seven-five boat, I'll just wait here until we
+get the news from the conference, then I'll blow you to Zink's best
+dinner, and take you home on the ten-seventeen."
+
+"Oh, Bill, forget me!" she said, concerned for his obvious fatigue, for
+his face was grimed with perspiration and very pale. "I feel like a
+fool to have come in on you when you're so busy and so distressed!
+Anything will be all right---"
+
+"Sue, I wouldn't have had you miss this for a million, if you can only
+get along, somehow!" he said eagerly. "Some other time---"
+
+"Oh, Billy, DON'T bother about me!" Susan dismissed herself with an
+impatient little jerk of her head. "Does this new thing worry you?" she
+asked.
+
+"What new thing?" he asked sharply.
+
+"Why, this--this plan of Mr. Carpenter's to bring a train-load of men
+on from Philadelphia," said Susan, half-proud and half-frightened.
+
+"Who said so?" he demanded abruptly.
+
+"Why, I don't know his name, Billy--yes I do, too! Mrs. Cudahy called
+him Jarge---"
+
+"George Weston, that was!" Billy's eyes gleamed. "What else did he say?"
+
+"He said a man named Edward Harris---" "Sure it wasn't Frank Harris?"
+"Frank Harris--that was it! He said Harris overheard him--or heard him
+say so!"
+
+"Harris didn't hear anything that the old man didn't mean to have him
+hear," said Billy grimly. "But that only makes it the more probably
+true! Lord, Lord, I wonder where I can get hold of Weston!"
+
+"He's going to be at that conference, at half-past five," Susan assured
+him. He gave her an amused look.
+
+"Aren't you the little Foxy-Quiller!" he said. "Gosh, I do love to have
+you out here, Sue!" he added, grinning like a happy small boy. "This is
+Rassette's, where I'm staying," he said, stopping before the very
+prettiest and gayest of little gardens. "Come in and meet Mrs.
+Rassette."
+
+Susan went in to meet the blonde, pretty, neatly aproned little lady of
+the house.
+
+"The boys already are upstairs, Mr. Oliver," said Mrs. Rassette, and as
+Billy went up the little stairway with flying leaps, she led Susan into
+her clean little parlor. Susan noticed a rug whose design was an
+immense brown dog, a lamp with a green, rose-wreathed shade, a carved
+wooden clock, a little mahogany table beautifully inlaid with white
+holly, an enormous pair of mounted antlers, and a large concertina,
+ornamented with a mosaic design in mother-of-pearl. The wooden floor
+here, and in the hall, was unpainted, but immaculately clean and the
+effect of the whole was clean and gay and attractive.
+
+"You speak very wonderful English for a foreigner, Mrs. Rassette."
+
+"I?" The little matron showed her white teeth. "But I was born in New
+Jersey," she explained, "only when I am seven my Mama sends me home to
+my Grandma, so that I shall know our country. It is a better country
+for the working people," she added, with a smile, and added
+apologetically, "I must look into my kitchen; I am afraid my boy shall
+fall out of his chair."
+
+"Oh, let's go out!" Susan followed her into a kitchen as spotless as
+the rest of the house, and far more attractive. The floor was
+cream-white, the woodwork and the tables white, and immaculate blue
+saucepans hung above an immaculate sink.
+
+Three babies, the oldest five years old, were eating their supper in
+the evening sunshine, and now fixed their solemn blue eyes upon the
+guest. Susan thought they were the cleanest babies she had ever seen;
+through their flaxen mops she could see their clean little heads, their
+play-dresses were protected by checked gingham aprons worked in
+cross-stitch designs. Marie and Mina and Ernie were kissed in turn,
+after their mother had wiped their rosy little faces with a damp cloth.
+
+"I am baby-mad!" said Susan, sitting down with the baby in her lap. "A
+strike is pretty hard, when you have these to think of, isn't it?" she
+asked sympathetically.
+
+"Yes, we don't wish that we should move," Mrs. Rassette agreed
+placidly, "We have been here now four years, and next year it is our
+hope that we go to our ranch."
+
+"Oh, have you a ranch?" asked Susan.
+
+"We are buying a little ranch, in the Santa Clara valley," the other
+woman said, drawing three bubbling Saucepans forward on her shining
+little range. "We have an orchard there, and there is a town nearby
+where Joe shall have a shop of his own. And there is a good school! But
+until my Marie is seven, we think we shall stay here. So I hope the
+strike will stop. My husband can always get work in Los Angeles, but it
+is so far to move, if we must come back next year!"
+
+Susan watched her, serenely beginning to prepare the smallest girl for
+bed; the helpful Marie trotting to and fro with nightgowns and
+slippers. All the while the sound of men's voices had been rising and
+falling steadily in an upstairs room. Presently they heard the scraping
+of chairs on a bare floor, and a door slammed.
+
+Billy Oliver put his head into the kitchen. He looked tired, but smiled
+when he saw Susan with the sleepy baby in her lap.
+
+"Hello, Sue, that your oldest? Come on, woman, the Cudahys expect us to
+dinner, and we've not got much time!"
+
+Susan kissed the baby, and walked with him to the end of the block, and
+straight through the open door of the Cudahy cottage, and into the
+kitchen. Here they found Mrs. Cudahy, dashing through preparations for
+a meal whose lavishness startled Susan. Bottles of milk and bottles of
+cream stood on the table, Susan fell to stripping ears of corn; there
+were pop-overs in the oven; Mrs. Cudahy was frying chickens at the
+stove. Enough to feed the Carroll family, under their mother's
+exquisite management, for a week!
+
+There was no management here. A small, freckled and grinning boy known
+as "Maggie's Tim" came breathless from the grocery with a great bottle
+of fancy pickles; Billy brought up beer from the cellar; Clem Cudahy
+cut a thick slice of butter from a two-pound square, and helped it into
+the serving-dish with a pudgy thumb. A large fruit pie and soda
+crackers were put on the table with the main course, when they sat
+down, hungry and talkative.
+
+"Well, what do you think of the Ironworks Row?" asked Billy, at about
+seven o'clock, when the other men had gone off to the conference, and
+Susan was helping Mrs. Cudahy in the kitchen.
+
+"Oh, I like it!" Susan assured him, enthusiastically. "Only," she added
+in a lowered tone, with a glance toward Mrs. Cudahy, who was out in the
+yard talking to Lizzie, "only I prefer the Rassette establishment to
+any I've seen!"
+
+"The Rassettes," he told her, significantly, "are trained for their
+work; she just as much as he is! Do you wonder I think it's worth while
+to educate people like that?"
+
+"But Billy--everyone seems so comfortable. The Cudahys, now,--why, this
+dinner was fit for a king--if it had been served a little differently!"
+
+"Oh, Clem's a rich man, as these men go," Billy said. "He's got two
+flats he rents, and he's got stock! And they've three married sons, all
+prosperous."
+
+"Well, then, why do they live here?"
+
+"Why wouldn't they? You think that it's far from clubs and shops and
+theaters and libraries, but they don't care for these things. They've
+never had time for them, they've never had time to garden, or go to
+clubs, and consequently they don't miss them. But some day, Sue," said
+Billy, with a darkening face, "some day, when these people have the
+assurance that their old age is to be protected and when they have
+easier hours, and can get home in daylight, then you'll see a change in
+laborers' houses!"
+
+"And just what has a strike like this to do with that, Billy?" said
+Susan, resting her cheek on her broom handle.
+
+"Oh, it's organization; it's recognition of rights; it's the
+beginning!" he said. "We have to stand before we can walk!"
+
+"Here, don't do that!" said Mrs. Cudahy, coming in to take away the
+broom. "Take her for a walk, Billy," said she, "and show her the
+neighborhood." She laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Now, don't ye
+worry about the men coming back," said she kindly, "they'll be back
+fast enough, and wid good news, too!"
+
+"I'm going to stay overnight with Mrs. Cudahy," said Susan, as they
+walked away.
+
+"You are!" he stopped short, in amazement.
+
+"Yes, I am!" Susan returned his smile with another. "I could no more
+go home now than after the first act of a play!" she confessed.
+
+"Isn't it damned interesting?" he said, walking on.
+
+"Why, yes," she said. "It's real at last--it's the realest thing I ever
+saw in my life! Everything's right on the surface, and all kept within
+certain boundaries. In other places, people come and go in your lives.
+Here, everybody's your neighbor. I like it! It could be perfect; just
+fancy if the Carrolls had one house, and you another, and I a third,
+and Phil and his wife a fourth--wouldn't it be like children playing
+house! And there's another thing about it, Billy," Susan went on
+enthusiastically, "it's honest! These people are really worried about
+shoes and rent and jobs--there's no money here to keep them from
+feeling everything! Think what a farce a strike would be if every man
+in it had lots of money! People with money CAN'T get the taste of
+really living!"
+
+"Ah, well, there's a lot of sin and wretchedness here now!" he said
+sadly. "Women drinking--men acting like brutes! But some day, when the
+liquor traffic is regulated, and we have pension laws, and perhaps the
+single tax---"
+
+"And the Right-Reverend William Lord Oliver, R. I., in the Presidential
+Chair, hooray and Glory be to God---!" Susan began.
+
+"Oh, you dry up, Susan," Billy said laughing. "I don't care," he added
+contentedly. "I like to be at the bottom of things, shoving up. And my
+Lord, if we only pull this thing off---!"
+
+"It's not my preconceived idea of a strike," Susan said, after a
+moment's silence. "I thought one had to throw coal, and run around the
+streets with a shawl over one's head---"
+
+"In the east, where the labor is foreign, that's about it," he said,
+"but here we have American-born laborers, asking for their rights. And
+I believe it's all coming!"
+
+"But with ignorance and inefficiency on one hand, and graft and cruelty
+on the other, and drink and human nature and poverty adding their
+complications, it seems rather a big job!" Susan said. "Now, look at
+these small kids out of bed at this hour of night, Bill! And what are
+they eating?--Boiled crabs! And notice the white stockings--I never had
+a pair in my life, yet every kidlet on the block is wearing them. And
+look upstairs there, with a bed still airing!"
+
+"The wonder is that it's airing at all," Billy said absently. "Is that
+the boys coming back?" he asked sharply.
+
+"Now, Bill, why do you worry---?" But Susan knew it was useless to
+scold him. They went quietly back, and sat on Mrs. Cudahy's steps, and
+waited for news. All Ironworks Row waited. Down the street Susan could
+see silent groups on nearly every door-step. It grew very dark; there
+was no moon, but the sky was thickly strewn with stars.
+
+It was after ten o'clock when the committee came back. Susan knew, the
+moment that she saw the three, moving all close together, silently and
+slowly, that they brought no good news.
+
+As a matter of fact, they brought almost no news at all. They went into
+Clem Cudahy's dining-room, and as many men and women as could crowded
+in after them. Billy sat at the head of the table.
+
+Carpenter, the "old man" himself, had stuck to his guns, Clem Cudahy
+said. He was the obstinate one; the younger men would have conceded
+something, if not everything, long ago. But the old man had said that
+he would not be dictated to by any man alive, and if the men wanted to
+listen to an ignorant young enthusiast---
+
+"Three cheers for Mr. Oliver!" said a strong young voice, at this
+point, and the cheers were given and echoed in the street, although
+Billy frowned, and said gruffly, "Oh, cut it out!"
+
+It was a long evening. Susan began to think that they would talk
+forever. But, at about eleven o'clock, the men who had been streaming
+in and out of the house began to disperse, and she and Mrs. Cudahy went
+into the kitchen, and made a pot of coffee.
+
+Susan, sitting at the foot of the table, poured it, and seasoned it
+carefully.
+
+"You are going to be well cared for, Mr. Oliver," said Ernest Rassette,
+in his careful English.
+
+"No such luck!" Billy said, smiling at Susan, as he emptied his cup at
+a draught. "Well! I don't know that we do any good sitting here. Things
+seem to be at a deadlock."
+
+"What do they concede, Bill?" Susan asked.
+
+"Oh, practically everything but the recognition of the union. At least,
+Carpenter keeps saying that if this local agitation was once wiped
+out,--which is me!--then he'd talk. He doesn't love me, Sue."
+
+"Damn him!" said one of his listeners, a young man who sat with his
+head in his hands.
+
+"It's after twelve," Billy said, yawning. "Me to the hay! Goodnight,
+everyone; goodnight, Sue!"
+
+"And annywan that cud get a man like that, and doesn't," said Mrs.
+Cudahy when he was gone, "must be lookin' for a saint right out av the
+lit'ny!"
+
+"I never heard of any girl refusing Mr. Oliver," Susan said demurely.
+
+She awoke puzzled, vaguely elated. Sunshine was streaming in at the
+window, an odor of coffee, of bacon, of toast, drifted up from below.
+Susan had slept well. She performed the limited toilet necessitated by
+a basin and pitcher, a comb somewhat beyond its prime, and a mirror too
+full of sunlight to be flattering.
+
+But it was evidently satisfactory, for Clem Cudahy told her, as she
+went smiling into the kitchen, that she looked like a streak of
+sunlight herself. Sunlight was needed; it was a worried and anxious day
+for them all.
+
+Susan went with Lizzie to see the new Conover baby, and stopped on the
+way back to be introduced to Mrs. Jerry Nelson, who had been stretched
+on her bed for eight long years. Mrs. Nelson's bright little room was
+easily accessible from the street; the alert little suffering woman was
+never long alone.
+
+"I have to throw good soup out, the way it spoils on me," said Mrs.
+Nelson's daughter to Susan, "and there's nobody round makes cake or
+custard but what Mama gets some!"
+
+"I'm a great one for making friends," the invalid assured her happily.
+"I don't miss nothing!"
+
+"And after all I don't see why such a woman isn't better off than Mary
+Lord," said Susan later to Billy, "so much nearer the center of things!
+Of course," she told him that afternoon, "I ought to go home today. But
+I'm too interested. I simply can't! What happens next?"
+
+"Oh, waiting," he said wearily. "We have a mass meeting this afternoon.
+But there's nothing to do but wait!"
+
+Waiting was indeed the order of the day. The whole colony waited. It
+grew hotter and hotter; flies buzzed in and out of the open doorways,
+children fretted and shouted in the shade. Susan had seen no drinking
+the night before; but now she saw more than one tragedy. The meeting at
+three o'clock ended in a more grim determination than ever; the men
+began to seem ugly. Sunset brought a hundred odors of food, and
+unbearable heat.
+
+"I've got to walk some of this off," said Billy, restlessly, just
+before dark. "Come on up and see the cabbage gardens!"
+
+Susan pinned on her wide hat, joined him in silence, and still in
+silence they threaded the path that led through various dooryards and
+across vacant lots, and took a rising road toward the hills.
+
+The stillness and soft dusk were very pleasant to Susan; she could find
+a beauty in carrot-tops and beet greens, and grew quite rapturous over
+a cow.
+
+"Doesn't the darling look comfortable and countryish, Bill?"
+
+Billy interrupted his musing to give her an absent smile. They sat down
+on a pile of lumber, and watched the summer moon rise gloriously over
+the hills.
+
+"Doesn't it seem FUNNY to you that we're right in the middle of a
+strike, Bill?" Susan asked childishly.
+
+"Funny--! Oh, Lord!"
+
+"Well---" Susan laughed at herself, "I didn't mean funny! But I'll tell
+you what I'd do in your place," she added thoughtfully.
