Ferd Eastman’s wife had succumbed, some weeks before, to a second paralytic stroke, and Mary Lou wept unaffectedly at the thought of poor Ferd’s grief.  She said she couldn’t help hoping that some sweet and lovely girl,—­“Ferd knows so many!” said Lou, sighing,—­would fill the empty place.  Susan, with an unfavorable recollection of Ferd’s fussy, important manner and red face, said nothing.  Georgie, Mary Lou reported, was a very sick woman, in Ma’s and Mary Lou’s opinion.  Ma had asked the young O’Connors to her home for Christmas dinner; “perhaps they expected us to ask the old lady,” said Mary Lou, resentfully, “anyway, they aren’t coming!” Georgie’s baby, it appeared, was an angel, but Joe disciplined the poor little thing until it would make anyone’s heart sick.

Of Alfie the report was equally discouraging:  “Alfie’s wife is perfectly awful,” his sister said, “and their friends, Sue,—­barbers and butchers!  However, Ma’s asked ’em here for Christmas dinner, and then you’ll see them!” Virginia was still at the institution, but of late some hope of eventual restoration of her sight had been given her.  “It would break your heart to see her in that place, it seems like a poorhouse!” said Mary Lou, with trembling lips, “but Jinny’s an angel.  She gets the children about her, and tells them stories; they say she’s wonderful with them!”

There was really good news of the Lord sisters, Susan was rejoiced to hear.  They had finally paid for their lot in Piedmont Hills, and a new trolley-car line, passing within one block of it, had trebled its value.  This was Lydia’s chance to sell, in Mary Lou’s opinion, but Lydia intended instead to mortgage the now valuable property, and build a little two-family house upon it with the money thus raised.  She had passed the school-examinations, and had applied for a Berkeley school.  “But better than all,” Mary Lou announced, “that great German muscle doctor has been twice to see Mary,—­isn’t that amazing?  And not a cent charged—–­”

“Oh, God bless him!” said Susan, her eyes flashing through sudden mist.  “And will she be cured?”

“Not ever to really be like other people, Sue.  But he told her, last time, that by the time that Piedmont garden was ready for her, she’d be ready to go out and sit in it every day!  Lydia fainted away when he said it,—­yes, indeed she did!”

“Well, that’s the best news I’ve heard for many a day!” Susan rejoiced.  She could not have explained why, but some queer little reasoning quality in her brain made her own happiness seem the surer when she heard of the happiness of other people.

The old odors in the halls, the old curtains and chairs and dishes, the old, old conversation; Mrs. Parker reading a clean, neatly lined, temperate little letter from Loretta, signed “Sister Mary Gregory”; Major Watts anxious to explain to Susan just the method of building an army bridge that he had so successfully introduced during the Civil War,—­“S’ee, ‘Who is this boy, Cutter?’ ’Why, sir, I don’t know,’ says Captain Cutter, ‘but he says his name is Watts!’ ‘Watts?’ says the General, ‘Well,’ s’ee, ’If I had a few more of your kind, Watts, we’d get the Yanks on the run, and we’d keep ’em on the run.’”