This might have seemed overemphatic to an unprejudiced outsider.  But no one who really knew Susanna would have blamed her young husband for an utter disbelief in the likelihood of her getting anywhere at any given time.  Susanna’s one glaring fault was a cheerful indifference to the fixed plans of others.  Engagements she forgot, ignored, or cancelled at the last minute; dinner guests, arriving at her lovely home, never dreamed how often the consternation of utter surprise was hidden under the hilarious greetings of hostess and host.  Dressmakers and dentists charged Susanna mercilessly for forgotten appointments; but an adoring circle of friends had formed a sort of silent conspiracy to save her from herself, and socially she suffered much less than she deserved.

“But some day you’ll get an awful jolt; you’ll get the lesson of your life, Sue,” Jim used to say, and Susanna always answered meekly: 

“Oh, Jim, I know it!”

“My mother used to have a nursery rhyme about me,” she told Jim on one occasion.  “It was one of those ‘A is for Amiable Annie’ things, you know; ’K is for Kind little Katie, whose weight is one hundred and eighty’—­you’ve heard them, of course?  Well, ’S was for Shiftless Susanna.’  I know the next line was, ’But such was the charm of her manner’—­but I’ve forgotten the rest.  Whether mother made that up for my especial benefit or not, I don’t know.”

“Well, you have the charm all right,” Jim was obliged to confess, for Susanna had an undeniable genius for adjustment and placation.  Nobody was angry long at Susanna, perhaps because so many other people were always ready to step in gladly and fill any gaps in her programme.  She was too popular to be snubbed.  And her excuses were always so reasonable!

“You know I simply lose my mind at the telephone,” she would plead.  “I accept anything then—­it never occurs to me that we may have engagements!” Or, “Well, the Jacksons said Thursday,” she would brilliantly elucidate, “and Mrs. Oliver said the twentieth, and it never occurred to me that it was the same day!”

And she was always willing—­this was the maddening part of Susanna!- -to own herself entirely in the wrong, and always ended any conversation on the subject with a cheerful:  “But anyway, I’m improving, you admit that, don’t you, Jim?  I’m not nearly as bad as I used to be!”

She said now very seriously:  “Jim, darling, you may depend upon me.  I realize what this means, and I am perfectly delighted to have the chance.  At eleven to-day, ‘one if by land, and two if by sea,’ I’ll be at your office.  Trust me!”

“I do, dearest,” Jim said.  And he went down the drive a little later, under the blazing glory of the maples with great content in his heart.  Susanna, going about her pretty house briskly, felt so sure of herself that the day’s good work seemed half accomplished already.

She had adjusted the skirt of the pongee suit, and pinned the hydrangea hat at a fascinating angle when the telephone rang.