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.

How

Susan pondered over the letter. 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 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 of her soiled cuffs as she shook hands with her hostess two hours later, 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 to her old host as well. To Peter it was just a quiet, happy evening at home, with music, and a rarchit 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 Yelland's for a week, you know. Do you know Clare Yelland? She's the dandiest girl you ever sawnineteen 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.

"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! 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 s plied the reason. Susan was alway

home on Sundays now, unless she went out with Peter Coleman or his friends.

"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.

She went to bed a little while later, profoundly depressed. 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 matinées; 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, 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.

Susan was not deceived by the glittering, prismatic thing known as Society. She knew that Peter Coleman's and Emily Saunders's 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 egotism was the natural result of his upbringing, 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 and 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.

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.

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 loosely across their shoulders as they worked.

"S'listen, Susan. You're engaged to Peter Coleman, aren't you?" asked Thorny one January day.

"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 intentions.

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 down-town 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. "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.

desk. He looked up and laughed at her, and later ran up to the "deck" for a few minutes to say good-by. 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 down-town that morning, through the fresh, early air, on the dummy-front. It was hard today to be shut up in a stuffy office. Outside, the water-carts were making the season's first trip along Front Street; pedestrians chose the shady side today. 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.

CHAPTER IX

The World that Works

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 about with fifteen-year-old Jim and seventeenyear-old Betsey; revelled in a confidential, sisterly attitude with handsome Phil, the oldest of the five, 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 offered Susan the following day as a holiday, too. So 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 late in July that Georgianna Lancaster startled and shocked the whole boarding-house out of its midsummer 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.

But

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 the door," 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!"

"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 some one, 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 had 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 diningroom 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 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.

"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. 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. Doctor O'Connor would not desert his mother; his mother refused to accept Georgie. Georgie cried day and night, merely asserting 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. A little too much was being heard, said the authorities, of 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, felt 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 no longer be 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 a while t