"Look here, I thought you were going to be George Lancaster O'Connor!" said Susan, threateningly, to the new baby.
"I don't know why a boy wouldn't have been named Joseph Aloysius, like his father and grandfather," said the old lady disapprovingly.
But Georgie paid no heed. The baby's mother was kneeling beside the bed where little Helen lay, her eyes fairly devouring the tiny face.
"You don't suppose God would take her away from me, Sue, because of that nonsense about wanting a boy?" Georgie whispered.
Susan's story did not win the hundred dollar prize, but it won a fifth prize of ten dollars, and kept her in pocket money for some weeks. After that Mary Lord brought home an order for twenty place- cards for a child's Easter Party, and Susan spent several days happily fussing with water colors and so earned five dollars more.
Time did not hang at all heavily on her hands; there was always an errand or two to be done for auntie, and always a pack of cards and a library book with which to fill the evening. Susan really enjoyed the lazy evenings, after the lazy days. She and Mary Lou spent the first week in April in a flurry of linens and ginghams, making shirtwaists for the season; for three days they did not leave the house, nor dress fully, and they ate their luncheons from the wing of the sewing-machine.
Spring came and poured over the whole city a bath of warmth and perfume. The days lengthened, the air was soft and languid. Susan loved to walk to market now, loved to loiter over calls in the late after-noon, and walk home in the lingering sunset light. If a poignant regret smote her now and then, its effect was not lasting, she dismissed it with a bitter sigh.
But constant humiliation was good for neither mind nor body; Susan felt as pinched in soul as she felt actually pinched by the old cheerless, penniless condition, hard and bitter elements began to show themselves in her nature. She told herself that one great consolation in her memories of Stephen Bocqueraz was that she was too entirely obscure a woman to be brought to the consideration of the public, whatever her offense might or might not be. Cold and sullen, Susan saw herself as ill-used, she could not even achieve human contempt--she was not worthy of consideration. Just one of the many women who were weak--And sometimes, to escape the desperate circling of her thoughts, she would jump up and rush out for a lonely walk, through the wind- blown, warm disorder of the summer streets, or sometimes, dropping her face suddenly upon a crooked arm, she would burst into bitter weeping.