“No letters here from your aunt, nor your uncle, nor none of the tribe,” said old Whaler, who had gone over with Tyler to keep his place, and so had no further use for good manners.

“I think old Tommy Whaler is an impudent old wretch,” said Susie that evening, “and I won’t go near his old post-office again.”  But Susie forgot her threat of vengeance the next day, and she went again, lured by family affection, to inquire for that letter which Aunt Abbie must have written.  The third time she went, rummy old Whaler roared very improperly, “Bother your aunt!  You’ve got a beau somewheres—­that’s what’s the matter.”

Poor Susan was so dazzled by this flash of clairvoyance that she hurried from that dreadful post-office, scarcely hearing the terrible words that the old gin-pig hurled after her:  “And he’s forgot you!—­that’s what’s the matter.”

Susie Barringer walked home along the river-road, revolving many things in her mind.  She went to her room and locked her door by sticking a pen-knife over the latch, and sat down to have a good cry.  Her faculties being thus cleared for action, she thought seriously for an hour.  If you can remember when you were a school-girl, you know a great deal of solid thinking can be done in an hour.  But we can tell you in a moment what it footed up.  You can walk through the Louvre in a minute, but you cannot see it in a week.

Susan Barringer (sola, loquitur):  “Three weeks yesterday.  Yes, I s’pose it’s so.  What a little fool I was!  He goes everywheres—­says the same things to everybody, like he was selling ribbons.  Mean little scamp!  Mother seen through him in a minute.  I’m mighty glad I didn’t tell her nothing about it.” [Fie, Susie! your principles are worse than your grammar.] “He’ll marry some rich girl—­I don’t envy her, but I hate her—­and I am as good as she is.  Maybe he will come back—­no, and I hope he won’t;—­and I wish I was dead!” (Pocket handkerchief.)

Yet in the midst of her grief there was one comforting thought—­nobody knew of it.  She had no confidante—­she had not even opened her heart to her mother:  these Western maidens have a fine gift of reticence.  A few of her countryside friends and rivals had seen with envy and admiration the pretty couple on the day of Leon’s arrival.  But all their poisonous little compliments and questions had never elicited from the prudent Susie more than the safe statement that the handsome stranger was a friend of Aunt Abbie’s, whom she had met at Jacksonville.  They could not laugh at her:  they could not sneer at gay deceivers and lovelorn damsels when she went to the sewing-circle.  The bitterness of her tears was greatly sweetened by the consideration that in any case no one could pity her.  She took such consolation from this thought that she faced her mother unflinchingly at tea, and baffled the maternal inquest on her “redness of eyes” by the school-girl’s invaluable and ever-ready headache.