“Oh, that sounds simple!  But I don’t want to do any of the things you mean.  I want to work into an interesting life, somehow.  I’ll—­ I’ll never marry,” said Susan.

“You won’t?  Well; of course that makes it easier, because you can go into your work with heart and soul.  But perhaps you’ll change your mind, Sue.  I hope you will, just as I hope all the girls will marry.  I’m not sure,” said Mrs. Carroll, suddenly smiling, “but what the very quickest way for a woman to marry off her girls is to put them into business.  In the first place, a man who wants them has to be in earnest, and in the second, they meet the very men whose interests are the same as theirs.  So don’t be too sure you won’t.  However, I’m not laughing at you, Sue.  I think you ought to seriously select some work for yourself, unless of course you are quite satisfied where you are.”

“I’m not,” said Susan.  “I’ll never get more than forty where I am.  And more than that, Thorny heard that Front Office is going to be closed up any day.”

“But you could get another position, dear.”

“Well, I don’t know.  You see, it’s a special sort of bookkeeping.  It wouldn’t help any of us much elsewhere.”

“True.  And what would you like best to do, Sue?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  Sometimes I think the stage.  Or something with lots of traveling in it.”  Susan laughed, a little ashamed of her vagueness.

“Why not take a magazine agency, then?  There’s a lot of money—–­”

“Oh, no!” Susan shuddered.  “You’re joking!”

“Indeed I’m not.  You’re just the sort of person who would make a fine living selling things.  The stage—­I don’t know.  But if you really mean it, I don’t see why you shouldn’t get a little start somewhere.”

“Aunt Jo, they say that Broadway in New York is simply lined with girls trying—–­”

“New York!  Well, very likely.  But you try here.  Go to the manager of the Alcazar, recite for him—–­”

“He wouldn’t let me,” Susan asserted, “and besides, I don’t really know anything.”

“Well, learn something.  Ask him, when next some manager wants to make up a little road company—–­”

“A road company!  Two nights in Stockton, two nights in Marysville—­ horrors!” said Susan.

“But that wouldn’t be for long, Sue.  Perhaps two years.  Then five or six years in stock somewhere—–­”

“Aunt Jo, I’d be past thirty!” Susan laughed and colored charmingly.  “I—­honestly, I couldn’t give up my whole life for ten years on the chance of making a hit,” she confessed.

“Well, but what then, Sue?”

“Now, I’ll tell you what I’ve often wanted to do,” Susan said, after a thoughtful interval.

“Ah, now we’re coming to it!” Mrs. Carroll said, with satisfaction.  They had left the kitchen now, and were sitting on the top step of the side porch, reveling in the lovely panorama of hillside and waterfront, and the smooth and shining stretch of bay below them.