Part 2 (1/2)
Susan did not herself press the point of being a celebrity in her own appearance. She did not look the part. She did not even try. She was sixty years old, wore black frocks which touched the pavements behind as she walked and were raised some eight inches above it in front, owing to that perfect frankness with which age is always willing to confess its stomach. She had worn the same bonnet for five years, tied under her protruding chin. Sometimes she changed the ribbons, but she never changed the ”shape.”
She nodded to the three men seated near the open window in the bank.
Then she paused at the bottom of the steps which led to the second floor and sighed.
”This staircase was built for men to climb,” she grumbled as she began the ascent. She stood on the step below and put her right foot on the one above, but she did not alternate with the left. The gears in her left knee were not strong enough to bear the necessary lift. Her feet made a flat all-heel-and-toe sound as she went up, very emphatic. When she reached the top her face was red, and she was ”out of breath.” But she went on panting down the hall, looking at the lettering on the doors of the various offices. Printed on a large ground-gla.s.s door she saw ”Mike Prim.” She wrinkled her nose, adjusted her spectacles, poked out her neck and stared at it.
”Humph! Mike Prim! Nothing else! What does he do? How does he make a living? Every man in this town knows, and not a single woman!” she said to herself.
She came to the door at the end of the hall upon which was printed, ”John Regis, Attorney-at-law.”
She opened it without knocking and stood upon the threshold.
”Well, John Regis, you must think you are still a young man, keeping your office at the top of this ladder staircase,” she complained, raising her handkerchief and dabbing her face.
”Come in, Susan, and take this chair by the window,” said the Judge.
Rising from his desk and coming forward, he conducted her elegantly to the chair.
”It's forty years since I was here,” she said, looking about her, ”and you've not changed a thing. You are scarcely changed yourself, John.”
”The man is changed, Susan. Forty years make more difference in a man than they do in things,” he answered gently.
”The same books, all so thick and awful looking. I remember that day I thought you must be the wisest man in the world--to know all that was in them.”
”I didn't know, and I don't know yet,” he put in, smiling.
”The same chairs, the same brown prints on the wall. And that little vase, isn't it the one you had on your desk that day?” she asked, bending forward to look at it more closely.
”The very same. You put a rose into it that day, do you remember?”
”No, but I do remember that I was in love with you, John. A woman of sixty may admit that now!” she laughed.
”I wish you had admitted it then. I tried hard enough to win you, Susan.
We should have been a team!”
”No, we should not. We are both headstrong. We should have obstructed each other. I married the right man.”
”I suppose so. Certainly you never could have henpecked me into Congress the way you did Jim Walton! Why did you do it?” he asked, showing the ends of a sword smile as he regarded her.
”Well, you see I couldn't go myself,” she laughed.
”So you sent your husband, next best thing.”
”It wasn't so bad. I helped him, you know.”
”Wrote all his speeches, kicked up all of his dust for him, didn't you?”
”Not all, but I helped.”
”With your sc.r.a.pbooks, for example?”
”Yes,” she admitted.