Susan, sitting back on her knees in the upper hall, to peer through the railing at the scene below, to Miss Baker’s intense amusement, could admire everything but the men guests.  They were either more or less attractive and married, thought Susan, or very young, very old, or very uninteresting bachelors.  Red-faced, eighteen-year-old boys, laughing nervously, and stumbling over their pumps, shared the honors with cackling little fifty-year-old gallants.  It could only be said that they were males, and that Ella would have cheerfully consigned her mother to bed with a bad headache rather than have had one too few of them to evenly balance the number of women.  The members of the family knew what patience and effort were required, what writing and telephoning, before the right number was acquired.

The first personal word that Kenneth Saunders ever spoke to his sister’s companion was when, running downstairs, on the occasion of one of these dinners, he came upon her, crouched in her outlook, and thoroughly enjoying herself.

“Good God!” said Kenneth, recoiling.

“Sh-sh—­it’s only me—­I’m watching ’em!” Susan whispered, even laying her hand upon the immaculate young gentleman’s arm in her anxiety to quiet him.

“Why, Lord; why doesn’t Ella count you in on these things?” he demanded, gruffly.  “Next time I’ll tell her—­”

“If you do, I’ll never speak to you again!” Susan threatened, her merry face close to his in the dark.  “I wouldn’t be down there for a farm!”

“What do you do, just watch ’em?” Kenneth asked sociably, hanging over the railing beside her.

“It’s lots of fun!” Susan said, in a whisper.  “Who’s that?”

“That’s that Bacon girl—­isn’t she the limit!” Kenneth whispered back.  “Lord,” he added regretfully, “I’d much rather stay up here than go down!  What Ella wants to round up a gang like this for—­”

And, sadly speculating, the son of the house ran downstairs, and Susan, congratulating herself, returned to her watching.

Indeed, after a month or two in her new position, she thought an evening to herself a luxury to be enormously enjoyed.  It was on such an occasion that Susan got the full benefit of the bathroom, the luxuriously lighted and appointed dressing-table, the porch with its view of a dozen gardens drenched in heavenly moonlight.  At other times Emily’s conversation distracted her and interrupted her at her toilet.  Emily gave her no instant alone.

Emily came up very late after the dinners to yawn and gossip with Susan while Gerda, her mother’s staid middle-aged maid, drew off her slippers and stockings, and reverently lifted the dainty gown safely to its closet.  Susan always got up, rolled herself in a wrap, and listened to the account of the dinner; Emily was rather critical of the women, but viewed the men more romantically.  She repeated their compliments, exulting that they had been paid her “under Ella’s very nose,” or while “Mama was staring right at us.”  It pleased Emily to imagine a great many love-affairs for herself, and to feel that they must all be made as mysterious and kept as secret as possible.