“Home in no time, Sue!” her mother said bravely.

But a few days later something happened, Susan was waked from sleep, was rushed to the hospital again, was pressed by some unknown hand into a kneeling position beside a livid and heavily breathing creature whom she hardly recognized as her mother.  It was all confusing and terrifying; it was over very soon.  Susan came blinking out of the dimly lighted room with Mary Lou, who was sobbing, “Oh, Aunt Sue Rose!  Aunt Sue Rose!” Susan did not cry, but her eyes hurt her, and the back of her head ached sharply.

She cried later, in the nights, after her cousins had seemed to be unsympathetic, feeling that she needed her mother to take her part.  But on the whole the cousins were devoted and kind to Susan, and the child was as happy as she could have been anywhere.  But her restless ambition forced her into many a discontented hour, as she grew, and when an office position was offered her Susan was wild with eagerness to try her own feet.

“I can’t bear it!” mourned her aunt, “why can’t you stay here happily with us, lovey?  My own girls are happy.  I don’t know what has gotten into you girls lately, wanting to rush out like great, coarse men!  Why can’t you stay at home, doing all the little dainty, pretty things that only a woman can do, to make a home lovely?”

“Don’t you suppose I’d much rather not work?” Susan demanded impatiently.  “I can’t have you supporting me, Auntie.  That’s it.”

“Well, if that’s it, that’s nonsense, dear.  As long as Auntie lives all she asks is to keep a comfortable home for her girls.”

“Why, Sue, you’ll be implying that we all ought to have taken horrid office positions,” Virginia said, in smiling warning.

Susan remained mutinously silent.

“Have you any fault to find with Auntie’s provision for you, dear?” asked Mrs. Lancaster, patiently.

“Oh, no, auntie!  That’s not it at all!” Susan protested, “it’s just simply that I—­I can’t—­I need money, sometimes—­” She stopped, miserably.

“Come, now!” Mrs. Lancaster, all sweet tolerance of the vagary, folded her hands to await enlightenment.  “Come, now!  Tell auntie what you need money for.  What is this special great need?”

“No one special thing, auntie—­” Susan was anything but sure of her ground.  As a matter of fact she did not want to work at all, she merely felt a frantic impulse to do something else than settle down for life as Mary Lou and Virginia and Georgie had done.  “But clothes cost money,” she pursued vaguely.

“What sort of a gown did you want, dear?” Mrs. Lancaster reached for her shabby purse.  Susan refused the gift of a gown with many kisses, and no more was said for a while of her working.

This was in her seventeenth summer.  For more than a year after that she drifted idly, reading a great many romantic novels, and wishing herself a young actress, a lone orphan, the adored daughter of an invalid father or of a rich and adoring mother, the capable, worshiped oldest sister in a jolly big family, a lovely cripple in a bright hospital ward, anything, in short, except what she was.