+
+Billy glanced at her quickly.
+
+"What YOU'D do?" he asked curiously.
+
+"Certainly! I've been thinking it over, as a dispassionate outsider,"
+Susan explained calmly.
+
+"Well, go on," he said, grinning indulgently.
+
+"Well, I will," Susan said, firing, "if you'll treat me seriously, and
+not think that I say this merely because the Carrolls want you to go
+camping with us! I was just thinking---" Susan smiled bashfully, "I was
+wondering why you don't go to Carpenter---"
+
+"He won't see me!"
+
+"Well, you know what I mean!" she said impatiently. "Send your
+committee to him, and make him this proposition. Say that if he'll
+recognize the union--that's the most important thing, isn't it?"
+
+"That's by far the most important! All the rest will follow if we get
+that. But he's practically willing to grant all the rest, EXCEPT the
+union. That's the whole point, Sue!"
+
+"I know it is, but listen. Tell him that if he'll consent to all the
+other conditions--why," Susan spread open her hands with a shrug,
+"you'll get out! Bill, you know and I know that what he hates more than
+anything or anybody is Mr. William Oliver, and he'd agree to almost ANY
+terms for the sake of having you eliminated from his future
+consideration!"
+
+"I--get out?" Billy repeated dazedly. "Why, I AM the union!"
+
+"Oh, no you're not, Bill. Surely the principles involved are larger
+than any one man!" Susan said pleasantly.
+
+"Well, well--yes--that's true!" he agreed, after a second's silence.
+"To a certain extent--I see what you mean!--that is true. But, Sue,
+this is an unusual case. I organized these boys, I talked to them, and
+for them. They couldn't hold together without me--they'll tell you so
+themselves!"
+
+"But, Billy, that's not logic. Suppose you died?"
+
+"Well, well, but by the Lord Harry I'm not going to die!" he said
+heatedly. "I propose to stick right here on my job, and if they get a
+bunch of scabs in here they can take the consequences! The hour of
+organized labor has come, and we'll fight the thing out along these
+lines---"
+
+"Through your hat--that's the way you're talking now!" Susan said
+scornfully. "Don't use those worn-out phrases, Bill; don't do it! I'm
+sick of people who live by a bunch of expressions, without ever
+stopping to think whether they mean anything or not! You're too big and
+too smart for that, Bill! Now, here you've given the cause a splendid
+push up, you've helped these particular men! Now go somewhere else, and
+stir up more trouble. They'll find someone to carry it on, don't you
+worry, and meanwhile you'll be a sort of idol--all the more influential
+for being a martyr to the cause!"
+
+Billy did not answer. He got up and walked away from her, turned, and
+came slowly back.
+
+"I've been here ten years," he said then, and at the sound of pain in
+his voice the girl's heart began to ache for him. "I don't believe
+they'd stand for it," he added presently, with more hope. And finally,
+"And I don't know what I'd do!"
+
+"Well, that oughtn't to influence you," Susan said bracingly.
+
+"No, you're quite right. That's not the point," he agreed quickly.
+
+Presently she saw him lean forward in the darkness, and put his head in
+his hands. Susan longed to put her arm about him, and draw the rough
+head to her shoulder and comfort him.
+
+At breakfast time the next morning, Billy walked into Mrs. Cudahy's
+dining-room, very white, very serious, determined lines drawn about his
+firm young mouth. Susan looked at him, half-fearful, half-pitying.
+
+"How late did you walk, Bill?" she asked, for he had gone out again
+after bringing her back to the house the night before.
+
+"I didn't go to bed," he said briefly. He sat down by the table. "Well,
+I guess Miss Brown put her finger on the very heart of the matter,
+Clem," said he.
+
+"And how's that?" asked Clem Cudahy. His wife, in the very act of
+pouring the newcomer a cup of coffee, stopped with arrested arm. Susan
+experienced a sensation of panic.
+
+"Oh, but I didn't mean anything!" she said eagerly. "Don't mind what I
+said, Bill!"
+
+But the matter had been taken out of her hands now, and in less than an
+hour the news spread over the entire settlement. Mr. Oliver was going
+to resign!
+
+The rest of the morning and the early afternoon went by in a confused
+rush. At three o'clock Billy, surrounded by vociferous allies, walked
+to the hall, for a stormy and exhausting meeting.
+
+"The boys wouldn't listen to him at all at first," said Clem, in giving
+the women an account of it, later. "But eventually they listened, and
+eventually he carried the day. It was all too logical to be ignored and
+turned aside, he told them. They had not been fighting for any personal
+interest, or any one person. They had asked for this change, and that,
+and the other,--and these things they might still win. He, after all,
+had nothing to do with the issue; as a recognized labor union they
+might stand on their own feet."
+
+After that the two committees met, in old Mr. Carpenter's office, and
+Billy came home to Susan and Mrs. Cudahy, and sat for a tense hour
+playing moodily with Lizzie's baby.
+
+Then the committee came back, almost as silently as it had come last
+night. But this time it brought news. The strike was over.
+
+Very quietly, very gravely, they made it known that terms had been
+reached at last. Practically everything had been granted, on the single
+condition that William Oliver resign from his position in the Iron
+Works, and his presidency of the union.
+
+Billy congratulated them. Susan knew that he was so emotionally shaken,
+and so tired, as to be scarcely aware of what he was doing and saying.
+Men and women began to come in and discuss the great news. There were
+some tears; there was real grief on more than one of the hard young
+faces.
+
+"I'll see all you boys again in a day or two," Billy said. "I'm going
+over to Sausalito to-night,--I'm all in! We've won, and that's the main
+thing, but I want you to let me off quietly to-night,--we can go over
+the whole thing later.
+
+"Gosh, about one cheer, and I would have broken down like a kid!" he
+said to Susan, on the car. Rassette and Clem had escorted them thither;
+Mrs. Cudahy and Lizzie walking soberly behind them, with Susan. Both
+women kissed Susan good-bye, and Susan smiled through her tears as she
+saw the last of them.
+
+"I'll take good care of him," she promised the old woman. "He's been
+overdoing it too long!"
+
+"Lord, it will be good to get away into the big woods," said Billy.
+"You're quite right, I've taken the whole thing too hard!"
+
+"At the same time," said Susan, "you'll want to get back to work,
+sooner or later, and, personally, I can't imagine anything else in life
+half as fascinating as work right there, among those people, or people
+like them!"
+
+"Then you can see how it would cut a fellow all up to leave them?" he
+asked wistfully.
+
+"See!" Susan echoed. "Why, I'm just about half-sick with homesickness
+myself!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The train went on and on and on; through woods wrapped in dripping
+mist, and fields smothered in fog. The unseasonable August afternoon
+wore slowly away. Betsey, fitting her head against the uncomfortable
+red velvet back of the seat, dozed or seemed to doze. Mrs. Carroll
+opened her magazine over and over again, shut it over and over again,
+and stared out at the landscape, eternally slipping by. William Oliver,
+seated next to Susan, was unashamedly asleep, and Susan, completing the
+quartette, looked dreamily from face to face, yawned suppressedly, and
+wrestled with "The Right of Way."
+
+They were making the six hours' trip to the big forest for a month's
+holiday, and it seemed to each one of the four that they had been in
+the train a long, long time. In the racks above their heads were coats
+and cameras, suit-cases and summer hats, and a long cardboard box,
+originally intended for "Gents' medium, ribbed, white," but now
+carrying fringed napkins and the remains of a luncheon.
+
+It had all been planned a hundred times, under the big lamp in the
+Sausalito sitting-room. The twelve o'clock train--Farwoods Station at
+five--an hour's ride in the stage--six o'clock. Then they would be at
+the cabin, and another hour--say--would be spent in the simplest of
+housewarming. A fire must be built to dry bedding after the long
+months, and to cook bacon and eggs, and just enough unpacking to find
+night-wear and sheets. That must do for the first night.
+
+"But we'll sit and talk over the fire," Betsey would plead. "Please,
+Mother! We'll be all through dinner at eight o'clock!"
+
+The train however was late, nearly half-an-hour late, when they reached
+Farwoods. The stage, pleasant enough in pleasant weather, was
+disgustingly cramped and close inside. Susan and Betsey were both young
+enough to resent the complacency with which Jimmy climbed up, with his
+dog, beside the driver.
+
+"You let him stay in the baggage-car with Baloo all the way, Mother,"
+Betts reproached her, flinging herself recklessly into the coach, "and
+now you're letting him ride in the rain!"
+
+"Well, stop falling over everything, for Heaven's sake, Betts!" Susan
+scolded. "And don't step on the camera! Don't get in, Billy,--I say
+DON'T GET IN! Well, why don't you listen to me then! These things are
+all over the floor, and I have to---"
+
+"I have to get in, it's pouring,--don't be such a crab, Sue!" Billy
+said pleasantly. "Lord, what's that! What did I break?"
+
+"That's the suitcase with the food in it," Susan snapped. "PLEASE wait
+a minute, Betts!--All right," finished Susan bitterly, settling herself
+in a dark corner, "tramp over everything, I don't care!"
+
+"If you don't care, why are you talking about it?" asked Betts.
+
+"He says that we'll have to get out at the willows, and walk up the
+trail," said Mrs. Carroll, bending her tall head, as she entered the
+stage, after a conversation with the driver. "Gracious sakes, how
+things have been tumbled in! Help me pile these things up, girls!"
+
+"I was trying to," Susan began stiffly, leaning forward to do her
+share. A sudden jolt of the starting stage brought her head against
+Betts with a violent concussion. After that she sat back in magnificent
+silence for half the long drive.
+
+They jerked and jolted on the uneven roads, the rain was coming down
+more steadily now, and finally even Jimmy and the shivering Baloo had
+to come inside the already well-filled stage.
+
+It was quite dark when they were set down at the foot of the overgrown
+trail, and started, heavily loaded, for the cabin. Wind sighed and
+swept through the upper branches of the forest, boughs creaked and
+whined, the ground underfoot was spongy with moisture, and the air very
+cold.
+
+The cabin was dark and deserted looking; a drift of tiny redwood
+branches carpeted the porch. The rough steps ran water. Once inside,
+they struck matches and lighted a candle.
+
+Cold, darkness and disorder everybody had expected to find. But it was
+a blow to discover that the great stone fireplace, the one real beauty
+of the room, and the delight of every chilly evening, had been brought
+down by some winter gale. A bleak gap marked its once hospitable
+vicinity, cool air rushed in where the breath of dancing flames had so
+often rushed out, and, some in a great heap on the hearth, and some
+flung in muddy confusion to the four corners of the room, the sooty
+stones lay scattered.
+
+It was a bad moment for everyone. Betsey began to cry, her weary little
+head on her mother's shoulder.
+
+"This won't do!" Mrs. Carroll said perplexedly. "B-r-r-r-r! How cold it
+is!"
+
+"This is rotten," Jimmy said bitterly. "And all the fellows are going
+to the Orpheum to-night too!" he added enviously.
+
+"It's warm here compared to the bedroom," Susan, who had been
+investigating, said simply. "The blankets feel wet, they're so cold!"
+
+"And too wet for a camp-fire--" mused the mother.
+
+"And the stage gone!" Billy added.
+
+A cold draught blew open the door and set the candle guttering.
+
+"Oh, I'm so COLD!" Susan said, hunching herself like a sick chicken.
+
+The rest of the evening became family history. How they took their
+camping stove and its long tin pipe from the basement, and set it up in
+the woodshed that, with the little bedroom, completed the cabin, how
+wood from the cellar presently crackled within, how suitcases were
+opened by maddening candle-light, and wet boots changed for warm
+slippers, and wet gowns for thick wrappers. How the kettle sang and the
+bacon hissed, and the coffee-pot boiled over, and everybody took a turn
+at cutting bread. Deep in the heart of the rain-swept, storm-shaken
+woods, they crowded into the tiny annex, warm and dry, so lulled by the
+warm meal and the warm clothes that it was with great difficulty that
+Mrs. Carroll roused them all for bed at ten o'clock.
+
+"I'm going to sleep with you, Sue," announced Betsey, shivering, and
+casting an envious glance at her younger brother who, with Billy, was
+to camp for that night in the kitchen, "and if it's like this
+to-morrow, I vote that we all go home!"
+
+But they awakened in all the fragrant beauty and stillness of a great
+forest, on a heavenly August morning. Sunshine flooded the cabin, when
+Susan opened her eyes, and the vista of redwood boughs beyond the
+window was shot with long lines of gold. Everywhere were sweetness and
+silence; blots of bright gold on feathery layers of soft green.
+High-arched aisles stretched all about the cabin like the spokes of a
+great wheel; warm currents, heavy with piney sweetness, drifted across
+the crystal and sparkling brightness of the air. The rain was gone; the
+swelled creek rushed noisily down a widened course; it was cool now,
+but the day would be hot. Susan, dressing with her eyes on the world
+beyond the window, was hastened by a sudden delicious odor of boiling
+coffee, and the delightful sound of a crackling wood fire.
+
+Delightful were all the sights and sounds and duties of the first days
+in camp. There must be sweeping, airing, unpacking in the little
+domicile. Someone must walk four miles to the general store for salt,
+and more matches, and pancake flour. Someone must take the other
+direction, and climb a mile of mountain every day or two for milk and
+eggs and butter. The spring must be cleared, and a board set across the
+stream; logs dragged in for the fire, a pantry built of boxes, for
+provisions, and ship-shape disposition made of mugs and plates.
+
+Billy sharpened cranes for their camp-kitchen, swung the kettles over a
+stone-lined depression, erected a protection of flat redwood boughs.
+And under his direction the fireplace was rebuilt.
+
+"It just shows what you can do, if you must!" said Susan, complacently
+eying the finished structure.
+
+"It's handsomer than ever!" Mrs. Carroll said. The afternoon sunlight
+was streaming in across the newly swept hearth, and touching to
+brighter colors the Navajo blanket stretched on the floor. "And now we
+have one more happy association with the camp!' she finished
+contentedly.
+
+"Billy is wishing he could transfer all his strikers up here," said
+Susan dimpling. "He thinks that a hundred miles of forest are too much
+for just a few people!"
+
+"They wouldn't enjoy it," he answered seriously, "they have had no
+practice in this sort of life. They'd hate it. But of course it's a
+matter of education---"
+
+"Help! He's off!" said the irreverent Susan, "now he'll talk for an
+hour! Come on, Betts, I have to go for milk!"
+
+Exquisite days these for them all, days so brimming with beauty as to
+be forever memorable. Susan awoke every morning to a rushing sense of
+happiness, and danced to breakfast looking no more than a gay child, in
+her bluejacket's blouse, with her bright hair in a thick braid. Busy
+about breakfast preparations, and interrupted by a hundred little
+events in the forest or stream all about her, Billy would find her.
+There was always a moment of heat and hurry, when toast and oatmeal and
+coffee must all be brought to completion at once, and then they might
+loiter over their breakfast as long as they liked.
+
+Afterward, Susan and Mrs. Carroll put the house in order, while the
+others straightened and cleaned the camp outside. Often the talks
+between the two women ran far over the time their work filled, and
+Betsey would come running in to ask Mother and Susan why they were
+laughing. Laughter was everywhere, not much was needed to send them all
+into gales of mirth.
