"Peter loves to have his girl friends dine here," smiled old Mrs. Baxter in parting. "You must come again. He has company two or three times a week." Susan smiled in response, but the little speech was the one blot on a happy evening.
Every happy time seemed to have its one blot. Susan would have her hour, would try to keep the tenderness out of her "When do I see you again, Peter?" to be met by his cheerful "Well, I don't know. I'm going up to the Yellands' for a week, you know. Do you know Clare Yelland? She's the dandiest girl you ever saw--nineteen, and a raving beauty!" Or, wearing one of Peter's roses on her black office-dress, she would have to smile through Thorny's interested speculations as to his friendship for this society girl or that. "The Chronicle said yesterday that he was supposed to be terribly crushed on that Washington girl," Thorny would report. "Of course, no names, but you could tell who they meant!"
Susan began to talk of going away "to work."
"Lord, aren't you working now?" asked William Oliver in healthy scorn.
"Not working as hard as I could!" Susan said. "I can't--can't seem to get interested--" Tears thickened her voice, she stopped short.
The two were sitting on the upper step of the second flight of stairs in the late evening, just outside the door of the room where Alfred Lancaster was tossing and moaning in the grip of a heavy cold and fever. Alfred had lost his position, had been drinking again, and now had come home to his mother for the fiftieth time to be nursed and consoled. Mrs. Lancaster, her good face all mother-love and pity, sat at his side. Mary Lou wept steadily and unobtrusively. Susan and Billy were waiting for the doctor.
"No," the girl resumed thoughtfully, after a pause, "I feel as if I'd gotten all twisted up and I want to go away somewhere and get started fresh. I could work like a slave, Bill, in a great clean institution, or a newspaper office, or as an actress. But I can't seem to straighten things out here. This isn't MY house, I didn't have anything to do with the making of it, and I can't feel interested in it. I'd rather do things wrong, but do them MY way!"
"It seems to me you're getting industrious all of a sudden, Sue."
"No." She hardly understood herself. "But I want to GET somewhere in this life, Bill," she mused. "I don't want to sit back and wait for things to come to me. I want to go to them. I want some alternative. So that--" her voice sank, "so that, if marriage doesn't come, I can say to myself, 'Never mind, I've got my work!'"