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 b.u.t.ton 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 gra.s.s and b.u.t.tercups 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 gra.s.sy 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 b.u.t.tercups and poppies on the gra.s.sy slopes, and where there was shade, under the oaks, "Mission bells" and scarlet columbine and cream and lavender iris were ma.s.sed 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 st.u.r.dily. "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 advertis.e.m.e.nts, 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 pa.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day in July that Susan, leaving the office at two o'clock, met the lovely Mrs. John Furlong on the sh.o.r.e 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.