“Ah, don’t say such things, Thorny!” she said.  Her brows contracted.  “His wife enjoying Europe!” she mused.  “Can you beat it?”

“I think it’s the limit,” said Miss Thornton virtuously, “and I think old J. B. would raise the roof.  But anyway, it shows why she got the crediting.”

“Oh, Thorny, I can’t believe it!  Perhaps she doesn’t realize how it looks!”

“Violet Hunter!” Thorny said, with fine scorn.  “Now you mark my words, Susan, it won’t last—­things like this don’t—­”

“But—­but don’t they sometimes last, for years?” Susan asked, a little timidly, yet wishing to show some worldly wisdom, too.

“Not like her, there’s nothing to her,” said the sapient Miss Thornton.  “No.  You’ll be doing that work in a few months, and getting forty.  So come along to the big game, Sue.”

“Well—­” Susan half-promised.  But the big game was temporarily lost sight of in this horrid news of Violet Kirk.  Susan watched Miss Kirk during the remainder of the afternoon, and burst out with the whole story, to Mary Lou, when they went out to match a piece of tape that night.

“Dear me, Ma would hate to have you coming in contact with things like that, Sue!” worried Mary Lou.  “I wonder if Ma would miss us if we took the car out to the end of the line?  It’s such a glorious night!  Let’s,—­if you have carfare.  No, Sue, it’s easy enough to rob a girl of her good name.  There were some people who came to the house once, a man and his wife.  Well, I suppose I was ordinarily polite to the man, as I am to all men, and once or twice he brought me candy—­but it never entered my head—­”

It was deliciously bracing to go rushing on, on the car, past the Children’s Hospital, past miles of sandhills, out to the very shore of the ocean, where the air was salt, and filled with the dull roaring of surf.  Mary Lou, sharing with her mother a distaste for peanuts, crowds, tin-type men, and noisy pleasure-seekers, ignored Susan’s hints that they walk down to the beach, and they went back on the same car.

When they entered the close, odorous dining-room, an hour later, Georgie, lazily engaged with Fan-tan, had a piece of news.

“Susan, you sly thing!  He’s adorable!” said Georgie.

“Who?” said Susan, taking a card from her cousin’s hand.  Dazedly she read it.  “Mr. Peter Coleman.”

“Did he call?” she asked, her heart giving a great bound.

“Did he call?  With a perfect heart-breaker of a puppy—!”

“London Baby,” Susan said, eagerly.

“He was airing the puppy, he said” Georgie added archly.

“One excuse as well as another!” Mary Lou laughed delightedly as she kissed Susan’s glowing cheek.

“He wouldn’t come in,” continued Georgie, “which was really just as well, for Loretta and her prize idiot were in the parlor, and I couldn’t have asked him down here.  Well, he’s a darling.  You have my blessing, Sue.”