"Your play. Wake up. Sue!" laughed Mary. "I have you now, I can yard in seven moves!"
"No skill to that," said Susan hardily, "just sheer luck!"
"Oh you wicked story-teller!" Mary laughed delightedly, and they set the men for another game.
"No, but you're really the lucky one, Sue," said the older woman presently.
"I lucky!" and Susan laughed as she moved her man.
"Well, don't you think you are?"
"I think I'm darned unlucky!" the girl declared seriously.
"Here--here! Descriptive adjectives!" called Lydia, but the others paid no heed.
"Sue, how can you say so!"
"Well, I admit, Miss Mary," Susan said with pretty gravity, "that God hasn't sent me what he has sent you to bear, for some inscrutable reason,--I'd go mad if He had! But I'm poor--"
"Now, look here," Mary said authoritatively. "You're young, aren't you? And you're good-looking, aren't you?"
"Don't mince matters, Miss Mary. Say beautiful," giggled Susan.
"I'm in earnest. You're the youngest and prettiest woman in this house. You have a good position, and good health, and no encumbrances--"
"I have a husband and three children in the Mission, Miss Mary. I never mentioned them--"
"Oh, behave yourself, Sue! Well! And, more than that, you have--we won't mention one special friend, because I don't want to make you blush, but at least a dozen good friends among the very richest people of society. You go to lunch with Miss Emily Saunders, and to Burlingame with Miss Ella Saunders, you get all sorts of handsome presents--isn't this all true?"
"Absolutely," said Susan so seriously, so sadly, that the invalid laid a bony cold one over the smooth brown one arrested on the "Halma" board.
"Why, I wasn't scolding you, dearie!" she said kindly. "I just wanted you to appreciate your blessings!"
"I know--I know," Susan answered, smiling with an effort. She went to bed a little while later profoundly depressed.
It was all true, it was all true! But, now that she had it, it seemed so little! She was beginning to be popular in the Saunders set,--her unspoiled freshness appealed to more than one new friend, as it had appealed to Peter Coleman and to Emily and Ella Saunders. She was carried off for Saturday matinees, she was in demand for one Sunday after another. She was always gay, always talkative, she had her value, as she herself was beginning to perceive. And, although she met very few society men, just now, being called upon to amuse feminine luncheons or stay overnight with Emily when nobody else was at home, still her social progress seemed miraculously swift to Thorny, to Billy and Georgie and Virginia, even sometimes to herself. But she wanted more--more--more! She wanted to be one of this group herself, to patronize instead of accepting patronage.