But Susan Posey was more than a consoler,—­she was an angel to him in this time of his disappointment.  “Read me all the poems over again,” she said,—­“it is almost the only pleasure I have left, to hear you read your beautiful verses.”  Clement Lindsay had not written to Susan quite so often of late as at some former periods of the history of their love.  Perhaps it was that which had made her look paler than usual for some little time.  Something was evidently preying on her.  Her only delight seemed to be in listening to Gifted as he read, sometimes with fine declamatory emphasis, sometimes in low, tremulous tones, the various poems enshrined in his manuscript.  At other times she was sad, and more than once Mrs. Hopkins had seen a tear steal down her innocent cheek, when there seemed to be no special cause for grief.  She ventured to speak of it to Master Byles Gridley.

“Our Susan’s in trouble, Mr. Gridley, for some reason or other that’s unbeknown to me, and I can’t help wishing you could jest have a few words with her.  You’re a kind of a grandfather, you know, to all the young folks, and they’d tell you pretty much everything about themselves.  I calc’late she is n’t at ease in her mind about somethin’ or other, and I kind o’ think, Mr. Gridley, you could coax it out of her.”

“Was there ever anything like it?” said Master Byles Gridley to himself.  “I shall have all the young folks in Oxbow Village to take care of at this rate.  Susan Posey in trouble, too!  Well, well, well, it’s easier to get a birch-bark canoe off the shallows than a big ship off the rocks.  Susan Posey’s trouble will be come at easily enough; but Myrtle Hazard floats in deeper water.  We must make Susan Posey tell her own story, or let her tell it, for it will all come out of itself.”

“I am going to dust the books in the open shelves this morning.  I wonder if Miss Susan Posey would n’t like to help for half an hour or so,” Master Gridley remarked at the breakfast-table.

The amiable girl’s very pleasant countenance lighted up at the thought of obliging the old man who had been so kind to her and so liberal to her friend, the poet.  She would be delighted to help him; she would dust them all for him, if he wanted her to.  No, Master Gridley said, he always wanted to have a hand in it; and, besides, such a little body as she was could not lift those great folios out of the lower shelves without overstraining herself; she might handle the musketry and the light artillery, but he must deal with the heavy guns himself.  “As low down as the octavos, Susan Posey, you shall govern; below that, the Salic law.”

Susan did not low much about the Salic law; but she knew he meant that he would dust the big books and she would attend to the little ones.

A very young and a very pretty girl is sometimes quite charming in a costume which thinks of nothing less than of being attractive.  Susan appeared after breakfast in the study, her head bound with a kerchief of bright pattern, a little jacket she had outgrown buttoned, in spite of opposition, close about her up to the throat, round which a white handkerchief was loosely tied, and a pair of old gauntlets protecting her hands, so that she suggested something between a gypsy, a jaunty soubrette, and the fille du regiment.