+
+Usually they packed a basket, gathered the stiff, dry bathing suits
+from the grass, and lunched far up in the woods. Fishing gear was
+carried along, although the trout ran small, and each fish provided
+only a buttery, delicious mouthful. Susan learned to swim and was more
+proud of her first breathless journey across the pool than were the
+others with all their expert diving and racing. Mrs. Carroll swam well,
+and her daughters were both splendid swimmers.
+
+After the first dip, they lunched on the hot shingle, and dozed and
+talked, and skipped flat stones on the water, until it was time to swim
+again. All about them the scene was one of matchless beauty. Steep
+banks, aquiver with ferns, came down on one side of the pool, to the
+very edge of the crystal water; on the other, long arcades, shot with
+mellow sunlight, stretched away through the forest. Bees went by on
+swift, angry journeys, and dragon-flies rested on the stones for a few
+dazzling palpitating seconds, and were gone again. Black water-bugs
+skated over the shallows, throwing round shadows on the smooth floor of
+the pool.
+
+Late in the afternoon, the campers would saunter home, crossing hot
+strips of meadow, where they started hundreds of locusts into flight,
+or plunging into the cool green of twilight woods. Back at the camp,
+there would be the crackle of wood again, with all the other noises of
+the dying forest day. Good odors drifted about, broiling meat and
+cooking wild berries, chipmunks and gray squirrels and jays chattered
+from the trees overhead; there was a whisking of daring tails, a
+flutter of bold wings.
+
+Daylight lasted for the happy meal, and stars came out above their
+camp-fire. And while they talked or sang, or sat with serious young
+eyes watching the flames, owls called far away through the wood, birds
+chuckled sleepily in the trees, and, where moonlight touched the
+stream, sometimes a trout rose and splashed.
+
+When was it that Billy always began to take his place at Susan's side,
+at the campfire, their shoulders almost touching in the dark? When was
+it that, through all the careless, happy companionship that bound them
+all, she began to know, with a thrill of joy and pain at her heart,
+that there were special looks for her, special glad tones for her? She
+did not know.
+
+But she did know that suddenly all the world seemed Billy,--Billy's arm
+to cross a stream, Billy's warning beside the swimming pool, Billy's
+laughter at her nonsense, and Billy's eyes when she looked up from
+musing over her book or turned, on a trail, to call back to the others,
+following her. She knew why the big man stumbled over words, grew
+awkward and flushed when she turned upon him the sisterly gaze of her
+blue eyes.
+
+And with the knowledge life grew almost unbearably sweet. Susan was
+enveloped in some strange golden glory; the mere brushing of her hair,
+or shaking out of her bathing-suit became a rite, something to be done
+with an almost suffocating sense of significance. Everything she did
+became intensified, her laughter and her tears were more ready, her
+voice had new and sweeter notes in it, she glowed like a rose in the
+knowledge that he thought her beautiful, and because he thought her
+sweet and capable and brave she became all of these things.
+
+She did not analyze him; he was different from all other men, he stood
+alone among them, simply because he was Billy. He was tall and strong
+and clean of heart and sunny of temper, yes--but with these things she
+did not concern herself,--he was poor, too, he was unemployed, he had
+neither class nor influence to help him,--that mattered as little.
+
+He was Billy,--genial and clever and good, unconventional, eager to
+learn, full of simple faith in human nature, honest and unaffected
+whether he was dealing with the president of a great business, or
+teaching Jim how to play his reel for trout,--and he had her whole
+heart. Whether she was laughing at his arguments, agreeing with his
+theories, walking silently at his side through the woods, or watching
+the expressions that followed each other on his absorbed face, while he
+cleaned his gun or scrutinized the detached parts of Mrs. Carroll's
+coffee-mill, Susan followed him with eyes into which a new expression
+had crept. She watched him swimming, flinging back an arc of bright
+drops with every jerk of his sleek wet head; she bent her whole
+devotion on the garments he brought her for buttons, hoping that he did
+not see the trembling of her hands, or the rush of color that his mere
+nearness brought to her face. She thrilled with pride when he came to
+bashfully consult her about the long letters he wrote from time to time
+to Clem Cudahy or Joseph Rassette, listened eagerly to his talks with
+the post-office clerk, the store-keeper, the dairymen and ranchers up
+on the mountain.
+
+And always she found him good. "Too good for me," said Susan sadly to
+herself. "He has made the best of everything that ever came his way,
+and I have been a silly fool whenever I had half a chance."
+
+The miracle was worked afresh for them, as for all lovers. This was no
+mere attraction between a man and a maid, such as she had watched all
+her life, Susan thought. This was some new and rare and wonderful
+event, as miraculous in the eyes of all the world as it was to her.
+
+"I should be Susan Oliver," she thought with a quick breath. An actual
+change of name--how did other women ever survive the thrill and
+strangeness of itl "We should have to have a house," she told herself,
+lying awake one night. A house--she and Billy with a tiny establishment
+of their own, alone over their coffee-cups, alone under their lamp!
+Susan's heart went out to the little house, waiting for them somewhere.
+She hung a dream apron on the door of a dream kitchen, and went to meet
+a tired dream-Billy at the door----
+
+He would kiss her. The blood rushed to her face and she shut her happy
+eyes.
+
+A dozen times a day she involved herself in some enterprise from which
+she could not extricate herself without his help. Billy had to take
+heavy logs out of her arms, had to lay a plank across the stretch of
+creek she could not cross, had to help her down from the crotch of a
+tree with widespread brotherly arms.
+
+"I thought--I--could--make--it!" gasped Susan, laughing, when he swam
+after her, across the pool, and towed her ignominiously home.
+
+"Susan, you're a fool!" scolded Billy, when they were safe on the bank,
+and Susan, spreading her wet hair about her, siren-wise, answered
+meekly: "Oh, I know it!"
+
+On a certain Saturday Anna and Philip climbed down from the stage, and
+the joys of the campers were doubled as they related their adventures
+and shared all their duties and delights. Susan and Anna talked nearly
+all night, lying in their canvas beds, on a porch flooded with
+moonlight, and if Susan did not mention Billy, nor Anna allude to the
+great Doctor Hoffman, they understood each other for all that.
+
+The next day they all walked up beyond the ranch-house, and followed
+the dripping flume to the dam. And here, beside a wide sheet of blue
+water, they built their fire, and had their lunch, and afterward spent
+a long hour in the water. Quail called through the woods, and rabbits
+flashed out of sight at the sound of human voices, and once, in a
+silence, a doe, with a bright-eyed fawn clinking after her on the
+stones, came down to the farther shore for a drink.
+
+"You ought to live this sort of life all the time, Sue!" Billy said
+idly, as they sat sunning themselves on the wide stone bulkhead that
+held back the water.
+
+"I? Why?" asked Susan, marking the smooth cement with a wet forefinger.
+
+"Because you're such a kid, Sue--you like it all so much!"
+
+"Knowing what you know of me, Bill, I wonder that you can think of me
+as young at all," the girl answered drily, suddenly somber and raising
+shamed eyes to his.
+
+"How do you mean?" he stammered, and then, suddenly enlightened, he
+added scornfully, "Oh, Lord!"
+
+"That---" Susan said quietly, still marking the hot cement, "will keep
+me from ever--ever being happy, Bill---" Her voice thickened, and she
+stopped speaking.
+
+"I don't look at that whole episode as you do, Sue," Billy said gruffly
+after a moment's embarrassed silence. "I don't believe chance controls
+those things. I often think of it when some man comes to me with a
+hard-luck story. His brother cheated him, and a factory burned down,
+and he was three months sick in a hospital--yes, that may all be true!
+But follow him back far enough and you'll find he was a mean man from
+the very start, ruined a girl in his home town, let his wife support
+his kids. It's years ago now perhaps, but his fate is simply working
+out its natural conclusion. Somebody says that character IS fate,
+Sue,--you've always been sweet and decent and considerate of other
+people, and your fate saved you through that. You couldn't have done
+anything wrong--it's not IN you!"
+
+He looked up with his bright smile but Susan could hear no more. She
+had scrambled to her feet while he was speaking, now she stopped only
+long enough to touch his shoulder with a quick, beseeching pressure.
+The next instant she was walking away, and he knew that her face was
+wet with tears. She plunged into the pool, and swam steadily across the
+silky expanse, and when he presently joined her, with Anna and Betts,
+she was quite herself again.
+
+Quite her old self, and the life and heart of everything they did. Anna
+laughed until the tears stood in her eyes, the others, more easily
+moved, went from one burst of mirth to another. They were coming home
+past the lumber mill when Billy fell in step just beside her, and the
+others drifted on without them. There was nothing in that to startle
+Susan, but she did feel curiously startled, and a little shy, and
+managed to keep a conversation going almost without help.
+
+"Stop here and watch the creek," said Billy, at the mill bridge. Susan
+stopped, and they stood looking down at the foaming water, tumbling
+through barriers, and widening, in a ruffled circle, under the great
+wheel.
+
+"Was there ever such a heavenly place, Billy?"
+
+"Never," he said, after a second. Susan had time to think his voice a
+little deep and odd before he added, with an effort, "We'll come back
+here often, won't we? After we're married?"
+
+"Oh, are we going to be married?" Susan said lightly.
+
+"Well, aren't we?" He quietly put his arm about her, as they stood at
+the rail, so that in turning her innocent, surprised eyes, she found
+his face very near. Susan held herself away rigidly, dropped her eyes.
+She could not answer.
+
+"How about it, Sue?" he asked, very low and, looking up, she found that
+he was half-smiling, but with anxious eyes. Suddenly she found her eyes
+brimming, and her lip shook. Susan felt very young, a little frightened.
+
+"Do you love me, Billy?" she faltered. It was too late to ask it, but
+her heart suddenly ached with a longing to hear him say it.
+
+"Love you!" he said scarcely above his breath. "Don't you know how I
+love you! I think I've loved you ever since you came to our house, and
+I gave you my cologne bottle!"
+
+There was no laughter in his tone, but the old memory brought laughter
+to them both. Susan clung to him, and he tightened his arms about her.
+Then they kissed each other.
+
+Half an hour behind the others they came slowly down the home trail.
+Susan had grown shy now and, although she held his hand childishly, she
+would not allow him to kiss her again. The rapid march of events had
+confused her, and she amused him by a plea for time "to think."
+
+"Please, please don't let them suspect anything tonight, Bill!" she
+begged. "Not for months! For we shall probably have to wait a long,
+long time!"
+
+"I have a nerve to ask any girl to do it!" Billy said gloomily.
+
+"You're not asking any girl. You're asking me, you know!"
+
+"But, darling, you honestly aren't afraid? We'll have to count every
+cent for awhile, you know!"
+
+"It isn't as if I had been a rich girl," Susan reminded him.
+
+"But you've been a lot with rich people. And we'll have to live in some
+place in the Mission, like Georgie, Sue!"
+
+"In the Mission perhaps, but not like Georgie! Wait until you eat my
+dinners, and see my darling little drawing-room! And we'll go to dinner
+at Coppa's and Sanguinetti's, and come over to Sausalito for
+picnics,--we'll have wonderful times! You'll see!"
+
+"I adore you," said Billy, irrevelantly.
+
+"Well," Susan said, "I hope you do! But I'll tell you something I've
+been thinking, Billy," she resumed dreamily, after a silence.
+
+"And pwhats dthat, me dar-r-rlin'?"
+
+"Why, I was thinking that I'd rather---" Susan began hesitatingly,
+"rather have my work cut out for me in this life! That is, I'd rather
+begin at the bottom of the ladder, and work up to the top, than be at
+the top, through no merit of my own, and live in terror of falling to
+the bottom! I believe, from what I've seen of other people, that we'll
+succeed, and I think we'll have lots of fun doing it!"
+
+"But, Sue, you may get awfully tired of it!"
+
+"Everybody gets awfully tired of everything!" sang Susan, and caught
+his hand for a last breathless run into camp.
+
+At supper they avoided each other's eyes, and assumed an air of
+innocence and gaiety. But in spite of this, or because of it, the meal
+moved in an unnatural atmosphere, and everyone present was conscious of
+a sense of suspense, of impending news.
+
+"Betts dear, do listen!--the SALT," said Mrs. Carroll. "You've given me
+the spoons and the butter twice! Tell me about to-day," she added, in a
+desperate effort to start conversation. "What happened?"
+
+But Jimmy choked at this, Betsey succumbed to helpless giggling, and
+even Philip reddened with suppressed laughter.
+
+"Don't, Betts!" Anna reproached her.
+
+"You're just as bad yourself!" sputtered Betsey, indignantly.
+
+"I?" Anna turned virtuous, outraged eyes upon her junior, met Susan's
+look for a quivering second, and buried her flushed and laughing face
+in her napkin.
+
+"I think you're all crazy!" Susan said calmly.
+
+"She's blushing!" announced Jimmy.
+
+"Cut it out now, kid," Billy growled. "It's none of your business!"
+
+"WHAT'S none of his business?" carroled Betsey, and a moment later
+joyous laughter and noise broke out,--Philip was shaking William's
+hand, the girls were kissing Susan, Mrs. Carroll was laughing through
+tears. Nobody had been told the great news, but everybody knew it.
+
+Presently Susan sat in Mrs. Carroll's lap, and they all talked of the
+engagement; who had suspected it, who had been surprised, what Anna had
+noticed, what had aroused Jimmy's suspicions. Billy was very talkative
+but Susan strangely quiet to-night.
+
+It seemed to make it less sacred, somehow, this open laughter and
+chatter about it. Why she had promised Billy but a few hours ago, and
+here he was threatening never to ask Betts to "our house," unless she
+behaved herself, and kissing Anna with the hilarious assurance that his
+real reason for "taking" Susan was because she, Anna, wouldn't have
+him! No man who really loved a woman could speak like that to another
+on the very night of his engagement, thought Susan. A great coldness
+seized her heart, and pity for herself possessed her. She sat next to
+Mrs. Carroll at the camp-fire, and refused Billy even the little
+liberty of keeping his fingers over hers. No liberties to-night!
+
+And later, tucked by Mrs. Carroll's motherly hands into her little camp
+bed on the porch, she lay awake, sick at heart. Far from loving Billy
+Oliver, she almost disliked him! She did not want to be engaged this
+way, she wanted, at this time of all times in her life, to be treated
+with dignity, to be idolized, to have her every breath watched. How she
+had cheapened everything by letting him blurt out the news this way!
+And now, how could she in dignity draw back----
+
+Susan began to cry bitterly. She was all alone in the world, she said
+to herself, she had never had a chance, like other girls! She wanted a
+home to-night, she wanted her mother and father---!
+
+Her handkerchief was drenched, she tried to dry her eyes on the harsh
+hem of the sheet. Her tears rushed on and on, there seemed to be no
+stopping them. Billy did not care for her, she sobbed to herself, he
+took the whole thing as a joke! And, beginning thus, what would he feel
+after a few years of poverty, dark rooms and unpaid bills?
+
+Even if he did love her, thought Susan bursting out afresh, how was she
+to buy a trousseau, how were they to furnish rooms, and pay rent, "one
+always has to pay a month's rent in advance!" she thought gloomily.
+
+"I believe I am going to be one of those weepy, sensitive women, whose
+noses are always red," said Susan, tossing restlessly in the dark. "I
+shall go mad if I can't get to sleep!" And she sat up, reached for her
+big, loose Japanese wrapper and explored with bare feet for her
+slippers.
