The conversation turned upon death, and the last acts of the dying. Loretta Parker related the death of a young saint. Miss Lord, pouring a little lime water into most of her food, chewed religiously, her eyes moving from one speaker's face to another.
"I saw my pearl to-day," said William Oliver to Susan, under cover of the general conversation.
"Eleanor Harkness? Where?"
"On Market Street,--the little darling! Walking with Anna Carroll. Going to the boat."
"Oh, and how's Anna?"
"Fine, I guess. I only spoke to them for a minute. I wish you could have seen her dear little laugh--"
"Oh, Billy, you fatuous idiot! It'll be someone else to-morrow."
"It will NOT," said William, without conviction "No, my little treasure has all my heart--"
"Honestly," said Susan, in fine scorn, "it's cat-sickening to hear you go on that way! Especially with that snapshot of Anna Carroll still in your watch!"
"That snapshot doesn't happen to be still in my watch, if it's any business of yours!" the gentleman said, sweetly.
"Why, it is TOO! Let's see it, then!"
"No, I won't let you see it, but it's not there, just the same."
"Oh, Billy, what an awful lie!"
"Susan!" said Mrs. Lancaster, partly in reproof, partly to call her niece's attention to apple-pie and tapioca pudding.
"Pudding, please, auntie." Susan subsided, not to break forth again until the events of the day suddenly rushed into her mind. She hastily reviewed them for William's benefit.
"Well, what do you care?" he consoled her for the disappointment, "here's your chance to bone up on the segregating, or crediting, or whatever you call it."
"Yes, and then have someone else get it!"
"No one else could get it, if you understood it best!" he said impatiently.
"That shows just about how much you know about the office!" Susan retorted, vexed at his lack of sympathy. And she returned to her pudding, with the real cream of the day's news yet untold.
A few moments later Billy was excused, for a struggle with German in the night school, and departed with a joyous, "Auf wiedersehen, Fraulein Brown!" to Susan. Such boarders as desired were now drinking their choice between two dark, cool fluids that might have been tea, or might have been coffee, or might have been neither.
"I am going a little ahead of you and Georgie, Ma," said Virginia, rising, "for I want to see Mamie Evans about tickets for Saturday."