After such a visit, Susan went home with a heart too full of gratitude for words.  “God has given us everything in the world!” she would say to Billy, looking across the hearth at him, in the silent happy evening.

Walking with the children, in the long spring afternoons, Susan liked to go in for a moment to see Lydia Lord in the library.  Lydia would glance up from the book she was stamping, and at the sight of Susan and the children, her whole plain face would brighten.  She always came out from behind her little gates and fences to talk in whispers to Susan, always had some little card or puzzle or fan or box for Mart and Billy.

“And Mary’s well!”

“Well—–!  You never saw anything like it.  Yesterday she was out in the garden from eight o’clock until ten at night!  And she’s never alone, everyone in the neighborhood loves her—–!” Miss Lord would accompany them to the door when they went, wave to the boys through the glass panels, and go back to her desk still beaming.

Happiest of all the times away from home were those Susan spent with the Carrolls, or with Anna in the Hoffmanns’ beautiful city home.  Anna did not often come to Oakland, she was never for more than a few hours out of her husband’s sight, but she loved to have Susan and the boys with her.  The doctor wanted a glimpse of her between his operations and his lectures, would not eat his belated lunch unless his lovely wife sat opposite him, and planned a hundred delights for each of their little holidays.  Anna lived only for him, her color changed at his voice, her only freedom, in the hours when Conrad positively must be separated from her, was spent in doing the things that pleased him, visiting his wards, practicing the music he loved, making herself beautiful in some gown that he had selected for her.

“It’s idolatry, mon Guillaume,” said Mrs. Oliver, briskly, when she was discussing the case of the Hoffmanns with her lord.  “Now, I’m crazy enough about you, as you well know,” continued Susan, “but, at the same time, I don’t turn pale, start up, and whisper, ’Oh, it’s Willie!’ when you happen to come home half an hour earlier than usual.  I don’t stammer with excitement when I meet you downtown, and I don’t cry when you—­well, yes, I do!  I feel pretty badly when you have to be away overnight!” confessed Susan, rather tamely.

“Wait until little Con comes!” Billy predicted comfortably.  “Then they’ll be less strong on the balcony scene!”

“They think they want one,” said Susan wisely, “but I don’t believe they really do!”

On the fifth anniversary of her wedding day Susan’s daughter was born, and the whole household welcomed the tiny Josephine, whose sudden arrival took all their hearts by storm.

“Take your slangy, freckled, roller-skating, rifle-shooting boys and be off with you!” said Susan, over the hour-old baby, to Billy, who had come flying home in mid-morning.  “Now I feel like David Copperfield’s landlady, ‘at last I have summat I can love!’ Oh, the mistakes that you won’t make, Jo!” she apostrophized the baby.  “The smart, capable, self-sufficient way that you’ll manage everything!”