+
+Ah--that was better! She sat on the top step, her head resting against
+the rough pillar of the porch, and felt a grateful rush of cool air on
+her flushed face. Her headache lessened suddenly, her thoughts ran more
+quietly.
+
+There was no moon yet. Susan stared at the dim profile of the forest,
+and at the arch of the sky, spattered with stars. The exquisite beauty
+of the summer night soothed and quieted her. After a time she went
+noiselessly down the dark pathway to the spring-house for a drink.
+
+The water was deliciously cool and fresh. Susan, draining a second cup
+of it, jumped as a voice nearby said quietly:
+
+"Don't be frightened--it's me, Billy!"
+
+"Heaven alive--how you scared me!" gasped Susan, catching at the hand
+he held out to lead her back to the comparative brightness of the path.
+"Billy, why aren't you asleep?"
+
+"Too happy, I guess," he said simply, his eyes on her.
+
+She held his hands at arm's length, and stared at him wistfully.
+
+"Are you so happy, Bill?" she asked.
+
+"Well, what do you think?" The words were hardly above a whisper, he
+wrenched his hands suddenly free from her, and she was in his arms,
+held close against his heart. "What do you think, my own girl?" said
+Billy, close to her ear.
+
+"Heavens, I don't want him to care THIS much!" said the terrified
+daughter of Eve, to herself. Breathless, she freed herself, and held
+him at arm's length again.
+
+"Billy, I can't stay down here--even for a second--unless you promise
+not to!"
+
+"But darling--however, I won't! And will you come over here to the
+fence for just a minute--the moon's coming up!"
+
+Billy Oliver--the same old Billy!--trembling with eagerness to have
+Susan Brown--the unchanged Susan!--come and stand by a fence, and watch
+the moon rise! It was very extraordinary, it was pleasant, and
+curiously exciting, too.
+
+"Well---" conceded Susan, as she gathered her draperies about her, and
+went to stand at the fence, and gaze childlishly up at the stars.
+Billy, also resting elbows on the old rail, stood beside her, and never
+moved his eyes from her face.
+
+The half-hour that followed both of them would remember as long as they
+lived. Slowly, gloriously, the moon climbed up the dark blue dome of
+the sky, and spread her silver magic on the landscape; the valley below
+them swam in pale mist, clean-cut shadows fell from the nearby forest.
+
+The murmur of young voices rose and fell--rose and fell. There were
+little silences, now and then Susan's subdued laughter. Susan thought
+her lover magnificent in the moonlight; what Billy thought of the
+lovely downcast face, the loose braid of hair that caught a dull gleam
+from the moon, the slender elbows bare on the rail, the breast that
+rose and fell, under her light wraps, with Susan's quickened breathing,
+perhaps he tried to tell her.
+
+"But I must go in!" she protested presently. "This has been wonderful,
+but I must go in!"
+
+"But why? We've just begun talking--and after all, Sue, you're going to
+be my wife!"
+
+The word spurred her. In a panic Susan gave him a swift half-kiss, and
+fled, breathless and dishevelled, back to the porch. And a moment later
+she had fallen into a sleep as deep as a child's, her prayer of
+gratitude half-finished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The days that followed were brightened or darkened with moods so
+intense, that it was a real, if secret, relief to Susan when the forest
+visit was over, and sun-burned and shabby and loaded with forest
+spoils, they all came home again. Jim's first position awaited him, and
+Anna was assistant matron in the surgical hospital now,--fated to see
+the man she loved almost every day, and tortured afresh daily by the
+realization of his greatness, his wealth, his quiet, courteous
+disregard of the personality of the dark-eyed, deft little nurse. Dr.
+Conrad Hoffman was seventeen years older than Anna. Susan secretly
+thought of Anna's attachment as quite hopeless.
+
+Philip and Betts and Susan were expected back at their respective
+places too, and Billy was deeply interested in the outcome of the
+casual, friendly letters he had written during the month in camp to
+Joseph Rassette. These letters had been passed about among the men
+until they were quite worn out; Clem Cudahy had finally had one or two
+printed, for informal distribution, and there had been a little
+sensation over them. Now, eastern societies had written asking for back
+numbers of the "Oliver Letter," and a labor journal had printed one
+almost in full. Clement Cudahy was anxious to discuss with Billy the
+feasibility of printing such a letter weekly for regular circulation,
+and Billy thought well of the idea, and was eager to begin the
+enterprise.
+
+Susan was glad to get back to the little "Democrat," and worked very
+hard during the fall and winter. She was not wholly happy, or, rather,
+she was not happy all the time. There were times, especially when Billy
+was not about, when it seemed very pleasant to be introduced as an
+engaged girl, and to get the respectful, curious looks of other girls.
+She liked to hear Mrs. Carroll and Anna praise Billy, and she liked
+Betts' enthusiasm about him.
+
+But little things about him worried her inordinately, sometimes she
+resented, for a whole silent evening, his absorption in other people,
+sometimes grew pettish and unresponsive and offended because he could
+keep neither eyes nor hands from her. And there were evenings when they
+seemed to have nothing to talk about, and Billy, too tired to do
+anything but drowse in his big chair, was confronted with an alert and
+horrified Susan, sick with apprehension of all the long evenings,
+throughout all the years. Susan was fretted by the financial barrier to
+the immediate marriage, too, it was humiliating, at twenty-six, to be
+affected by a mere matter of dollars and cents.
+
+They quarreled, and came home silently from a dinner in town, Susan's
+real motive in yielding to a reconciliation being her disinclination to
+confess to Mrs. Carroll,--and those motherly eyes read her like a
+book,--that she was punishing Billy for asking her not to "show off"
+before the waiter!
+
+But early in the new year, they were drawn together by rapidly maturing
+plans. The "Oliver Letter," called the "Saturday Protest" now, was
+fairly launched. Billy was less absorbed in the actual work, and began
+to feel sure of a moderate success. He had rented for his office half
+of the lower floor of an old house in the Mission. Like all the old
+homes that still stand to mark the era when Valencia Street was as
+desired an address as California Street is to-day, it stood upon
+bulkheaded ground, with a fat-pillared wooden fence bounding the wide
+lawns.
+
+The fence was full of gaps, and the house, with double bay-windows, and
+with a porch over its front door, was shabby and bare. Its big front
+door usually stood open; opposite Billy, across a wide hall, was a
+modest little millinery establishment, upstairs a nurses' home, and a
+woman photographer occupied the top floor. The "Protest," a slim little
+sheet, innocent of contributed matter or advertising, and written,
+proofed and set up by Billy's own hands, was housed in what had been
+the big front drawing-room. Billy kept house in the two back rooms that
+completed the little suite.
+
+Susan first saw the house on a Saturday in January, a day that they
+both remembered afterwards as being the first on which their marriage
+began to seem a definite thing. It was in answer to Billy's rather
+vague suggestion that they must begin to look at flats in the
+neighborhood that Susan said, half in earnest:
+
+"We couldn't begin here, I suppose? Have the office downstairs in the
+big front room, and clean up that old downstairs kitchen, and fix up
+these three rooms!"
+
+Billy dismissed the idea. But it rose again, when they walked downtown,
+in the afternoon sunlight, and kept them in animated talk over a happy
+dinner.
+
+"The rent for the whole thing is only twenty dollars!" said Susan, "and
+we can fix it all up, pretty old-fashioned papers, and white paint! You
+won't know it!"
+
+"I adore you, Sue--isn't this fun?" was William's somewhat indirect
+answer. They missed one boat, missed another, finally decided to leave
+it to Mrs. Carroll.
+
+Mrs. Carroll's decision was favorable. "Loads of sunlight and fresh
+air, Sue, and well up off the ground!" she summarized it.
+
+The decision made all sorts of madness reasonable. If they were to live
+there, would this thing fit--would that thing fit--why not see paperers
+at once, why not look at stoves? Susan and Billy must "get an idea" of
+chairs and tables, must "get an idea" of curtains and rugs.
+
+"And when do you think, children?" asked Mrs. Carroll.
+
+"June," said Susan, all roses.
+
+"April," said the masterful male.
+
+"Oh, doesn't it begin to seem exciting!" burst from Betsey. The
+engagement was an old story now, but this revived interest in it.
+
+"Clothes!" said Anna rapturously. "Sue, you must be married in another
+pongee, you NEVER had anything so becoming!"
+
+"We must decide about the wedding too," Mrs. Carroll said. "Certain old
+friends of your mother, Sue---"
+
+"Barrows can get me announcements at cost," Philip contributed.
+
+After that Susan and Billy had enough to talk about. Love-making must
+be managed at odd moments; Billy snatched a kiss when the man who was
+selling them linoleums turned his back for a moment; Susan offered him
+another as she demurely flourished the coffee-pot, in the deep recesses
+of a hardware shop.
+
+"Do let me have my girl for two seconds together!" Billy pleaded, when
+between Anna, with samples of gowns, Betts, wild with excitement over
+an arriving present, and Mrs. Carroll's anxiety that they should not
+miss a certain auction sale, he had only distracted glimpses of his
+sweetheart.
+
+It is an undeniable and blessed thing that, to the girl who is buying
+it, the most modest trousseau in the world seems wonderful and
+beautiful and complete beyond dreams. Susan's was far from being the
+most modest in the world, and almost every day brought her beautiful
+additions to it. Georgie, kept at home by a delicate baby, sent one
+delightful box after another; Mary Lou sent a long strip of beautiful
+lace, wrapped about Ferd's check for a hundred dollars.
+
+"It was Aunt Sue Rose's lace," wrote Mary Lou, "and I am going to send
+you a piece of darling Ma's, too, and one or two of her spoons."
+
+This reminded Georgie of "Aunt Sue Rose's box," which, unearthed,
+brought forth more treasures; a thin old silver ladle, pointed
+tea-spoons connected with Susan's infant memories of castor-oil.
+Virginia had a blind friend from whom she ordered a wonderful knitted
+field-coat. Anna telephoned about a patient who must go into mourning,
+and wanted to sell at less than half its cost, the loveliest of
+rose-wreathed hats.
+
+Susan and Anna shopped together, Anna consulting a shabby list, Susan
+rushing off at a hundred tangents. Boxes and boxes and boxes came home,
+the engagement cups had not stopped coming when the wedding presents
+began. The spareroom closet was hung with fragrant new clothes, its bed
+was heaped with tissue-wrapped pieces of silver.
+
+Susan crossed the bay two or three times a week to rush through some
+bit of buying, and to have dinner with Billy. They liked all the little
+Spanish and French restaurants, loitered over their sweet black coffee,
+and dry cheese, explored the fascinating dark streets of the Chinese
+Quarter, or went to see the "Marionettes" next door to the old Broadway
+jail. All of it appealed to Susan's hunger for adventure, she wove
+romances about the French families among whom they dined,--stout
+fathers, thin, nervous mothers, stolid, claret-drinking little girls,
+with manes of black hair,--about the Chinese girls, with their painted
+lips, and the old Italian fishers, with scales glittering on their
+rough coats.
+
+"We've got to run for it, if we want it!" Billy would say, snatching
+her coat from a chair. Susan after jabbing in her hatpins before a
+mirror decorated with arabesques of soap, would rush with him into the
+street. Fog and pools of rain water all about, closed warehouses and
+lighted saloons, dark crossings--they raced madly across the ferry
+place at last, with the clock in the tower looking down on them.
+
+"We're all right now!" Billy would gasp. But they still ran, across the
+long line of piers, and through the empty waiting-room, and the iron
+gates.
+
+"That was the closest yet!" Susan, reaching the upper deck, could stop
+to breathe. There were seats facing the water, under the engine-house,
+where Billy might put his arm about her unobserved. Their talk went on.
+
+Usually they had the night boat to themselves, but now and then Susan
+saw somebody that she knew on board. One night she went in to talk for
+a moment with Ella Saunders. Ella was gracious, casual. Ken was
+married, as Susan knew,--the newspapers had left nothing to be imagined
+of the most brilliant of the season's matches, and pictures of the
+fortunate bride, caught by the cameras as she made her laughing way to
+her carriage, a white blur of veil and flowers, had appeared
+everywhere. Emily was not well, said Ella, might spend the summer in
+the east; Mama was not very well. She asked Susan no questions, and
+Susan volunteered nothing.
+
+And on another occasion they were swept into the company of the
+Furlongs. Isabel was obviously charmed with Billy, and Billy, Susan
+thought, made John Furlong seem rather stupid and youthful.
+
+"And you MUST come and dine with us!" said Isabel. Obviously not in the
+month before the wedding, Isabel's happy excuses, in an aside to Susan,
+were not necessary, "---But when you come back," said Isabel.
+
+"And you with us in our funny little rooms in the Mission," Susan said
+gaily. Isabel took her husband's arm, and gave it a little squeeze.
+
+"He'd love to!" she assured Susan. "He just loves things like that. And
+you must let us help get the dinner!"
+
+On Sundays the old walks to the beach had been resumed, and the hills
+never had seemed to Susan as beautiful as they did this year, when the
+first spring sweetness began to pierce the air, and the breeze brought
+faint odors of grass, and good wet earth, and violets. Spring this year
+meant to the girl's glowing and ardent nature what it meant to the
+birds, with apple-blossoms and mustard-tops, lilacs and blue skies,
+would come the mating time. Susan was the daughter of her time; she did
+not know why all the world seemed made for her now; her heritage of
+ignorance and fear was too great. But Nature, stronger than any folly
+of her children, made her great claim none the less. Susan thrilled in
+the sunshine and warm air, dreamed of her lover's kisses, gloried in
+the fact that youth was not to pass her by without youth's hour.
+
+By March all Sausalito was mantled with acacia bloom, and the silent
+warm days were sweet with violets. The sunshine was soft and warm, if
+there was still chill in the shade. The endless weeks had dragged
+themselves away; Susan and Billy were going to be married.
+
+Susan walked in a radiant dream, curiously wrapped away from reality,
+yet conscious, in a new and deep and poignant way, of every word, of
+every waking instant.
+
+"I am going to be married next week," she heard herself saying. Other
+women glanced at her; she knew they thought her strangely unmoved. She
+thought herself so. But she knew that running under the serene surface
+of her life was a dazzling great river of joy! Susan could not look
+upon it yet. Her eyes were blinded.
+
+Presents came in, more presents. A powder box from Ella, candle-sticks
+from Emily, a curiously embroidered tablecloth from the Kenneth
+Saunders in Switzerland. And from old Mrs. Saunders a rather touching
+note, a request that Susan buy herself "something pretty," with a check
+for fifty dollars, "from her sick old friend, Fanny Saunders."
+
+Mary Lou, very handsomely dressed and prosperous, and her beaming
+husband, came down for the wedding. Mary Lou had a hundred little
+babyish, new mannerisms, she radiated the complacency of the adored
+woman, and, when Susan spoke of Billy, Mary Lou was instantly reminded
+of Ferd, the salary Ferd made at twenty, the swiftness of his rise in
+the business world, his present importance. Mary Lou could not hide the
+pity she felt for Susan's very modest beginning. "I wish Ferd could
+find Billy some nice, easy position," said Mary Lou. "I don't like you
+to live out in that place. I don't believe Ma would!"
