Part 4 (1/2)

”You're going to see your Saint--I know!” said Miss Susie, tossing her bright head. ”I'm jealous, and you know it.”

”Don't be a goose, Susie! You know you're my very best friend, but--she's different.”

”I should think she was different!” Susie sharply agreed. ”And you've been 'different' ever since she came.”

”I hope so,” said Vivian gravely. ”Mrs. St. Cloud brings out one's very best and highest. I wish you liked her better, Susie.”

”I like you,” Susie answered. ”You bring out my 'best and highest'--if I've got any. She don't. She's like a lovely, faint, bright--bubble! I want to p.r.i.c.k it!”

Vivian smiled down upon her.

”You bad little mouse!” she said. ”Come, give me the books.”

”Leave them with me, and I'll bring them in the car.” Susie looked anxious to make amends for her bit of blasphemy.

”All right, dear. Thank you. I'll be home by that time, probably.”

In the street she stopped before a little shop where papers and magazines were sold.

”I believe Father'd like the new Centurion,” she said to herself, and got it for him, chatting a little with the one-armed man who kept the place. She stopped again at a small florist's and bought a little bag of bulbs.

”Your mother's forgotten about those, I guess,” said Mrs. Crothers, the florist's wife, ”but they'll do just as well now. Lucky you thought of them before it got too late in the season. Bennie was awfully pleased with that red and blue pencil you gave him, Miss Lane.”

Vivian walked on. A child ran out suddenly from a gate and seized upon her.

”Aren't you coming in to see me--ever?” she demanded.

Vivian stooped and kissed her.

”Yes, dear, but not to-night. How's that dear baby getting on?”

”She's better,” said the little girl. ”Mother said thank you--lots of times. Wait a minute--”

The child fumbled in Vivian's coat pocket with a mischievous upward glance, fished out a handful of peanuts, and ran up the path laughing while the tall girl smiled down upon her lovingly.

A long-legged boy was lounging along the wet sidewalk. Vivian caught up with him and he joined her with eagerness.

”Good evening, Miss Lane. Say--are you coming to the club to-morrow night?”

She smiled cordially.

”Of course I am, Johnny. I wouldn't disappoint my boys for anything--nor myself, either.”

They walked on together chatting until, at the minister's house, she bade him a cheery ”good-night.”

Mrs. St. Cloud was at the window pensively watching the western sky.

She saw the girl coming and let her in with a tender, radiant smile--a lovely being in a most unlovely room.

There was a chill refinement above subdued confusion in that Cambridge-Bainville parlor, where the higher culture of the second Mrs. Williams, superimposed upon the lower culture of the first, as that upon the varying tastes of a combined ancestry, made the place somehow suggestive of excavations at Abydos.