“That was Papa!” laughed his daughters.

“That was Papa!” his widow smiled and sighed.  “Well.  The first thing I knew, there was the proprietor,—­you may imagine!  Papa says, ’Will you kindly tell me why I have to bring my wife, a delicate, refined Southern woman—­’”

“And he said beautiful, too, Ma!”

Mrs. Lancaster laughed mildly.

“Poor papa!  He was so proud of my looks!  ‘Will you tell me,’ he says, ‘why I have to put my wife into rooms like these?’ ‘Sir,’ the landlord says, ‘I have only one better suite—­’”

“Bridal suite, he said, Ma!”

“Yes, he did.  The regular bridal suite.  I wasn’t a bride then, that was after poor George was born, but I had a very high color, and I always dressed very elegantly.  And I had a good figure, your father’s two hands could meet around my waist.  Anyway, then Papa—­ dear me, how it all comes back!—­Papa says, fairly shouting, ’Well, why can’t I have that suite?’ ‘Oh, sir,’ the landlord says, ’a Mr. George Lancaster has engaged that for his wife, and they say that he’s a man who will get what he pays for—­’” Another mild laugh interrupted the narrative.

“Didn’t you nearly die, Ma?”

“Well, my dear!  If you could have seen the man’s face when Papa—­and how well he did this sort of thing, deary me!—­whips out a card—­”

They all laughed merrily.  Then Mrs. Lancaster sighed.

“Poor Papa, I don’t know what he would have done if he could have seen us to-day,” she said.  “It’s just as well we couldn’t see ahead, after all!”

“Gee, but I’d like to see what’s coming,” Susan said thoughtfully.

“Bed is coming next!” Mary Lou said, putting her arm about the girl.  Upstairs they all filed sleepily, lowering the hall gases as they went.  Susan yawningly kissed her aunt and Virginia good-night, on the second floor, where they had a dark and rather colorless room together.  She and the other girls went on up to the third-story room, where they spent nearly another hour in dilatory undressing.  Susan hesitated again over the thought of a hot bath, decided against it, decided against even the usual brushing of her hair to-night, and sprang into bed to lie flat on her tired back, watching Mary Lou make up Georgie’s bed with dislocating yawns, and Georgie, wincing as she put her hair into tight “kids.”  Susan slept in a small space bounded by the foot of the bed, the head of the bed, the wall, and her cousin’s large person, and, as Mary Lou generally made the bed in the morning by flapping the covers back without removing them, they were apt to feel and smell unaired, and to be rumpled and loose at the foot.  Susan could not turn over in the night without arousing Mary Lou, who would mutter a terrified “What is it—­what is it?” for the next ten minutes.  Years before, Susan, a timid, country-bred child, had awakened many a time in the night, frightened by the strange city noises, or the fire-bells, and had lain, with her mouth dry, and her little heart thundering, through lessening agonies of fright.  But she never liked to awake Mary Lou.  Now she was used to the city, and used to the lumpy, ill-made bed as well; indeed Susan often complained that she fell asleep too fast, that she wanted to lie awake and think.