+
+Virginia was less happy than her sister. The Eastmans were too busy
+together to remember her loneliness. "Sometimes it seems as if Mary Lou
+just likes to have me there to remind her how much better off she is,"
+said Virginia mildly, to Susan. "Ferd buys her things, and takes her
+places, and all I can do is admire and agree! Of course they're
+angels," added Virginia, wiping her eyes, "but I tell you it's hard to
+be dependent, Sue!"
+
+Susan sympathized, laughed, chattered, stood still under dressmakers'
+hands, dashed off notes, rushed into town for final purchases, opened
+gifts, consulted with everyone,--all in a golden, whirling dream.
+Sometimes a cold little doubt crossed her mind, and she wondered
+whether she was taking all this too much for granted, whether she
+really loved Billy, whether they should not be having serious talks
+now, whether changes, however hard, were not wiser "before than after"?
+
+But it was too late for that now. The big wheels were set in motion,
+the day was coming nearer and more near. Susan's whole being was tuned
+to the great event; she felt herself the pivot upon which all her world
+turned. A hundred things a day brought the happy color to her face,
+stopped her heart-beats for a second. She had a little nervous qualm
+over the announcements; she dreamed for a moment over the cards that
+bore the new name of Mrs. William Jerome Oliver. "It seems so--so funny
+to have these things here in my trunk, before I'm married!" said Susan.
+
+Anna came home, gravely radiant; Betsy exulted in a new gown of flimsy
+embroidered linen; Philip, in the character of best man, referred to a
+list of last-moment reminders.
+
+Three days more--two days more--then Susan was to be married to-morrow.
+She and Billy had enough that was practical to discuss the last night,
+before he must run for his boat. She went with him to the door.
+
+"I'm going to be crazy about my wife!" whispered Billy, with his arms
+about her. Susan was not in a responsive mood.
+
+"I'm dead!" she said wearily, resting her head against his shoulder
+like a tired child.
+
+She went upstairs slowly to her room. It was strewn with garments and
+hats and cardboard boxes; Susan's suitcase, with the things in it that
+she would need for a fortnight in the woods, was open on the table. The
+gas flared high, Betsey at the mirror was trying a new method of
+arranging her hair. Mrs. Carroll was packing Susan's trunk, Anna sat on
+the bed.
+
+"Sue, dear," said the mother, "are you going to be warm enough up in
+the forest? It may be pretty cold."
+
+"Oh, we'll have fires!" Susan said.
+
+"Well, you are the COOLEST!" ejaculated Betsey. "I should think you'd
+feel so FUNNY, going up there alone with Billy---"
+
+"I'd feel funnier going up without him," Susan said equably. She got
+into a loose wrapper, braided her hair. Mrs. Carroll and Betsey kissed
+her and went away; Susan and Anna talked for a few minutes, then Susan
+went to sleep. But Anna lay awake for a long time thinking,--thinking
+what it would be like to know that only a few hours lay between the end
+of the old life and the beginning of the new.
+
+"My wedding day." Susan said it slowly when she awakened in the
+morning. She felt that the words should convey a thrill, but somehow
+the day seemed much like any other day. Anna was gone, there was a
+subdued sound of voices downstairs.
+
+A day that ushered in the full glory of the spring. All the flowers
+were blooming at once, at noon the air was hot and still, not a leaf
+stirred. Before Susan had finished her late breakfast Billy arrived;
+there was talk of tickets and train time before she went upstairs. Mary
+Lou had come early to watch the bride dress; good, homely, happy Miss
+Lydia Lord must run up to Susan's room too,--the room was full of
+women. Isabel Furlong was throned in the big chair, John was to take
+her away before the wedding, but she wanted to kiss Susan in her
+wedding gown.
+
+Susan presently saw a lovely bride, smiling in the depths of the
+mirror, and was glad for Billy's sake that she looked "nice." Tall and
+straight, with sky-blue eyes shining under a crown of bright hair, with
+the new corsets setting off the lovely gown to perfection, her mother's
+lace at her throat and wrists, and the rose-wreathed hat matching her
+cheeks, she looked the young and happy woman she was, stepping bravely
+into the world of loving and suffering.
+
+The pretty gown must be gathered up safely for the little walk to
+church. "Are we all ready?" asked Susan, running concerned eyes over
+the group.
+
+"Don't worry about us!" said Philip. "You're the whole show to-day!"
+
+In a dream they were walking through the fragrant roads, in a dream
+they entered the unpretentious little church, and were questioned by
+the small Spanish sexton at the door. No, that was Miss Carroll,--this
+was Miss Brown. Yes, everyone was here. The groom and his best man had
+gone in the other door. Who would give away the bride? This gentleman,
+Mr. Eastman, who was just now standing very erect and offering her his
+arm. Susan Ralston Brown--William Jerome Oliver--quite right. But they
+must wait a moment; the sexton must go around by the vestry for some
+last errand.
+
+The little organ wheezed forth a march; Susan walked slowly at Ferd
+Eastman's side,--stopped,--and heard a rich Italian voice asking
+questions in a free and kindly whisper. The gentleman this side--and
+the lady here--so!
+
+The voice suddenly boomed out loud and clear and rapid. Susan knew that
+this was Billy beside her, but she could not raise her eyes. She
+studied the pattern that fell on the red altar-carpet through a
+sun-flooded window. She told herself that she must think now seriously;
+she was getting married. This was one of the great moments of her life.
+
+She raised her head, looked seriously into the kind old face so near
+her, glanced at Billy, who was very pale.
+
+"I will," said Susan, clearing her throat. She reflected in a panic
+that she had not been ready for the question, and wondered vaguely if
+that invalidated her marriage, in the eyes of Heaven at least. Getting
+married seemed a very casual and brief matter. Susan wished that there
+was more form to it; pages, and heralds with horns, and processions.
+What an awful carpet this red one must be to sweep, showing every
+speck! She and Billy had painted their floors, and would use rugs----
+
+This was getting married. "I wish my mother was here!" said Susan to
+herself, perfunctorily. The words had no meaning for her.
+
+They knelt down to pray. And suddenly Susan, whose ungloved hand, with
+its lilies-of-the-valley, had dropped by her side, was thrilled to the
+very depth of her being by the touch of Billy's cold fingers on hers.
+
+Her heart flooded with a sudden rushing sense of his goodness, his
+simplicity. He was marrying his girl, and praying for them both, his
+whole soul was filled with the solemn responsibility he incurred now.
+
+She clung to his hand, and shut her eyes.
+
+"Oh, God, take care of us," she prayed, "and make us love each other,
+and make us good! Make us good---"
+
+She was deep in her prayer, eyes tightly closed, lips moving fast, when
+suddenly everything was over. Billy and she were walking down the aisle
+again, Susan's ringed hand on the arm that was hers now, to the end of
+the world.
+
+"Billy, you didn't kiss her!" Betts reproached him in the vestibule.
+
+"Didn't I? Well, I will!" He had a fragrant, bewildered kiss from his
+wife before Anna and Mrs. Carroll and all the others claimed her.
+
+Then they walked home, and Susan protested that it did not seem right
+to sit at the head of the flower trimmed table, and let everyone wait
+on her. She ran upstairs with Anna to get into her corduroy
+camping-suit, and dashing little rough hat, ran down for kisses and
+good-byes. Betsey--Mary Lou--Philip--Mary Lou again.
+
+"Good-bye, adorable darling!" said Betts, laughing through tears.
+
+"Good-bye, dearest," whispered Anna, holding her close.
+
+"Good-bye, my own girl!" The last kiss was for Mrs. Carroll, and Susan
+knew of whom the mother was thinking as the first bride ran down the
+path.
+
+"Well, aren't they all darlings?" said young Mrs. Oliver, in the train.
+
+"Corkers!" agreed the groom. "Don't you want to take your hat off, Sue?"
+
+"Well, I think I will," Susan said pleasantly. Conversation languished.
+
+"Tired, dear?"
+
+"Oh, no!" Susan said brightly.
+
+"I wonder if you can smoke in here," Billy observed, after a pause.
+
+"I don't believe you can!" Susan said, interestedly.
+
+"Well, when he comes through I'll ask him---"
+
+Susan felt as if she should never speak spontaneously again. She was
+very tired, very nervous, able, with cold dispassion, to wonder what
+she and Billy Oliver were doing in this close, dirty train,--to wonder
+why people ever spoke of a wedding-day as especially pleasant,--what
+people found in life worth while, anyway!
+
+She thought that it would be extremely silly in them to attempt to
+reach the cabin to-night; far more sensible to stay at Farwoods, where
+there was a little hotel, or, better yet, go back to the city. But
+Billy, although a little regretful for the darkness in which they ended
+their journey, suggested no change of plan, and Susan found herself
+unable to open the subject. She made the stage trip wedged in between
+Billy and the driver, climbed down silently at the foot of the familiar
+trail, and carried the third suitcase up to the cabin.
+
+"You can't hurt that dress, can you, Sue?" said Billy, busy with the
+key.
+
+"No!" Susan said, eager for the commonplace. "It's made for just this!"
+
+"Then hustle and unpack the eats, will you? And I'll start a fire!"
+
+"Two seconds!" Susan took off her hat, and enveloped herself in a
+checked apron. There was a heavy chill in the room; there was that
+blank forbidding air in the dusty, orderly room that follows months of
+unuse. Susan unpacked, went to and fro briskly; the claims of
+housekeeping reassured and soothed her.
+
+Billy made thundering journeys for wood. Presently there was a flare of
+lighted papers in the fireplace, and the heartening snap and crackle of
+wood. The room was lighted brilliantly; delicious odors of sap mingled
+with the fragrance from Susan's coffee pot.
+
+"Oh, keen idea!" said Billy, when she brought the little table close to
+the hearth. "Gee, that's pretty!" he added, as she shook over it the
+little fringed tablecloth, and laid the blue plates neatly at each side.
+
+"Isn't this fun?" It burst spontaneously from the bride.
+
+"Fun!" Billy flung down an armful of logs, and came to stand beside
+her, watching the flames. "Lord, Susan," he said, with simple force,
+"if you only knew how perfect you seem to me! If you only knew how many
+years I've been thinking how beautiful you were, and how clever, and
+how far above me----!"
+
+"Go right on thinking so, darling!" said Susan, practically, escaping
+from his arm, and taking her place behind the cold chicken. "Do ye feel
+like ye could eat a little mite, Pa?" asked she.
+
+"Well, I dunno, mebbe I could!" William answered hilariously. "Say,
+Sue, oughtn't those blankets be out here, airing?" he added suddenly.
+
+"Oh, do let's have dinner first. They make everything look so horrid,"
+said young Mrs. Oliver, composedly carving. "They can dry while we're
+doing the dishes."
+
+"You know, until we can afford a maid, I'm going to help you every
+night with the dishes," said Billy.
+
+"Well, don't put on airs about it," Susan said briskly. "Or I'll leave
+you to do them entirely alone, while I run over the latest songs on the
+PIARNO. Here now, deary, chew this nicely, and when I've had all I
+want, perhaps I'll give you some more!"
+
+"Sue, aren't we going to have fun--doing things like this all our
+lives?"
+
+"_I_ think we are," said Susan demurely. It was strange, it had its
+terrifying phases, but it was curiously exciting and wonderful, too,
+this wearing of a man's ring and his name, and being alone with him up
+here in the great forest.
+
+"This is life--this is all good and right," the new-made wife said to
+herself, with a flutter at her heart. And across her mind there flitted
+a fragment of the wedding-prayer, "in shamefacedness grave." "I will be
+grave," thought Susan. "I will be a good wife, with God's help!"
+
+Again morning found the cabin flooded with sunlight, and for all their
+happy days there the sun shone, and summer silences made the woods seem
+like June.
+
+"Billum, if only we didn't have to go back!" said William's wife,
+seated on a stump, and watching him clean trout for their supper, in
+the soft close of an afternoon.
+
+"Darling, I love to have you sitting there, with your little feet
+tucked under you, while I work," said William enthusiastically.
+
+"I know," Susan agreed absently. "But don't you wish we didn't?" she
+resumed, after a moment.
+
+"Well, in a way I do," Billy answered, stooping to souse a fish in the
+stream beside which he was kneeling. "But there's the 'Protest' you
+know,--there's a lot to do! And we'll come back here, every year. We'll
+work like mad for eleven months, and then come up here and loaf."
+
+"But, Bill, how do we know we can manage it financially?" said Susan
+prudently.
+
+"Oh, Lord, we'll manage it!" he answered comfortably. "Unless, of
+course, you want to have all the kids brought up in white stockings,"
+grinned Billy, "and have their pictures taken every month!"
+
+"Up here," said Susan dreamily, yet very earnestly too, "I feel so sure
+of myself! I love the simplicity, I love the work, I could entertain
+the King of England right here in this forest and not be ashamed! But
+when we go back, Bill, and I realize that Isabel Wallace may come in
+and find me pressing my window curtains, or that we honestly can't
+afford to send someone a handsome wedding present, I'll begin to be
+afraid. I know that now and then I'll find myself investing in
+finger-bowls or salted almonds, just because other people do."
+
+"Well, that's not actionable for divorce, woman!"
+
+Susan laughed, but did not answer. She sat looking idly down the long
+aisles of the forest, palpitating to-day with a rush of new fragrance,
+new color, new song. Far above, beyond the lacing branches of the
+redwoods, a buzzard hung motionless in a blue, blue sky.
+
+"Bill," she said presently, "I could live at a settlement house, and be
+happy all my life showing other women how to live. But when it comes to
+living down among them, really turning my carpets and scrubbing my own
+kitchen, I'm sometimes afraid that I'm not big enough woman to be
+happy!"
+
+"Why, but, Sue dear, there's a decent balance at the bank. We'll build
+on the Panhandle lots some day, and something comes in from the
+blue-prints, right along. If you get your own dinner five nights a
+week, we'll be trotting downtown on other nights, or over at the
+Carrolls', or up here." Billy stood up. "There's precious little real
+poverty in the world," he said, cheerfully, "we'll work out our list of
+expenses, and we'll stick to it! But we're going to prove how easy it
+is to prosper, not how easy it is to go under. We're the salt of the
+earth!"
+
+"You're big; I'm not," said Susan, rubbing her head against him as he
+sat beside her on the stump. But his nearness brought her dimples back,
+and the sober mood passed.
+
+"Bill, if I die and you remarry, promise me, oh, promise! that you
+won't bring her here!"
+
+"No, darling, my second wife is going to choose Del Monte or Coronado!"
+William assured her.
+
+"I'll bet she does, the cat!" Susan agreed gaily, "You know when Elsie
+Rice married Jerry Philips," she went on, in sudden recollection, "they
+went to Del Monte. They were both bridge fiends, even when they were
+engaged everyone who gave them dinners had to have cards afterwards.
+Well, it seems they went to Del Monte, and they moped about for a day
+or two, and, finally, Jerry found out that the Joe Carrs were at Santa
+Cruz,--the Carrs play wonderful bridge. So he and Elsie went straight
+up there, and they played every afternoon and every night for the next
+two weeks,--and all went to the Yosemite together, even playing on the
+train all the way!"
+
+"What a damn fool class for any nation to carry!" Billy commented,
+mildly.
