“You’re a dear good little girl, that’s what you are!” said Miss Foster, as they went out.  Susan stepped into her new role with characteristic vigor.  She was too much absorbed in it to be very sorry that her aunt was dead.  Everybody praised her, and a hundred times a day her cousins said truthfully that they could not see how these dreadful days would have been endurable at all without Susan.  Susan could sit up all night, and yet be ready to brightly dispense hot coffee at seven o’clock, could send telegrams, could talk to the men from Simpson and Wright’s, could go downtown with Billy to select plain black hats and simple mourning, could meet callers, could answer the telephone, could return a reassuring “That’s all attended to, dear,” to Mary Lou’s distracted “I haven’t given one thought to dinner!” and then, when evening came again, could quietly settle herself in a big chair, between Billy and Dr. O’Connor, for another vigil.

“Never a thought for her own grief!” said Georgie, to a caller.  Susan felt a little prick of guilt.  She was too busy and too absorbed to feel any grief.  And presently it occurred to her that perhaps Auntie knew it, and understood.  Perhaps there was no merit in mere grieving.  “But I wish I had been better to her while she was here!” thought Susan more than once.

She saw her aunt in a new light through the eyes of the callers who came, a long, silent stream, to pay their last respect to Louisianna Ralston.  All the old southern families of the city were represented there; the Chamberlains and the Lloyds, the Duvals and Fairfaxes and Carters.  Old, old ladies came, stout matrons who spoke of the dead woman as “Lou,” rosy-faced old men.  Some of them Susan had never seen before.

To all of them she listened with her new pretty deference and dignity.  She heard of her aunt’s childhood, before the war, “Yo’ dea’ auntie and my Fanny went to they’ first ball togethah,” said one very old lady.  “Lou was the belle of all us girls,” contributed the same Fanny, now stout and sixty, with a smile.  “I was a year or two younger, and, my laws, how I used to envy Miss Louis’anna Ralston, flirtin’ and laughin’ with all her beaux!”

Susan grew used to hearing her aunt spoken of as “your cousin,” “your mother,” even “your sister,”—­her own relationship puzzled some of Mrs. Lancaster’s old friends.  But they never failed to say that Susan was “a dear, sweet girl—­she must have been proud of you!”

She heard sometimes of her own mother too.  Some large woman, wiping the tears from her eyes, might suddenly seize upon Susan, with: 

“Look here, Robert, this is Sue Rose’s girl—­Major Calhoun was one of your Mama’s great admirers, dear!”

Or some old lady, departing, would kiss her with a whispered “Knew your mother like my own daughter,—­come and see me!”

They had all been young and gay and sheltered together, Susan thought, just half a century ago.  Now some came in widow’s black, and some with shabby gloves and worn shoes, and some rustled up from carriages, and patronized Mary Lou, and told Susan that “poor Lou” never seemed to be very successful!