"She should have come, too!" Peter said, embarra.s.sedly.

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 nutsh.e.l.ls 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.days, 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 Sat.u.r.days, 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.

Th.o.r.n.y was standing by the table. One or two other girls were in the room, Miss Sherman was mending a glove, Miss Cash.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sionately, 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 Cash.e.l.l 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 Cash.e.l.l 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 b.u.t.ted 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," Th.o.r.n.y 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 Cash.e.l.l 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 Cash.e.l.l 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 embarra.s.sed 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, Th.o.r.n.y?" 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 embarra.s.sing 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 G.o.d; 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.