She had so recently been a working girl herself that it was easy to settle down among them, easy to ask the questions that brought their confidence, easy to discuss ways and means from their standpoint. Susan became very popular; the girls laughed with her, copied her, confided in her. At the monthly dances they introduced her to their "friends," and their "friends" were always rendered red and incoherent with emotion upon learning that Mrs. Oliver was the wife of Mr. Oliver of the "Protest."
Sometimes Susan took the children to see Virginia, who had long ago left Mary Lou's home to accept a small position in the great institution for the blind. Virginia, with her little class to teach, and her responsibilities when the children were in the refectory and dormitory, was a changed creature, busy, important, absorbed. She showed the toddling Olivers the playroom and conservatory, and sent them home with their fat hands full of flowers.
"Bless their little hearts, they don't know how fortunate they are!" said Virginia, saying good-bye to Mart and Billy. "But I know!" And she sent a pitiful glance back toward her little charges.
After such a visit, Susan went home with a heart too full of gratitude for words. "God has given us everything in the world!" she would say to Billy, looking across the hearth at him, in the silent happy evening.
Walking with the children, in the long spring afternoons, Susan liked to go in for a moment to see Lydia Lord in the library. Lydia would glance up from the book she was stamping, and at the sight of Susan and the children, her whole plain face would brighten. She always came out from behind her little gates and fences to talk in whispers to Susan, always had some little card or puzzle or fan or box for Mart and Billy.
"And Mary's well!"
"Well---! You never saw anything like it. Yesterday she was out in the garden from eight o'clock until ten at night! And she's never alone, everyone in the neighborhood loves her---!" Miss Lord would accompany them to the door when they went, wave to the boys through the glass panels, and go back to her desk still beaming.
Happiest of all the times away from home were those Susan spent with the Carrolls, or with Anna in the Hoffmanns' beautiful city home. Anna did not often come to Oakland, she was never for more than a few hours out of her husband's sight, but she loved to have Susan and the boys with her. The doctor wanted a glimpse of her between his operations and his lectures, would not eat his belated lunch unless his lovely wife sat opposite him, and planned a hundred delights for each of their little holidays. Anna lived only for him, her color changed at his voice, her only freedom, in the hours when Conrad positively must be separated from her, was spent in doing the things that pleased him, visiting his wards, practicing the music he loved, making herself beautiful in some gown that he had selected for her.