Before the prayer ended Susannah was troubled by so strong a sense of emotion that she desired nothing so much as relief.  It seemed to her that the emotion was not so much in herself as in the others, or like an influence in the room pressing upon them all.  At length a kitten that had been lying by the hearth got up as if disturbed by the same influence, and, walking round the room, rubbed its fur against Ephraim’s knee.  She saw the start run through his whole nervous frame.  Opening his eyes, he put down his hand and stroked it.  Susannah liked Ephraim the better for this.  The kitten was not to be comforted; it looked up in his face and gave a piteous mew.  Susannah tittered; then she felt sorry and ashamed.

CHAPTER II.

Two quiet years passed, and Susannah had attained her eighteenth birthday.

On a certain day in the week there befell what the aunt called a “season” of baking.  It was the only occasion in the week when Mrs. Croom was sure to stay for some length of time in the same place with Susannah beside her.  Ephraim brought down his books to the hospitable kitchen, and sat aloof at a corner table.  He said the sun was too strong upon his upper windows, or that the rain was blowing in.  The first time that Ephraim sought refuge in the kitchen Mrs. Croom was quite flustered with delight.  She always coveted more of her son’s society.  But when he came a third time she began to suspect trouble.

Mrs. Croom stood by the baking-board, her slender hands immersed in a heap of pearly flour; baskets of scarlet currants lay at her feet.  All things in the kitchen shone by reason of her diligence, and the windows were open to the summer sunshine.  Susannah sat with a large pan of red gooseberries beside her; she was picking them over one by one.  Somewhere in the outer kitchen the hired boy had been plucking a goose, and some tiny fragments of the down were floating in the air.  One of them rode upon a movement of the summer air and danced before Susannah’s eyes.  She put her pretty red lips beneath it and blew it upwards.

Mrs. Croom’s suspicions concerning Ephraim had produced in her a desire to reprove some one, but she refrained as yet.

Susannah having wafted the summer snowflake aloft, still sat, her young face tilted upward like the faces of saints in the holy pictures, her bright eyes fixed upon the feather now descending.  Ephraim looked with obvious pleasure.  Her head was framed for him by the window; a dark stiff evergreen and the summer sky gave a Raphaelite setting.

The feather dropped till it all but touched the tip of the girl’s nose.  Then from the lips, puckered and rosy, came a small gust; the fragment of down ascended, but this time aslant.

“You didn’t blow straight enough up,” said Ephraim.

Susannah smiled to know that her pastime was observed.  The smile was a flash of pleasure that went through her being.  She ducked her laughing face farther forward to be under the feather.