+
+"Ah, well," Susan said, joyfully, "we'll fix them all! And when there
+are model poorhouses and prisons, and single tax, and labor pensions,
+and eight-hour days, and free wool--THEN we'll come back here and
+settle down in the woods for ever and ever!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+In the years that followed they did come back to the big woods, but not
+every year, for in the beginning of their life together there were hard
+times, and troubled times, when even a fortnight's irresponsibility and
+ease was not possible. Yet they came often enough to keep fresh in
+their hearts the memory of great spaces and great silences, and to
+dream their old dreams.
+
+The great earthquake brought them home hurriedly from their honeymoon,
+and Susan had her work to do, amid all the confusion that followed the
+uprooting of ten thousand homes. Young Mrs. Oliver listened to terrible
+stories, while she distributed second-hand clothing, and filed cards,
+walked back to her own little kitchen at five o'clock to cook her
+dinner, and wrapped and addressed copies of the "Protest" far into the
+night.
+
+With the deeper social problems that followed the days of mere physical
+need,--what was in her of love and charity rushed into sudden
+blossoming,--she found that her inexperienced hands must deal. She,
+whose wifehood was all joy and sanity, all sweet and mysterious
+deepening of the color of life, encountered now the hideous travesty of
+wifehood and motherhood, met by immature, ill-nourished bodies, and
+hearts sullen and afraid.
+
+"You ought not be seeing these things now," Billy warned her. But Susan
+shook her head.
+
+"It's good for me, Billy. And it's good for the little person, too.
+It's no credit to him that he's more fortunate than these--he needn't
+feel so superior!" smiled Susan.
+
+Every cent must be counted in these days. Susan and Billy laughed long
+afterward to remember that on many a Sunday they walked over to the
+little General Post Office in Mission Street, hoping for a subscription
+or two in the mail, to fan the dying fires of the "Protest" for a few
+more days. Better times came; the little sheet struck roots, carried a
+modest advertisement or two, and a woman's column under the heading
+"Mary Jane's Letter" whose claims kept the editor's wife far too busy.
+
+As in the early days of her marriage all the women of the world had
+been simply classified as wives or not wives, so now Susan saw no
+distinction except that of motherhood or childlessness. When she lay
+sick, feverish and confused, in the first hours that followed the
+arrival of her first-born, she found her problem no longer that of the
+individual, no longer the question merely of little Martin's crib and
+care and impending school and college expenses. It was the great burden
+of the mothers of the world that Susan took upon her shoulders. Why so
+much strangeness and pain, why such ignorance of rules and needs, she
+wondered. She lay thinking of tired women, nervous women, women hanging
+over midnight demands of colic and croup, women catching the little
+forms back from the treacherous open window, and snatching away the
+dangerous bottle from little hands---!
+
+"Miss Allen," said Susan, out of a silence, "he doesn't seem to be
+breathing. The blanket hasn't gotten over his little face, has it?"
+
+So began the joyous martyrdom. Susan's heart would never beat again
+only for herself. Hand in hand with the rapture of owning the baby
+walked the terror of losing him. His meals might have been a special
+miracle, so awed and radiant was Susan's face when she had him in her
+arms. His goodness, when he was good, seemed to her no more remarkable
+than his badness, when he was bad. Susan ran to him after the briefest
+absences with icy fear at her heart. He had loosened a pin--gotten it
+into his mouth, he had wedged his darling little head in between the
+bars of his crib---!
+
+But she left him very rarely. What Susan did now must be done at home.
+Her six-days-old son asleep beside her, she was discovered by Anna
+cheerfully dictating to her nurse "Mary Jane's Letter" for an
+approaching issue of the "Protest." The young mother laughed joyfully
+at Anna's concern, but later, when the trained nurse was gone, and the
+warm heavy days of the hot summer came, when fat little Martin was
+restless through the long, summer nights with teething, Susan's courage
+and strength were put to a hard test.
+
+"We ought to get a girl in to help you," Billy said, distressedly, on a
+night when Susan, flushed and excited, refused his help everywhere, and
+attempted to manage baby and dinner and house unassisted.
+
+"We ought to get clothes and china and linen and furniture,--we ought
+to move out of this house and this block!" Susan wanted to say. But
+with some effort she refrained from answering at all, and felt tears
+sting her eyes when Billy carried the baby off, to do with his big
+gentle fingers all the folding and pinning and buttoning that preceded
+Martin's disappearance for the evening.
+
+"Never mind!" Susan said later, smiling bravely over the dinner table,
+"he needs less care every day! He'll soon be walking and amusing
+himself."
+
+But Martin was only staggering uncertainly and far from self-sufficient
+when Billy Junior came laughing into the family group. "How do women DO
+it!" thought Susan, recovering slowly from a second heavy drain on
+nerves and strength.
+
+No other child, of course, would ever mean to her quite what the oldest
+son meant. The first-born is the miracle, brought from Heaven itself
+through the very gates of death, a pioneer, merciless and helpless, a
+little monarch whose kingdom never existed before the day he set up his
+feeble little cry. All the delightful innovations are for him,--the
+chair, the mug, the little airings, the remodeled domestic routine.
+
+"Pain in his poor little tum!" Susan said cheerfully and tenderly, when
+the youthful Billy cried. Under exactly similar circumstances, with
+Martin, she had shed tears of terror and despair, while Billy,
+shivering in his nightgown, had hung at the telephone awaiting her word
+to call the doctor. Martin's tawny, finely shaped little head, the grip
+of his sturdy, affectionate little arms, his early voyages into the
+uncharted sea of English speech,--these were so many marvels to his
+mother and father.
+
+But it had to be speedily admitted that Billy had his own particular
+charm too. The two were in everything a sharp contrast. Martin's bright
+hair blew in loose waves, Billy's dark curls fitted his head like a
+cap. Martin's eyes were blue and grave, Billy's dancing and brown.
+Martin used words carefully, with a nice sense of values, Billy
+achieved his purposes with stamping and dimpling, and early coined a
+tiny vocabulary of his own. Martin slept flat on his small back, a
+muscular little viking drifting into unknown waters, but drowsiness
+must always capture Billy alive and fighting. Susan untangled him
+nightly from his covers, loosened his small fingers from the bars of
+his crib.
+
+She took her maternal responsibilities gravely. Billy Senior thought it
+very amusing to see her, buttering a bowl for bread-pudding, or running
+small garments through her machine, while she recited "The Pied Piper"
+or "Goblin Market" to a rapt audience of two staring babies. But
+somehow the sight was a little touching, too.
+
+"Bill, don't you honestly think that they're smarter than other
+children, or is it just because they're mine?" Susan would ask. And
+Billy always answered in sober good faith, "No, it's not you, dear, for
+I see it too! And they really ARE unusual!"
+
+Susan sometimes put both boys into the carriage and went to see
+Georgie, to whose group a silent, heavy little boy had now been added.
+Mrs. O'Connor was a stout, complacent little person; the doctor's
+mother was dead, and Georgie spoke of her with sad affection and
+reverence. The old servant stayed on, tirelessly devoted to the new
+mistress, as she had been to the old, and passionately proud of the
+children. Joe's practice had grown enormously; Joe kept a runabout now,
+and on Sundays took his well-dressed wife out with him to the park.
+They had a circle of friends very much like themselves, prosperous
+young fathers and mothers, and there was a pleasant rivalry in
+card-parties, and the dressing of little boys and girls. Myra and
+Helen, colored ribbons tying their damp, straight, carefully ringletted
+hair, were a nicely mannered little pair, and the boy fat and sweet and
+heavy.
+
+"Georgie is absolutely satisfied," Susan said wistfully. "Do you think
+we will ever reach our ideals, Aunt Jo, as she has hers?"
+
+It was a summer Saturday, only a month or two after the birth of
+William Junior. Susan had not been to Sausalito for a long time, and
+Mrs. Carroll was ending a day's shopping with a call on mother and
+babies. Martin, drowsy and contented, was in her arms. Susan,
+luxuriating in an hour's idleness and gossip, sat near the open window,
+with the tiny Billy. Outside, a gusty August wind was sweeping chaff
+and papers before it; passers-by dodged it as if it were sleet.
+
+"I think there's no question about it, Sue," Mrs. Carroll's motherly
+voice said, cheerfully. "This is a hard time; you and Billy are both
+doing too much,--but this won't last! You'll come out of it some day,
+dear, a splendid big experienced woman, ready for any big work. And
+then you'll look back, and think that the days when the boys needed you
+every hour were short enough. Character is the one thing that you have
+to buy this way, Sue,--by effort and hardship and self-denial!"
+
+"But after all," Susan said somberly, so eager to ease her full heart
+that she must keep her voice low to keep it steady, "after all, Aunt
+Jo, aren't there lots of women who do this sort of thing year in and
+year out and DON'T achieve anything? As a means to an end," said Susan,
+groping for words, "as a road--this is comprehensible, but--but one
+hates to think of it as a goal!"
+
+"Hundreds of women reach their highest ambitions, Sue," the other woman
+answered thoughtfully, "without necessarily reaching YOURS. It depends
+upon which star you've selected for your wagon, Sue! You have just been
+telling me that the Lords, for instance, are happier than crowned
+kings, in their little garden, with a state position assured for Lydia.
+Then there's Georgie; Georgie is one of the happiest women I ever saw!
+And when you remember that the first thirty years of her life were
+practically wasted, it makes you feel very hopeful of anyone's life!"
+
+"Yes, but I couldn't be happy as Mary and Lydia are, and Georgie's life
+would drive me to strong drink!" Susan said, with a flash of her old
+fire.
+
+"Exactly. So YOUR fulfilment will come in some other way,--some way
+that they would probably think extremely terrifying or unconventional
+or strange. Meanwhile you are learning something every day, about women
+who have tiny babies to care for, about housekeeping as half the women
+of the world have to regard it. All that is extremely useful, if you
+ever want to do anything that touches women. About office work you
+know, about life downtown. Some day just the use for all this will come
+to you, and then I'll feel that I was quite right when I expected great
+things of my Sue!"
+
+"Of me?" stammered Susan. A lovely color crept into her thin cheeks and
+a tear splashed down upon the cheek of the sleeping baby.
+
+Anna's dearest dream was suddenly realized that summer, and Anna,
+lovelier than ever, came out to tell Sue of the chance meeting with
+Doctor Hoffmann in the laboratory that had, in two short minutes,
+turned the entire current of her life. It was all wonderful and
+delightful beyond words, not a tiny cloud darkened the sky.
+
+Conrad Hoffmann was forty-five years old, seventeen years older than
+his promised wife, but splendidly tall and strong, and--Anna and Susan
+agreed--STRIKINGLY handsome. He was at the very top of his profession,
+managed his own small surgical hospital, and maintained one of the
+prettiest homes in the city. A musician, a humanitarian, rich in his
+own right, he was so conspicuous a figure among the unmarried men of
+San Francisco that Anna's marriage created no small stir, and the six
+weeks of her engagement were packed with affairs in her honor.
+
+Susan's little sons were presently taken to Sausalito to be present at
+Aunt Anna's wedding. Susan was nervous and tired before she had
+finished her own dressing, wrapped and fed the beribboned baby, and
+slipped the wriggling Martin into his best white clothes. But she
+forgot everything but pride and pleasure when Betsey, the bride and
+"Grandma" fell with shrieks of rapture upon the children, and during
+the whole happy day she found herself over and over again at Billy's
+side, listening to him, watching him, and his effect on other people,
+slipping her hand into his. It was as if, after quiet months of taking
+him for granted, she had suddenly seen her big, clever, gentle husband
+as a stranger again, and fallen again in love with him.
+
+Susan felt strangely older than Anna to-day; she thought of that other
+day when she and Billy had gone up to the big woods; she remembered the
+odor of roses and acacia, the fragrance of her gown, the stiffness of
+her rose-crowned hat.
+
+Anna and Conrad were going away to Germany for six months, and Susan
+and the babies spent a happy week in Anna's old room. Betsey was
+filling what had been Susan's position on the "Democrat" now, and
+cherished literary ambitions.
+
+"Oh, why must you go, Sue?" Mrs. Carroll asked, wistfully, when the
+time for packing came. "Couldn't you stay on awhile, it's so lovely to
+have you here!"
+
+But Susan was firm. She had had her holiday; Billy could not divide his
+time between Sausalito and the "Protest" office any longer. They
+crossed the bay in mid-afternoon, and the radiant husband and father
+met them at the ferry. Susan sighed in supreme relief as he lifted the
+older boy to his shoulder, and picked up the heavy suitcase.
+
+"We could send that?" submitted Susan, but Billy answered by signaling
+a carriage, and placing his little family inside.
+
+"Oh, Bill, you plutocrat!" Susan said, sinking back with a great sigh
+of pleasure.
+
+"Well, my wife doesn't come home every day!" Billy said beaming.
+
+Susan felt, in some subtle climatic change, that the heat of the summer
+was over. Mission Street slept under a soft autumn haze; the hint of a
+cool night was already in the air.
+
+In the dining-room, as she entered with her baby in her arms, she saw
+that a new table and new chairs replaced the old ones, a ruffled little
+cotton house-gown was folded neatly on the table. A new, hooded
+baby-carriage awaited little Billy.
+
+"Oh, BILLY!" The baby was bundled unceremoniously into his new coach,
+and Susan put her arms about her husband's neck. "You OUGHTN'T!" she
+protested.
+
+"Clem and Mrs. Cudahy sent the carriage," Billy beamed.
+
+"And you did the rest! Bill, dear--when I am such a tired, cross
+apology for a wife!" Susan found nothing in life so bracing as the arm
+that was now tight about her. She had a full minute's respite before
+the boys' claims must be met.
+
+"What first, Sue?" asked Billy. "Dinner's all ordered, and the things
+are here, but I guess you'll have to fix things---"
+
+"I'll feed baby while you give Mart his milk and toast," Susan said
+capably, "then I'll get into something comfortable and we'll put them
+off, and you can set the table while I get dinner! It's been a heavenly
+week, Billy dear," said Susan, settling herself in a low rocker, "but
+it does seem good to get home!"
+
+The next spring all four did indeed go up to the woods, but it was
+after a severe attack of typhoid fever on Billy Senior's part, and
+Susan was almost too much exhausted in every way to trust herself to
+the rough life of the cabin. But they came back after a month's
+gypsying so brown and strong and happy that even Susan had forgotten
+the horrors of the winter, and in mid-summer the "Protest" moved into
+more dignified quarters, and the Olivers found the comfortable old
+house in Oakland that was to be a home for them all for a long time.
+
+Oakland was chosen because it is near the city, yet country-like enough
+to be ideal for children. The house was commonplace, shabby and cheaply
+built, but to Susan it seemed delightfully roomy and comfortable, and
+she gloried in the big yards, the fruit trees, and the old-fashioned
+garden. She cared for her sweet-pea vines and her chickens while the
+little boys tumbled about her, or connived against the safety of the
+cat, and she liked her neighbors, simple women who advised her about
+her plants, and brought their own babies over to play with Mart and
+Billy.
+
+Certain old interests Susan found that she must sacrifice for a time at
+least. Even with the reliable, capable, obstinate personage
+affectionately known as "Big Mary" in the kitchen, they could not leave
+the children for more than a few hours at a time. Susan had to let some
+of the old friends go; she had neither the gowns nor the time for
+afternoon calls, nor had she the knowledge of small current events that
+is more important than either. She and Billy could not often dine in
+town and go to the theater, for running expenses were heavy, the
+"Protest" still a constant problem, and Big Mary did not lend herself
+readily to sudden changes and interruptions.
