Now and then, on Sundays, the three women crossed the Oakland ferry and visited Virginia, who was patiently struggling back to the light.  They would find her somewhere in the great, orderly, clean institution, with a knot of sweet-faced, vague-eyed children clustered about her.  “Good-bye, Miss ’Ginia!” the unearthly, happy little voices would call, as the uncertain little feet echoed away.  Susan rather liked the atmosphere of the big institution, and vaguely envied the brisk absorbed attendants who passed them on swift errands.  Stout Mrs. Lancaster, for all her panting and running, invariably came within half a second of missing the return train for the city; the three would enter it laughing and gasping, and sink breathless into their seats, unable for sheer mirth to straighten their hats, or glance at their fellow-passengers.

In March Georgie’s second little girl, delicate and tiny, was born too soon, and the sturdy Myra came to her maternal grandmother for an indefinite stay.  Georgie’s disappointment over the baby’s sex was instantly swallowed up in anxiety over the diminutive Helen’s weight and digestion, and Susan and Mary Lou were delighted to prolong Myra’s visit from week to week.  Georgie’s first-born was a funny, merry little girl, and Susan developed a real talent for amusing her and caring for her, and grew very fond of her.  The new baby was well into her second month before they took Myra home,—­a dark, crumpled little thing Susan thought the newcomer, and she thought that she had never seen Georgie looking so pale and thin.  Georgie had always been freckled, but now the freckles seemed fairly to stand out on her face.  But in spite of the children’s exactions, and the presence of grim old Mrs. O’Connor, Susan saw a certain strange content in the looks that went between husband and wife.

“Look here, I thought you were going to be George Lancaster O’Connor!” said Susan, threateningly, to the new baby.

“I don’t know why a boy wouldn’t have been named Joseph Aloysius, like his father and grandfather,” said the old lady disapprovingly.

But Georgie paid no heed.  The baby’s mother was kneeling beside the bed where little Helen lay, her eyes fairly devouring the tiny face.

“You don’t suppose God would take her away from me, Sue, because of that nonsense about wanting a boy?” Georgie whispered.

Susan’s story did not win the hundred dollar prize, but it won a fifth prize of ten dollars, and kept her in pocket money for some weeks.  After that Mary Lord brought home an order for twenty place-cards for a child’s Easter Party, and Susan spent several days happily fussing with water colors and so earned five dollars more.

Time did not hang at all heavily on her hands; there was always an errand or two to be done for auntie, and always a pack of cards and a library book with which to fill the evening.  Susan really enjoyed the lazy evenings, after the lazy days.  She and Mary Lou spent the first week in April in a flurry of linens and ginghams, making shirtwaists for the season; for three days they did not leave the house, nor dress fully, and they ate their luncheons from the wing of the sewing-machine.