“Because you’re a very unusual type of man to be in that sort of place, Bill!” Susan interrupted.

“Shucks,” he said, in embarrassment.  “Well,” he resumed, “then some day I’m going to the old man and ask him for a year’s leave.  Then I’ll visit every big iron-works in the East, and when I come back, I’ll take a job of casting from my own blue-prints, at not less than a hundred a week.  Then I’ll run up some flats in the Panhandle—­”

“Having married the beautiful daughter of the old man himself—­” Susan interposed.  “And won first prize in the Louisiana lottery—­”

“Sure,” he said gravely.  “And meanwhile,” he added, with a business-like look, “Coleman has got a crush on you, Sue.  It’d be a dandy marriage for you, and don’t you forget it!”

“Well, of all nerve!” Susan said unaffectedly, and with flaming cheeks.  “There is a little motto, to every nation dear, in English it’s forget-me-not, in French it’s mind your own business, Bill!”

“Well, that may be,” he said doggedly, “but you know as well as I do that it’s up to you—­”

“Suppose it is,” Susan said, satisfied that he should think so.  “That doesn’t give you any right to interfere with my affairs!”

“You’re just like Georgie and Mary Lou,” he told her, “always bluffing yourself.  But you’ve got more brains than they have, Sue, and it’d give the whole crowd of them a hand up if you made a marriage like that.  Don’t think I’m trying to butt in,” he gave her his winning, apologetic smile, “you know I’m as interested as your own brother could be, Sue!  If you like him, don’t keep the matter hanging fire.  There’s no question that he’s crazy about you—­ everybody knows that!”

“No, there’s no question about that,” Susan said, softly.

But what would she not have given for the joy of knowing, in her secret heart, that it was true!

Two weeks later, Miss Brown, summoned to Mr. Brauer’s office, was asked if she thought that she could do the crediting, at forty dollars a month.  Susan assented gravely, and entered that day upon her new work, and upon a new era.  She worked hard and silently, now, with only occasional flashes of her old silliness.  She printed upon a card, and hung above her desk, these words: 

  “I hold it true, with him who sings
      To one clear harp in divers tones,
      That men may rise on stepping-stones
     Of their dead selves, to higher things.”

On stepping-stones of her dead selves, Susan mounted.  She wore a preoccupied, a responsible air, her voice softened, her manner was almost too sweet, too bright and gentle.  She began to take cold, or almost cold, baths daily, to brush her hair and mend her gloves.  She began to say “Not really?” instead of “Sat-so?” and “It’s of no consequence,” instead of “Don’t matter.”  She called her long woolen coat, familiarly known as her “sweater,” her “field-jacket,” and pronounced her own name “Syusan.”  Thorny, Georgianna, and Billy had separately the pleasure of laughing at Susan in these days.