But first they were to have a late second breakfast at Sardi’s, the little ramshackle Sausalito restaurant, whose tables, visible through green arches, hung almost directly over the water.  It was a cheap meal, oily and fried, but Susan was quite happy, hanging over the rail to watch the shining surface of the water that was so near.  The reflection of the sun shifted in a ceaselessly moving bright pattern on the white-washed ceiling, the wash of the outgoing steamer surged through the piles, and set to rocking all the nearby boats at anchor.

After luncheon, they climbed the long flights of steps that lead straight through the village, which hangs on the cliff like a cluster of sea-birds’ nests.  The gardens were bare and brown now, the trees sober and shabby.

When the steps stopped, they followed a road that ran like a shelf above the bay and waterfront far below, and that gave a wonderful aspect of the wide sweep of hills and sky beyond, all steeped in the thin, clear autumn haze.  Billy pushed open a high gate that had scraped the path beyond in a deep circular groove, and they were in a fine, old-fashioned garden, filled with trees.  Willow and pepper and eucalyptus towered over the smaller growth of orange and lemon-verbena trees; there were acacia and mock-orange and standard roses, and hollyhock stalks, bare and dry.  Only the cosmos bushes, tall and wavering, were in bloom, with a few chrysanthemums and late asters, the air was colder here than it had been out under the bright November sun, and the path under the trees was green and slippery.

On a rise of ground stood the plain, comfortable old house, with a white curtain blowing here and there at an open window and its front door set hospitably ajar.  But not a soul was in sight.

Billy and Susan were at home here, however, and went through the hallway to open a back door that gave on the kitchen.  It was an immaculate kitchen, with a fire glowing sleepily behind the shining iron grating of the stove, and sunshine lying on the well-scrubbed floor.  A tall woman was busy with plants in the bright window.

“Well, you nice child!” she exclaimed, her face brightening as Susan came into her arms for her motherly kiss.  “I was just thinking about you!  We’ve been hearing things about you, Sue, and wondering—­and wondering—!  And Billy, too!  The girls will be delighted!”

This was the mother of the five Carrolls, a mother to whom it was easy to trace some of their beauty, and some of their courage.  In the twelve long years of her widowhood, from a useless, idle, untrained member of a society to which all three adjectives apply, this woman had grown to be the broad and brave and smiling creature who was now studying Susan’s face with the insatiable motherliness that even her household’s constant claims failed to exhaust.  Manager and cook and houseworker, seamstress and confidante to her restless, growing brood, still there was a