+
+Entertaining, in any formal sense, was also out of the question, for to
+be done well it must be done constantly and easily, and the Oliver
+larder and linen closet did not lend itself to impromptu suppers and
+long dinners. Susan was too concerned in the manufacture of nourishing
+puddings and soups, too anxious to have thirty little brown stockings
+and twenty little blue suits hanging on the line every Monday morning
+to jeopardize the even running of her domestic machinery with very much
+hospitality. She loved to have any or all of the Carrolls with her,
+welcomed Billy's business associates warmly, and three times a year had
+Georgie and her family come to a one o'clock Sunday dinner, and planned
+for the comfort of the O'Connors, little and big, with the greatest
+pleasure and care. But this was almost the extent of her entertaining
+in these days.
+
+Isabel Furlong had indeed tried to bridge the gulf that lay between
+their manners of living, with a warm and sweet insistence that had
+conquered even the home-loving Billy. Isabel had silenced all of
+Susan's objections--Susan must bring the boys; they would have dinner
+with Isabel's own boy, Alan, then the children could all go to sleep in
+the Furlong nursery, and the mothers have a chat and a cup of tea
+before it was time to dress for dinner. Isabel's car should come all
+the way to Oakland for them, and take them all home again the next day.
+
+"But, angel dear, I haven't a gown!" protested Susan.
+
+"Oh, Sue, just ourselves and Daddy and John's mother!"
+
+"I could freshen up my black---" mused Susan.
+
+"Of course you could!" triumphed Isabel. And her enthusiasm carried the
+day. The Olivers went to dine and spend the night with the Furlongs,
+and were afterward sorry.
+
+In the first place, it was expensive. Susan indeed "freshened up" the
+black gown, but slippers and gloves, a belt and a silk petticoat were
+new for the occasion. The boys' wardrobes, too, were supplemented with
+various touches that raised them nearer the level of young Alan's
+clothes; Billy's dress suit was pressed, and at the last moment there
+seemed nothing to be done but buy a new suitcase--his old one was quite
+too shabby.
+
+The children behaved well, but Susan was too nervous about their
+behavior to appreciate that until the visit was long over, and the
+exquisite ease and order of Isabel's home made her feel hopelessly
+clumsy, shabby and strange. Her mood communicated itself somewhat to
+Billy, but Billy forgot all lesser emotions in the heat of a discussion
+into which he entered with Isabel's father during dinner. The old man
+was interested, tolerant, amused. Susan thought Billy nothing short of
+rude, although the meal finished harmoniously enough, and the men made
+an engagement the next morning to see each other again, and thresh out
+the subject thoroughly.
+
+Isabel kept Susan until afternoon, and strolled with her across the
+road to show her the pretty house that had been the Wallaces' home, in
+her mother's lifetime, empty now, and ready to lease.
+
+Susan had forgotten what a charming house it really was, bowered in
+gardens, flooded with sunshine, old-fashioned, elegant, comfortable and
+spacious. The upper windows gave on the tree-hidden roofs of San
+Rafael's nicest quarter, the hotel, the tennis-courts were but a few
+minutes' walk away.
+
+"Oh, if only you dear people could live here, what bliss we'd have!"
+sighed Isabel.
+
+"Isabel--it's out of the question! But what's the rent?"
+
+"Eighteen hundred---" submitted Isabel dubiously. "What do you pay?"
+
+"We're buying, you know. We pay six per cent, on a small mortgage."
+
+"Still, you could rent that house?" Isabel suggested, brightening.
+
+"Well, that's so!" Susan let her fancy play with it. She saw Mart and
+Billy playing here, in this sheltered garden, peeping through the
+handsome iron fence at horsemen and motor-cars passing by. She saw them
+growing up among such princely children as little Alan, saw herself the
+admired center of a group of women sensible enough to realize that
+young Mrs. Oliver was of no common clay.
+
+Then she smiled and shook her head. She went home depressed and silent,
+vexed at herself because the question of tipping or not tipping
+Isabel's chauffeur spoiled the last half of the trip, and absent-minded
+over Billy's account of the day, and the boys' prayers.
+
+Other undertakings, however, terminated more happily. Susan went with
+Billy to various meetings, somehow found herself in charge of a girls'
+dramatic club, and meeting in a bare hall with a score or two of little
+laundry-workers, waitresses and factory girls on every Tuesday evening.
+Sometimes it was hard to leave the home lamp-light, and come out into
+the cold on Tuesday evenings, but Susan was always glad she had made
+the effort when she reached the hall and when her own particular
+friends among the "Swastika Hyacinth Club" girls came to meet her.
+
+She had so recently been a working girl herself that it was easy to
+settle down among them, easy to ask the questions that brought their
+confidence, easy to discuss ways and means from their standpoint. Susan
+became very popular; the girls laughed with her, copied her, confided
+in her. At the monthly dances they introduced her to their "friends,"
+and their "friends" were always rendered red and incoherent with
+emotion upon learning that Mrs. Oliver was the wife of Mr. Oliver of
+the "Protest."
+
+Sometimes Susan took the children to see Virginia, who had long ago
+left Mary Lou's home to accept a small position in the great
+institution for the blind. Virginia, with her little class to teach,
+and her responsibilities when the children were in the refectory and
+dormitory, was a changed creature, busy, important, absorbed. She
+showed the toddling Olivers the playroom and conservatory, and sent
+them home with their fat hands full of flowers.
+
+"Bless their little hearts, they don't know how fortunate they are!"
+said Virginia, saying good-bye to Mart and Billy. "But _I_ know!" And
+she sent a pitiful glance back toward her little charges.
+
+After such a visit, Susan went home with a heart too full of gratitude
+for words. "God has given us everything in the world!" she would say to
+Billy, looking across the hearth at him, in the silent happy evening.
+
+Walking with the children, in the long spring afternoons, Susan liked
+to go in for a moment to see Lydia Lord in the library. Lydia would
+glance up from the book she was stamping, and at the sight of Susan and
+the children, her whole plain face would brighten. She always came out
+from behind her little gates and fences to talk in whispers to Susan,
+always had some little card or puzzle or fan or box for Mart and Billy.
+
+"And Mary's well!"
+
+"Well---! You never saw anything like it. Yesterday she was out in the
+garden from eight o'clock until ten at night! And she's never alone,
+everyone in the neighborhood loves her---!" Miss Lord would accompany
+them to the door when they went, wave to the boys through the glass
+panels, and go back to her desk still beaming.
+
+Happiest of all the times away from home were those Susan spent with
+the Carrolls, or with Anna in the Hoffmanns' beautiful city home. Anna
+did not often come to Oakland, she was never for more than a few hours
+out of her husband's sight, but she loved to have Susan and the boys
+with her. The doctor wanted a glimpse of her between his operations and
+his lectures, would not eat his belated lunch unless his lovely wife
+sat opposite him, and planned a hundred delights for each of their
+little holidays. Anna lived only for him, her color changed at his
+voice, her only freedom, in the hours when Conrad positively must be
+separated from her, was spent in doing the things that pleased him,
+visiting his wards, practicing the music he loved, making herself
+beautiful in some gown that he had selected for her.
+
+"It's idolatry, mon Guillaume," said Mrs. Oliver, briskly, when she was
+discussing the case of the Hoffmanns with her lord. "Now, I'm crazy
+enough about you, as you well know," continued Susan, "but, at the same
+time, I don't turn pale, start up, and whisper, 'Oh, it's Willie!' when
+you happen to come home half an hour earlier than usual. I don't
+stammer with excitement when I meet you downtown, and I don't cry when
+you--well, yes, I do! I feel pretty badly when you have to be away
+overnight!" confessed Susan, rather tamely.
+
+"Wait until little Con comes!" Billy predicted comfortably. "Then
+they'll be less strong on the balcony scene!"
+
+"They think they want one," said Susan wisely, "but I don't believe
+they really do!"
+
+On the fifth anniversary of her wedding day Susan's daughter was born,
+and the whole household welcomed the tiny Josephine, whose sudden
+arrival took all their hearts by storm.
+
+"Take your slangy, freckled, roller-skating, rifle-shooting boys and be
+off with you!" said Susan, over the hour-old baby, to Billy, who had
+come flying home in mid-morning. "Now I feel like David Copperfield's
+landlady, 'at last I have summat I can love!' Oh, the mistakes that you
+WON'T make, Jo!" she apostrophized the baby. "The smart, capable,
+self-sufficient way that you'll manage everything!"
+
+"Do you really want me to take the boys away for a few days?" asked
+Billy, who was kneeling down for a better view of mother and child.
+
+Susan's eyes widened with instant alarm.
+
+"Why should you?" she asked, cool fingers tightening on his.
+
+"I thought you had no further use for the sex," answered Billy meekly.
+
+"Oh---?" Susan dimpled. "Oh, she's too little to really absorb me yet,"
+she said. "I'll continue a sort of superficial interest in the boys
+until she's eighteen or so!"
+
+Sometimes echoes of the old life came to her, and Susan, pondering them
+for an hour or two, let them drift away from her again. Billy showed
+her the headlines one day that told of Peter Coleman's narrow escape
+from death, in his falling airship, and later she learned that he was
+well again and had given up aeronautics, and was going around the world
+to add to his matchless collection of semi-precious stones. Susan was
+sobered one day to hear of Emily Saunders' sudden death. She sat for a
+long time wondering over the empty and wasted life. Mrs. Kenneth
+Saunders, with a smartly clad little girl, was caught by press cameras
+at many fashionable European watering-places; Kenneth spent much of his
+time in institutions and sanitariums, Susan heard. She heard that he
+worshipped his little girl.
+
+And one evening a London paper, at which she was carelessly glancing in
+a library, while Billy hunted through files nearby for some lost
+reference, shocked her suddenly with the sight of Stephen Bocqueraz's
+name. Susan had a sensation of shame and terror; she shut the paper
+quickly.
+
+She looked about her. Two or three young men, hard-working young men to
+judge from appearance, were sitting with her at the long,
+magazine-strewn table. Gas-lights flared high above them, soft
+footfalls came and went in the warm, big room. At the desk the
+librarian was whispering with two nervous-looking young women. At one
+of the file-racks, Billy stood slowly turning page after page of a heap
+of papers. Susan looked at him, trying to see the kind, keen face from
+an outsider's viewpoint, but she had to give up the attempt. Every
+little line was familiar now, every little expression. William looked
+up and caught her smile and his lips noiselessly formed, "I love you!"
+
+"Me?" said Susan, also without a voice, and with her hand on her heart.
+
+And when he said "Fool!" and returned grinning to his paper, she opened
+her London sheet and turned to the paragraph she had seen.
+
+Not sensational. Mr. Stephen Bocqueraz, the well-known American writer,
+and Mrs. Bocqueraz, said the paragraph, had taken the house of Mrs.
+Bromley Rose-Rogers for the season, and were being extensively
+entertained. Mr. and Mrs. Bocqueraz would thus be near their daughter,
+Miss Julia Bocqueraz, whose marriage to Mr. Guy Harold Wetmore, second
+son of Lord Westcastle, would take place on Tuesday next.
+
+Susan told Billy about it late that night, more because not telling him
+gave the thing the importance inseparable from the fact withheld than
+because she felt any especial pang at the opening of the old wound.
+
+They had sauntered out of the library, well before closing time, Billy
+delighted to have found his reference, Susan glad to get out into the
+cool summer night.
+
+"Oysters?" asked William. Susan hesitated.
+
+"This doesn't come out of my expenses," she stipulated. "I'm hard-up
+this week!"
+
+"Oh, no--no! This is up to me," Billy said. So they went in to watch
+the oyster-man fry them two hot little panfuls, and sat over the coarse
+little table-cloth for a long half-hour, contentedly eating and
+talking. Fortified, they walked home, Susan so eager to interrogate Big
+Mary about the children that she reached the orderly kitchen quite
+breathless.
+
+Not a sound out of any of them was Big Mary's satisfactory report.
+Still their mother ran upstairs. Children had been known to die while
+parents and guardians supposed them to be asleep.
+
+However the young Olivers were slumbering safely, and were wide-awake
+in a flash, the boys clamoring for drinks, from the next room,
+Josephine wide-eyed and dewy, through the bars of her crib. Susan sat
+down with the baby, while Billy opened windows, wound the alarm clock,
+and quieted his sons.
+
+A full half-hour passed before everything was quiet. Susan found
+herself lying wakeful in the dark. Presently she said:
+
+"Billy?"
+
+"What is it?" he asked, roused instantly.
+
+"Why, I saw something funny in the London 'News' to-night," Susan
+began. She repeated the paragraph. Billy speculated upon it
+interestedly.
+
+"Sure, he's probably gone back to his wife," said Billy. "Circumstances
+influence us all, you know."
+
+"Do you mean that you don't think he ever meant to get a divorce?"
+
+"Oh, no, not necessarily! Especially if there was any reason for him to
+get it. I think that, if it had been possible, he would have gotten it.
+If not, he wouldn't have. Selfish, you know, darned selfish!"
+
+Susan pondered in silence.
+
+"I was to blame," she said finally.
+
+"Oh, no, you weren't, not as much as he was--and he knew it!" Billy
+said.
+
+"All sensation has so entirely died out of the whole thing," Susan said
+presently, "that it's just like looking at a place where you burned
+your hand ten years ago, and trying to remember whether the burn hurt
+worst, or dressing the burn, or curing the burn! I know it was all
+wrong, but at the time I thought it was only convention I was going
+against--I didn't realize that one of the advantages of laws is that
+you can follow them blind, when you've lost all your moorings. You
+can't follow your instincts, but you can remember your rule. I've
+thought a lot about Stephen Bocqueraz in the past few years, and I
+don't believe he meant to do anything terribly wrong and, as things
+turned out, I think he really did me more good than harm! I'm confident
+that but for him I would have married Kenneth, and he certainly did
+teach me a lot about poetry, Billy, about art and music, and more than
+that, about the SPIRIT of art and music and poetry, the sheer beauty of
+the world. So I've let all the rest go, like the fever out of a burn,
+and I believe I could meet him now, and like him almost. Does that seem
+very strange to you? Have you any feeling of resentment?"
+
+Billy was silent.
+
+"Billy!" Susan said, in quick uneasiness, "ARE you angry?"
+
+After a tense moment the regular sound of deep and placid breathing
+answered her. Billy lay on his back sound asleep.
+
+Susan stared at him a moment in the dimness. Then the absurdity of the
+thing struck her, and she began to laugh.
+
+"I wonder if, when we get to another world, EVERYTHING we do here will
+seem just ridiculous and funny?" speculated Susan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+For their daughter's first Thanksgiving Day the Olivers invited a dozen
+friends to their Oakland house for dinner; the first really large
+gathering of their married lives.
+
+"We have always been too poor, or I haven't been well, or there's been
+some other good reason for lying low," wrote Mrs. Oliver to Mrs.
