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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Saturday's Child, by Kathleen Norris
+#6 in our series by Kathleen Norris
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+Title: Saturday's Child
+
+Author: Kathleen Norris
+
+Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4687]
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+[This file was first posted on March 2, 2002]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Saturday's Child, by Kathleen Norris
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+
+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 I" 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 I"
+
+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 I" 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-----I"
+
+"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.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Saturday's Child, by Kathleen Norris
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+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Saturday's Child, by Kathleen Norris
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