“Your friend is a lady—­a widow?”

“No—­yes, I mean to say.”

“Do I understand that she is a widow?”

“Yes, of course.”

There was a confusion in Mr. Falconer’s manner that Susan remembered afterward.

“Can you give me references, Mr. Falconer?” and Susan looked him straight in the eye.

“Well, yes.  Mr. Hamilton of the Hamilton Block I know, and Mr. Dorsheimer of the Metropolitan Hotel.  I am also acquainted with Andrew Richardson, banker, and with John Y. Martindale, M.C.”

“Those references are sufficient,” Susan said, her confidence restored.  “I will make inquiries, and if everything is right, as I have no doubt it is, you can have the house if you should find that it suits you.  Will you go over now and look at it?  It is scarcely a half block from here.”

“Yes, if you please:  I should like the matter settled as soon as possible.”

So Susan put on her bonnet and brought a bunch of keys, and walked away with Mr. Falconer to show the house which she had built.  And a proud woman was Susan as she did this, and a perfect right had Susan to be a proud woman.  She had, indeed, built a model house as far as twenty-six hundred dollars could do this.  That amount was never, perhaps, put into brick and mortar in better shape.  So Mr. Falconer thought, and so he said very cordially.

“Oh,” sighed our poor Susan when she was again at home, “how good it seems to have such appreciation!”

Susan made inquiries of Mr. Hamilton of the Hamilton Block concerning Mr. Falconer.

“Very nice man—­very nice man, indeed!” Mr. Hamilton answered briskly:  “deals on the square, and always up to time.”

So the papers were drawn up, and Mr. Falconer paid the first month’s rent—­forty dollars.

“Here, Gertrude,” Susan said, handing her sister a roll of bills:  “half the rent of my house I shall allow you.  Make yourself as pretty as you can with it.”

“Oh, you blessed darling angel!” Gertrude cried in a transport.  “You’re the best sister that ever lived, Susie:  you really are.  Make myself pretty!  I tell you I mean to shine like a star with this money.  Twenty dollars a month!  Delia Spaulding spends five times as much, I suppose.  But never mind.  I have an eye and I have fingers:  I’ll make my money do wonders.”

This Gertrude indeed did.  She knew instinctively what colors and what shapes would suit her form and face and harmonize with her general wardrobe.  So she wasted nothing in experiments or in articles to be discarded because unbecoming or inharmonious.  If Gertrude’s toilets were less expensive than Delia Spaulding’s, they were more unique and more picturesque.  Indeed, there was not in her set a more prettily-dressed girl than Gertrude, and scarcely a prettier girl.  Her society among the gentlemen was soon quoted at par, and then rose to a premium.

Promptly on the first day of the second month Mr. Falconer called to pay Susan’s rent.