+Carroll, "but this year the stork is apparently filling previous
+orders, and our trio is well, and we have been blessed beyond all rhyme
+and reason, and want to give thanks. Anna and Conrad and the O'Connors
+have promised, Jinny will be here, and I'm only waiting to hear from
+you three to write and ask Phil and Mary and Pillsey and the baby. So
+DO come--for next year Anna says that it's her turn, and by the year
+after we may be so prosperous that I'll have to keep two maids, and
+miss half the fun--it will certainly break my heart if I ever have to
+say, 'We'll have roast turkey, Jane, and mince pies,' instead of making
+them myself. PLEASE come, we are dying to see the little cousins
+together, they will be simply heavenly---"
+
+"There's more than wearing your best dress and eating too much turkey
+to Thanksgiving," said Susan to Billy, when they were extending the
+dining-table to its largest proportions on the day before Thanksgiving.
+"It's just one of those things, like having a baby, that you have to DO
+to appreciate. It's old-fashioned, and homelike, and friendly. Perhaps
+I have a commonplace, middle-class mind, but I do love all this! I love
+the idea of everyone arriving, and a big fire down here, and Betts and
+her young man trying to sneak away to the sun-room, and the boys
+sitting in Grandma's lap, and being given tastes of white meat and
+mashed potato at dinnertime. Me to the utterly commonplace, every time!"
+
+"When you are commonplace, Sue," said her husband, coming out from
+under the table, where hasps had been absorbing his attention, "you'll
+be ready for the family vault at Holy Cross, and not one instant
+before!"
+
+"No, but the consolation is," Susan reflected, "that if this is
+happiness,--if it makes me feel like the Lord Mayor's wife to have
+three children, a husband whom most people think is either a saint or a
+fool,--I think he's a little of both, myself!--and a new sun-room built
+off my dining-room,--why, then there's an unexpected amount of
+happiness in this world! In me--a plain woman, sir, with my hands still
+odorous of onion dressing, and a safety-pin from my daughter's
+bathing-struggle still sticking into my twelve-and-a-half-cent
+gingham,--in me, I say, you behold a contented human creature, who
+confidently hopes to live to be ninety-seven!"
+
+"And then we'll have eternity together!" said the dusty Billy, with an
+arm about her.
+
+"And not a minute too long!" answered his suddenly serious wife.
+
+"You absolutely radiate content, Sue," Anna said to her wistfully, the
+next day.
+
+Anna had come early to Oakland, to have luncheon and a few hours'
+gossip with her hostess before the family's arrival for the six o'clock
+dinner. The doctor's wife reached the gate in her own handsome little
+limousine, and Susan had shared her welcome of Anna with enthusiasm for
+Anna's loose great sealskin coat.
+
+"Take the baby and let me try it on," said Susan. "Woman--it is the
+most gorgeous thing I ever saw!"
+
+"Conrad says I will need it in the east,--we go after Christmas," Anna
+said, her face buried against the baby.
+
+Susan, having satisfied herself that what she really wanted, when
+Billy's ship came in, was a big sealskin coat, had taken her guest
+upstairs, to share the scuffle that preceded the boys' naps, and hold
+Josephine while Susan put the big bedroom in order, and laid out the
+little white suits for the afternoon.
+
+Now the two women were sitting together, Susan in a rocker, with her
+sleepy little daughter in the curve of her arm, Anna in a deep low
+chair, with her head thrown back, and her eyes on the baby.
+
+"Radiate happiness?" Susan echoed briskly, "My dear, you make me
+ashamed. Why, there are whole days when I get really snappy and
+peevish,--truly I do! running from morning until night. As for getting
+up in the dead of night, to feed the baby, Billy says I look like
+desolation--'like something the cat dragged in,' was his latest pretty
+compliment. But no," Susan interrupted herself honestly, "I won't deny
+it. I AM happy. I am the happiest woman in the world."
+
+"Yet you always used to begin your castles in Spain with a million
+dollars," Anna said, half-wistfully, half-curiously. "Everything else
+being equal, Sue," she pursued, "wouldn't you rather be rich?"
+
+"Everything else never IS equal," Susan answered thoughtfully. "I used
+to think it was--but it's not! Now, for instance, take the case of
+Isabel Wallace. Isabel is rich and beautiful, she has a good
+husband,--to me he's rather tame, but probably she thinks of Billy as a
+cave-man, so that doesn't count!--she has everything money can buy, she
+has a gorgeous little boy, older than Mart, and now she has a girl, two
+or three months old. And she really is a darling, Nance, you never
+liked her particularly---"
+
+"Well, she was so perfect," pleaded Anna smiling, "so gravely wise and
+considerate and low-voiced, and light-footed---!"
+
+"Only she's honestly and absolutely all of that!" Susan defended her
+eagerly, "there's no pose! She really is unspoiled and good--my dear,
+if the other women in her set were one-tenth as good as Isabel!
+However, to go back. She came over here to spend the day with me, just
+before Jo was born, and we had a wonderful day. Billy and I were taking
+our dinners at a boarding-house, for a few months, and Big Mary had
+nothing else to do but look out for the boys in the afternoon. Isabel
+watched me giving them their baths, and feeding them their lunches, and
+finally she said, 'I'd like to do that for Alan, but I never do!' 'Why
+don't you?' I said. Well, she explained that in the first place there
+was a splendid experienced woman paid twenty-five dollars a week to do
+it, and that she herself didn't know how to do it half as well. She
+said that when she went into the nursery there was a general smoothing
+out of her way before her, one maid handing her the talcum, another
+running with towels, and Miss Louise, as they call her, pleasantly
+directing her and amusing Alan. Naturally, she can't drive them all
+out; she couldn't manage without them! In fact, we came to the
+conclusion that you have to be all or nothing to a baby. If Isabel made
+up her mind to put Alan to bed every night say, she'd have to cut out a
+separate affair every day for it, rush home from cards, or from the
+links, or from the matinee, or from tea--Jack wouldn't like it, and she
+says she doubts if it would make much impression on Alan, after all!"
+
+"I'd do it, just the same!" said Anna, "and I wouldn't have the nurse
+standing around, either--and yet, I suppose that's not very
+reasonable," she went on, after a moment's thought, "for that's
+Conrad's free time. We drive nearly every day, and half the time dine
+somewhere out of town. And his having to operate at night so much makes
+him want to sleep in the morning, so that we couldn't very well have a
+baby in the room. I suppose I'd do as the rest do, pay a fine nurse,
+and grab minutes with the baby whenever I could!"
+
+"You have to be poor to get all the fun out of children," Susan said.
+"They're at their very sweetest when they get their clothes off, and
+run about before their nap, or when they wake up and call you, or when
+you tell them stories at night."
+
+"But, Sue, a woman like Mrs. Furlong does NOT have to work so hard,"
+Anna said decidedly, "you must admit that! Her life is full of ease and
+beauty and power--doesn't that count? Doesn't that give her a chance
+for self-development, and a chance to make herself a real companion to
+her husband?" "Well, the problems of the world aren't answered in
+books, Nance. It just doesn't seem INTERESTING, or worth while to me!
+She could read books, of course, and attend lectures, and study
+languages. But--did you see the 'Protest' last week?"
+
+"No, I didn't! It comes, and I put it aside to read--"
+
+"Well, it was a corking number. Bill's been asserting for months, you
+know, that the trouble isn't any more in any special class, it's
+because of misunderstanding everywhere. He made the boys wild by saying
+that when there are as many people at the bottom of the heap reaching
+up, as there are people at the top reaching down, there'll be no more
+trouble between capital and labor! And last week he had statistics, he
+showed them how many thousands of rich people are trying--in their
+entirely unintelligent ways!--to reach down, and--my dear, it was
+really stirring! You know Himself can write when he tries!--and he
+spoke of the things the laboring class doesn't do, of the way it
+educates its children, of the way it spends its money,--it was as good
+as anything he's ever done, and it made no end of talk!
+
+"And," concluded Susan contentedly, "we're at the bottom of the heap,
+instead of struggling up in the world, we're struggling down! When I
+talk to my girls' club, I can honestly say that I know some of their
+trials. I talked to a mothers' meeting the other day, about simple
+dressing and simple clothes for children, and they knew I had three
+children and no more money than they. And they know that my husband
+began his business career as a puddler, just as their sons are
+beginning now. In short, since the laboring class can't, seemingly,
+help itself, and the upper class can't help it, the situation seems to
+be waiting for just such people as we are, who know both sides!"
+
+"A pretty heroic life, Susan!" Anna said shaking her head.
+
+"Heroic? Nothing!" Susan answered, in healthy denial. "I like it! I've
+eaten maple mousse and guinea-hen at the Saunders', and I've eaten
+liver-and-bacon and rice pudding here, and I like this best. Billy's a
+hero, if you like," she added, suddenly, "Did I tell you about the
+fracas in August?"
+
+"Not between you and Billy?" Anna laughed.
+
+"No-o-o! We fight," said Susan modestly, "when he thinks Mart ought to
+be whipped and I don't, or when little Billums wipes sticky fingers on
+his razor strop, but he ain't never struck me, mum, and that's more
+than some can say! No, but this was really quite exciting," Susan
+resumed, seriously. "Let me see how it began--oh, yes!--Isabel
+Wallace's father asked Billy to dinner at the Bohemian Club,--in
+August, this was. Bill was terribly pleased, old Wallace introduced him
+to a lot of men, and asked him if he would like to be put up---"
+
+"Conrad would put him up, Sue---" Anna said jealously.
+
+"My dear, wait--wait until you hear the full iniquity of that old divil
+of a Wallace! Well, he ordered cocktails, and he 'dear boyed' Bill, and
+they sat down to dinner. Then he began to taffy the 'Protest,' he said
+that the railroad men were all talking about it, and he asked Bill what
+he valued it at. Bill said it wasn't for sale. I can imagine just how
+graciously he said it, too! Well, old Mr. Wallace laughed, and he said
+that some of the railroad men were really beginning to enjoy the way
+Billy pitched into them; he said he had started life pretty humbly
+himself; he said that he wanted some way of reaching his men just now,
+and he thought that the 'Protest' was the way to do it. He said that it
+was good as far as it went, but that it didn't go far enough. He
+proposed to work its circulation up into hundreds of thousands, to buy
+it at Billy's figure, and to pay him a handsome salary,--six thousand
+was hinted, I believe,--as editor, under a five-year contract! Billy
+asked if the policy of the paper was to be dictated, and he said, no,
+no, everything left to him! Billy came home dazed, my dear, and I
+confess I was dazed too. Mr. Wallace had said that he wanted Billy, as
+a sort of side-issue, to live in San Rafael, so that they could see
+each other easily,--and I wish you could see the house he'd let us have
+for almost nothing! Then there would be a splendid round sum for the
+paper, thirty or forty thousand probably, AND the salary! I saw myself
+a lady, Nance, with a 'rising young man' for a husband---"
+
+"But, Sue--but, Sue," Anna said eagerly, "Billy would be editor--Billy
+would be in charge--there would be a contract--nobody could call that
+selling the paper, or changing the policy of the 'Protest'---"
+
+"Exactly what I said!" laughed Susan. "However, the next morning we
+rushed over to the Cudahys--you remember that magnificent old person
+you and Conrad met here? That's Clem. And his wife is quite as
+wonderful as he is. And Clem of course tore our little dream to rags---"
+
+"Oh, HOW?" Anna exclaimed regretfully.
+
+"Oh, in every way. He made it betrayal, and selling the birthright.
+Billy saw it at once. As Clem said, where would Billy be the minute
+they questioned an article of his, or gave him something for insertion,
+or cut his proof? And how would the thing SOUND--a railroad magnate
+owning the 'Protest'?"
+
+"He might do more good that way than in any other," mourned Anna
+rebelliously, "and my goodness, Sue, isn't his first duty to you and
+the children?"
+
+"Bill said that selling the 'Protest' would make his whole life a
+joke," Susan said. "And now I see it, too. Of course I wept and wailed,
+at the time, but I love greatness, Nance, and I truly believe Billy is
+great!" She laughed at the artless admission. "Well, you think Conrad
+is great," finished Susan, defending herself.
+
+"Yes, sometimes I wish he wasn't--yet," Anna said, sighing. "I never
+cooked a meal for him, or had to mend his shirts!" she added with a
+rueful laugh. "But, Sue, shall you be content to have Billy slave as he
+is slaving now," she presently went on, "right on into middle-age?"
+
+"He'll always slave at something," Susan said, cheerfully, "but that's
+another funny thing about all this fuss--the boys were simply WILD with
+enthusiasm when they heard about old Wallace and the 'Protest,' trust
+Clem for that! And Clem assured me seriously that they'd have him Mayor
+of San Francisco yet!--However," she laughed, "that's way ahead! But
+next year Billy is going east for two months, to study the situation in
+different cities, and if he makes up his mind to go, a newspaper
+syndicate has offered him enough money, for six articles on the
+subject, to pay his expenses! So, if your angel mother really will come
+here and live with the babies, and all goes well, I'm going, too!"
+
+"Mother would do anything for you," Anna said, "she loves you for
+yourself, and sometimes I think that she loves you for--for Jo, you
+know, too! She's so proud of you, Sue---"
+
+"Well, if I'm ever anything to be proud of, she well may be!" smiled
+Susan, "for, of all the influences of my life--a sentence from a talk
+with her stands out clearest! I was moping in the kitchen one day, I
+forget what the especial grievance was, but I remember her saying that
+the best of life was service--that any life's happiness may be measured
+by how much it serves!"
+
+Anna considered it, frowning.
+
+"True enough of her life, Sue!"
+
+"True of us all! Georgie, and Alfie, and Virginia! And Mary Lou,--did
+you know that they had a little girl? And Mary Lou just divides her
+capacity for adoration into two parts, one for Ferd and one for
+Marie-Louise!"
+
+"Well, you're a delicious old theorist, Sue! But somehow you believe in
+yourself, and you always do me good!" Anna said laughing. "I share with
+Mother the conviction that you're rather uncommon--one watches you to
+see what's next!"
+
+"Putting this child in her crib is next, now," said Susan flushing, a
+little embarrassed. She lowered Josephine carefully on the little
+pillow. "Best--girl--her--mudder--ever--did--HAB!" said Susan tenderly
+as the transfer was accomplished. "Come on, Nance!" she whispered,
+"we'll go down and see what Bill is doing."
+
+So they went down, to add a score of last touches to the orderly,
+homelike rooms, to cut grape-fruit and taste cranberry sauce, to fill
+vases with chrysanthemums and ferns, and count chairs for the long
+table.
+
+"This is fun!" said Susan to her husband, as she filled little dishes
+with nuts and raisins in the pantry and arranged crackers on a plate.
+
+"You bet your life it's fun!" agreed Billy, pausing in the act of
+opening a jar of olives. "You look so pretty in that dress, Sue," he
+went on, contentedly, "and the kids are so good, and it seems dandy to
+be able to have the family all here! We didn't see this coming when we
+married on less than a hundred a month, did we?"
+
+He put his arm about her, they stood looking out of the window together.
+
+"We did not! And when you were ill, Billy--and sitting up nights with
+Mart's croup!" Susan smiled reminiscently.
+
+"And the Thanksgiving Day the milk-bill came in for five months--when
+we thought we'd been paying it!"
+
+"We've been through some TIMES, Bill! But isn't it wonderful to--to do
+it all together--to be married?"
+
+"You bet your life it's wonderful," agreed the unpoetic William.
+
+"It's the loveliest thing in the world," his wife said dreamily. She
+tightened his arm about her and spoke half aloud, as if to herself. "It
+IS the Great Adventure!" said Susan.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Saturday's Child, by Kathleen Norris
+
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