"A terrible crash. And now the firm's reorganized; it's Hunter, Hunter & Brauer. Th.o.r.n.y 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 pa.s.sionately, "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 cla.s.s, 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-ap.r.o.ns, 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 pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sionately 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.