Saturday's Child Part 26

On Sunday afternoon Mr. Coleman duly presented himself at the boarding-house, but he was accompanied by Miss Fox, to whom Susan, who saw her occasionally at the Saunders', had taken a vague dislike, and by a Mr. Horace Carter, fat, sleepy, and slightly bald at twenty-six.

"I brought 'em along to pacify Auntie," said Peter on the car.

Susan made a little grimace.

"You don't like Con? Oh, she's loads of sport!" he a.s.sured her. "And you'll like Carter, too, he's loads of fun!"

But Susan liked n.o.body and nothing that day. It was a failure from beginning to end. The sky was overcast, gloomy. Not a leaf stirred on the dripping trees, in the silent Park, fog filled all the little canons. There were very few children on the merry-go-rounds, or in the swings, and very few pleasure-seekers in the museum and the conservatories. Miss Fox was quite comfortable in white furs, but Susan felt chilly. She tried to strike a human spark from Mr. Carter, but failed. Attempts at a general conversation also fell flat.

They listened to the band for a little while, but it was too cold to sit still very long, and when Peter proposed tea at the Occidental, Susan visibly brightened. But the shamed color rose in her face when Miss Fox languidly a.s.sured him that if he wanted her mother to scalp her, well and good; if not, he would please not mention tea downtown.

She added that Mama was having a tea herself to-day, or she would ask them all to come home with her. This put Susan in an uncomfortable position of which she had to make the best.

"If it wasn't for an a.s.sorted bunch of boarders," said Susan, "I would ask you all to our house."

Miss Fox eyed her curiously a moment, then spoke to Peter.

"Well, do let's do something, Peter! Let's go to the j.a.panese garden."

To the j.a.panese garden they went, for a most unsatisfactory tea. Miss Fox, it appeared, had been to j.a.pan,--"with Dolly Ripley, Peter," said she, carelessly mentioning the greatest of California's heiresses, and she delighted the little bowing, smiling tea-woman with a few words in her native tongue. Susan admired this accomplishment, with the others, as she drank the tasteless fluid from tiny bowls.

Only four o'clock! What an endless afternoon it had been!

Peter took her home, and they chatted on the steps gaily enough, in the winter twilight. But Susan cried herself to sleep that night. This first departure from her rule had proven humiliating and disastrous; she determined not to depart from it again.

Georgie and the doctor came to the house for the one o'clock Christmas dinner, the doctor instantly antagonizing his wife's family by the remark that his mother always had her Christmas dinner at night, and had "consented" to their coming, on condition that they come home again early in the afternoon. However, it was delightful to have Georgie back again, and the cousins talked and laughed together for an hour, in Mary Lou's room. Almost the first question from the bride was of Susan's love-affair, and what Peter's Christmas gift had been.

"It hasn't come yet, so I don't know myself!" Susan said readily. But that evening, when Georgie was gone and her aunt and cousins were at church, she sat down to write to Peter.

MY DEAR PETER (wrote Susan):

This is a perfectly exquisite pin, and you are a dear to have remembered my admiring a pearl crescent months ago. I never saw a pin that I liked better, but it's far too handsome a gift for me to keep. I haven't even dared show it to Auntie and the girls! I am sending it back to you, though I hate to let it go, and thank you a thousand times.

Always affectionately yours,

SUSAN BROWN.

Peter answered immediately from the country house where he was spending the holidays. Susan read his letter in the office, two days after Christmas.

DEAR PANSY IRENE:

I see Auntie's fine Italian hand in this! You wait till your father gets home, I'll learn you to sa.s.s back! Tell Mrs. Lancaster that it's an imitation and came in a box of lemon drops, and put it on this instant! The more you wear the better, this cold weather!

I've got the bulliest terrier ever, from George. Show him to you next week. PETER.

Frowning thoughtfully, her eyes still on the scribbled half-sheet, Susan sat down at her desk, and reached for paper and pen. She wrote readily, and sent the letter out at once by the office boy.

DEAR PETER:

Please don't make any more fuss about the pin. I can't accept it, and that's all there is to it. The candy was quite enough--I thought you were going to send me books. Hadn't you better change your mind and send me a book? As ever, S. B.

To which Peter, after a week's interval, answered briefly:

DEAR SUSAN:

This fuss about the pin gives me a pain. I gave a dozen gifts handsomer than that, and n.o.body else seems to be kicking.

Be a good girl, and Love the Giver. PETER.

This ended the correspondence. Susan put the pin away in the back of her bureau-drawer, and tried not to think about the matter.

January was cold and dark. Life seemed to be made to match. Susan caught cold from a worn-out overshoe, and spent an afternoon and a day in bed, enjoying the rest from her aching head to her tired feet, but protesting against each one of the twenty trips that Mary Lou made up and downstairs for her comfort. She went back to the office on the third day, but felt sick and miserable for a long time and gained strength slowly.

One rainy day, when Peter Coleman was alone in Mr. Brauer's office, she took the little jeweler's box in and laid it beside him on the desk.

"This is all darn foolishness!" Peter said, really annoyed.

"Well---" Susan shrugged wearily, "it's the way I feel about it."

"I thought you were more of a sport!" he said impatiently, holding the box as if he did not quite know what to do with it.

"Perhaps I'm not," Susan said quietly. She felt as if the world were slowly, dismally coming to an end, but she stood her ground.

An awkward silence ensued. Peter slipped the little box into his pocket. They were both standing at his high desk, resting their elbows upon it, and half-turned, so that they faced each other.

"Well," he said, discontentedly, "I've got to give you something or other for Christmas. What'll it be?"

"Nothing at all, Peter," Susan protested, "just don't say anything more about it!"

He meditated, scowling.

"Are you dated for to-morrow night?" he asked.

"Yes," Susan said simply. The absence of explanation was extremely significant.

"So you're not going out with me any more?" he asked, after a pause.

"Not--for awhile," Susan agreed, with a little difficulty. She felt a horrible inclination to cry.

"Well, gosh, I hope somebody is pleased at the trouble she has made!"

Peter burst out angrily.

"If you mean Auntie, Peter," indignation dried Susan's tears, "you are quite mistaken! Anyway, she would be quite right not to want me to accept expensive gifts from a man whose position is so different from my own---"

"Rot!" said Peter, flushing, "that sounds like servants' talk!"

"Well, of course I know it is nonsense---" Susan began. And, despite her utmost effort, two tears slipped down her cheeks.