It was positively not until a week later, when she met Allen Golyer at choir-meeting, that she remembered that this man knew the secret of her baffled hopes.  She blushed scarlet as he approached her:  “Have you got company home, Miss Susie?”

“Yes—­that is, Sally Withers and me came together, and—­”

“No, that’s hardly fair to Tom Fleming:  three ain’t the pleasantest company.  I will go home with you.”

Susie took the strong arm that was held out to her, and leaned upon it with a mingled feeling of confidence and dread as they walked home through the balmy night under the clear, starry heaven of the early spring.  The air was full of the quickening breath of May.

Susie Barringer waited in vain for some signal of battle from Allen Golyer.  He talked more than usual, but in a grave, quiet, protecting style, very different from his former manner of worshiping bashfulness.  His tone had in it an air of fatherly caressing which was inexpressibly soothing to his pretty companion, tired and lonely with her silent struggle of the past month.  When they came to her gate and he said good-night, she held his hand a moment with a tremulous grasp, and spoke impulsively:  “Al, I once told you something I never told anybody else.  I’ll tell you something else now, because I believe I can trust you.”

“Be sure of that, Susie Barringer.”

“Well, Al, my engagement is broken off.”

“I am sorry for you, Susie, if you set much store by him.”

Miss Susie answered with great and unnecessary impetuosity, “I don’t, and I am glad of it!” and then ran into the house and to bed, her cheeks all aflame at the thought of her indiscretion, and yet with a certain comfort in having a friend from whom she had no secrets.

I protest there was no thought of coquetry in the declaration which Susan Barringer blurted out to her old lover under the sympathetic starlight of the May heaven.  But Allen Golyer would have been a dull boy not to have taken heart and hope from it.  He became, as of old, a frequent and welcome visitor at Crystal Glen.  Before long the game of chequers with Susie became so enthralling a passion that it was only adjourned from one evening to another.  Allen’s white shirts grew fringy at the edges with fatigue-duty, and his large hands were furry at the fingers with much soap.  Susie’s affectionate heart, which had been swayed a moment from its orbit by the irresistible attraction of Bertie Leon’s diamond breastpin and city swagger, swung back to its ancient course under the mild influence of time and the weather and opportunity.  So that Dame Barringer was not in the least surprised, on entering her little parlor one soft afternoon in that very May, to see the two young people economically occupying one chair, and Susie shouting the useless appeal, “Mother, make him behave!”

“I never interfere in young folks’ matters, especially when they’re going all right,” said the motherly old soul, kissing “her son Allen” and trotting away to dry her happy tears.