Mr. Eastman took them all to lunch, at a modest table d’hote in the neighborhood, tipped the waiter munificently, asked in an aside for a special wine, which was of course not forthcoming.  Susan enjoyed the affair with a little of her old spirit, and kept them all talking and friendly.  Georgie, perhaps a little dashed by Mary Lou’s recently acquired state, told Susan in a significant aside, as a doctor’s wife, that it was very improbable that Mary Lou, at her age, would have children; “seems such a pity!” said Georgie, shrugging.  Virginia, to her new brother-in-law’s cheerful promise to find her a good husband within the year, responded, with a little resentful dignity, “It seems a little soon, to me, to be joking, Ferd!”

But on the whole it was a very harmonious meal.  The Eastmans were to leave the next day for a belated honeymoon; to Susan and Virginia and Billy would fall the work of closing up the Fulton Street house.

“And what about you, Sue?” asked Billy, as they were walking home that afternoon.

“I’m going to New York, Bill,” she answered.  And, with a memory of the times she had told him that before, she turned to him a sudden smile. “—­But I mean it this time!” said Susan cheerfully.  “I went to see Miss Toland, of the Alexander Toland Settlement House, a few weeks ago, about working there.  She told me frankly that they have all they need of untrained help.  But she said, ’Miss Brown, if you could take a year’s course in New York, you’d be a treasure!’ And so I’m going to borrow the money from Ferd, Bill.  I hate to do it, but I’m going to.  And the first thing you know I’ll be in the Potrero, right near your beloved Iron Works, teaching the infants of that region how to make buttonholes and cook chuck steak!”

“How much money do you want?” he asked, after a moment’s silence.

“Three hundred.”

“Three hundred!  The fare is one hundred!”

“I know it.  But I’m going to work my way through the course, Bill, even if I have to go out as a nurse-girl, and study at night.”

Billy said nothing for awhile.  But before they parted he went back to the subject.

“I’ll let you have the three hundred, Sue, or five hundred, if you like.  Borrow it from me, you know me a good deal better than you do Ferd Eastman!”

The next day the work of demolishing the boarding-house began.  Susan and Virginia lived with Georgie for these days, but lunched in the confusion of the old home.  It seemed strange, and vaguely sad, to see the long-crowded rooms empty and bare, with winter sunlight falling in clear sharp lines across the dusty, un-carpeted floors.  A hundred old scars and stains showed on the denuded walls; there were fresher squares on the dark, faded old papers, where the pictures had been hung; Susan recognized the outline of Mary Lord’s mirror, and Mrs. Parker’s crucifix.  The kitchen was cold and desolate, a pool of water on the cold stove, a smooth thin cake of yellow soap in a thick saucer, on the sink, a drift of newspapers on the floor, and old brooms assembled in a corner.