Susan began to talk of going away “to work.”

“Lord, aren’t you working now?” asked William Oliver in healthy scorn.

“Not working as hard as I could!” Susan said.  “I can’t—­can’t seem to get interested—­” Tears thickened her voice, she stopped short.

The two were sitting on the upper step of the second flight of stairs in the late evening, just outside the door of the room where Alfred Lancaster was tossing and moaning in the grip of a heavy cold and fever.  Alfred had lost his position, had been drinking again, and now had come home to his mother for the fiftieth time to be nursed and consoled.  Mrs. Lancaster, her good face all mother-love and pity, sat at his side.  Mary Lou wept steadily and unobtrusively.  Susan and Billy were waiting for the doctor.

“No,” the girl resumed thoughtfully, after a pause, “I feel as if I’d gotten all twisted up and I want to go away somewhere and get started fresh.  I could work like a slave, Bill, in a great clean institution, or a newspaper office, or as an actress.  But I can’t seem to straighten things out here.  This isn’t my house, I didn’t have anything to do with the making of it, and I can’t feel interested in it.  I’d rather do things wrong, but do them my way!”

“It seems to me you’re getting industrious all of a sudden, Sue.”

“No.”  She hardly understood herself.  “But I want to get somewhere in this life, Bill,” she mused.  “I don’t want to sit back and wait for things to come to me.  I want to go to them.  I want some alternative.  So that—­” her voice sank, “so that, if marriage doesn’t come, I can say to myself, ‘Never mind, I’ve got my work!’”

“Just as a man would,” he submitted thoughtfully.

“Just as a man would,” she echoed, eager for his sympathy.

“Well, that’s Mrs. Carroll’s idea.  She says that very often, when a girl thinks she wants to get married, what she really wants is financial independence and pretty clothes and an interest in life.”

“I think that’s perfectly true,” Susan said, struck.  “Isn’t she wise?” she added.

“Yes, she’s a wonder!  Wise and strong,—­she’s doing too much now, though.  How long since you’ve been over there, Sue?”

“Oh, ages!  I’m ashamed to say.  Months.  I write to Anna now and then, but somehow, on Sundays—­”

She did not finish, but his thoughts supplied the reason.  Susan was always at home on Sundays now, unless she went out with Peter Coleman.

“You ought to take Coleman over there some day, Sue, they used to know him when he was a kid.  Let’s all go over some Sunday.”

“That would be fun!” But he knew she did not mean it.  The atmosphere of the Carrolls’ home, their poverty, their hard work, their gallant endurance of privation and restriction were not in accord with Susan’s present mood.  “How are all of them?” she presently asked, after an interval, in which Alfie’s moaning and the hoarse deep voice of Mary Lord upstairs had been the only sounds.