“I sometimes think that it would be worth any effort in the first forty years of your life, to feel sure that you would at least not be an object of pity for the last twenty!” said Susan, upon whom these callers, with the contrasts they presented, had had a profound effect.

It was during an all-night vigil, in the room next to the one in which the dead woman lay.  Dr. O’Connor lay asleep on a couch, Susan and Billy were in deep chairs.  The room was very cold, and the girl had a big wrapper over her black dress.  Billy had wrapped himself in an Indian blanket, and put his feet comfortably up on a chair.

“You bet your life it would be!” said Billy yawning.  “That’s what I tell the boys, over at the works,” he went on, with awakening interest, “get into something, cut out booze and theaters and graphophones now,—­don’t care what your neighbors think of you now, but mind your own affairs, stick to your business, let everything else go, and then, some day, settle down with a nice little lump of stock, or a couple of flats, or a little plant of your own, and snap your fingers at everything!”

“You know I’ve been thinking,” Susan said slowly, “For all the wise people that have ever lived, and all the goodness everywhere, we go through life like ships with sealed orders.  Now all these friends of Auntie’s, they thought she made a brilliant match when she married Uncle George.  But she had no idea of management, and no training, and here she is, dying at sixty-three, leaving Jinny and Mary Lou practically helpless, and nothing but a lot of debts!  For twenty years she’s just been drifting and drifting,—­it’s only a chance that Alfie pulled out of it, and that Georgie really did pretty well.  Now, with Mrs. Carroll somehow it’s so different.  You know that, before she’s old, she’s going to own her little house and garden, she knows where she stands.  She’s worked her financial problem out on paper, she says ’I’m a little behind this month, because of Jim’s dentist.  But there are five Saturdays in January, and I’ll catch up then!’”

“She’s exceptional, though,” he asserted.

“Yes, but a training like that needn’t be exceptional!  It seems so strange that the best thing that school can give us is algebra and Caesar’s Commentaries,” Susan pursued thoughtfully.  “When there’s so much else we don’t know!  Just to show you one thing, Billy,—­when I first began to go to the Carrolls, I noticed that they never had to fuss with the building of a fire in the kitchen stove.  When a meal was over, Mrs. Carroll opened the dampers, scattered a little wet coal on the top, and forgot about it until the next meal, or even overnight.  She could start it up in two seconds, with no dirt or fuss, whenever she wanted to.  Think what that means, getting breakfast!  Now, ever since I was a little girl, we’ve built a separate fire for each meal, in this house.  Nobody ever knew any better.  You hear chopping of kindlings, and scratching of matches, and poor Mary Lou saying that it isn’t going to burn, and doing it all over—–­