"Violet Hunter!" Th.o.r.n.y 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 sh.o.r.e 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 Th.o.r.n.y, 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 s.h.a.ggy great yellow chrysanthemum in their b.u.t.tonholes; girls in furs; dancingly impatient small boys, and agitated and breathless chaperones. And here was Th.o.r.n.y, 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 Th.o.r.n.y'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 Th.o.r.n.y 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!"

"h.e.l.lo, 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," Th.o.r.n.y 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 Th.o.r.n.y.

"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.