certain pure radiance that was never quite missing from her smile, and Susan felt a mad impulse to-day to have a long comforting cry on the broad shoulder.  She thoroughly loved Mrs. Carroll, even if she thought the older woman’s interest in soups and darning and the filling of lamps a masterly affectation, and pitied her for the bitter fate that had robbed her of home and husband, wealth and position, at the very time when her children needed these things the most.

They two went into the sitting-room now, while Billy raced after the young people who had taken their luncheon, it appeared, and were walking over the hills to a favorite spot known as “Gioli’s” beach.

Susan liked this room, low-ceiled and wide, which ran the length of the house.  It seemed particularly pleasant to-day, with the uncertain sunlight falling through the well-darned, snowy window-curtains, the circle of friendly, shabby chairs, the worn old carpet, scrupulously brushed, the reading-table with a green-shaded lamp, and the old square piano loaded with music.  The room was in Sunday order to-day, books, shabby with much handling, were ranged neatly on their shelves, not a fallen leaf lay under the bowl of late roses on the piano.

Susan had had many a happy hour in this room, for if the Carrolls were poor to the point of absurdity, their mother had made a sort of science of poverty, and concentrated her splendid mind on the questions of meals, clothes, and the amusements of their home evenings.  That it had been a hard fight, was still a hard fight, Susan knew.  Philip, the handsome first-born, had the tendencies and temptations natural to his six-and-twenty years; Anna, her mother’s especial companion, was taking a hard course of nursing in a city hospital; Josephine, the family beauty, at twenty, was soberly undertaking a course in architecture, in addition to her daily work in the offices of Huxley and Huxley; even little Betsey was busy, and Jimmy still in school; so that the brunt of the planning, of the actual labor, indeed, fell upon their mother.  But she had carried a so much heavier burden, that these days seemed bright and easeful to Mrs. Carroll, and the face she turned to Susan now was absolutely unclouded.

“What’s all the news, Sue?  Auntie’s well, and Mary Lou?  And what do they say now of Jinny?  Don’t tell me about Georgie until the girls are here!  And what’s this I hear of your throwing down Phil completely, and setting up a new young man?”

“Please’m, you never said I wasn’ter,” Susan laughed.

“No, indeed I never did!  You couldn’t do a more sensible thing!”

“Oh, Aunt Jo!” The title was only by courtesy.  “I thought you felt that every woman ought to have a profession!”

“A means of livelihood, my dear, not a profession necessarily!  Yes, to be used in case she didn’t marry, or when anything went wrong if she did,” the older woman amended briskly.  “But, Sue, marriage first for all girls!  I won’t say,” she went on thoughtfully, “that any marriage is better than none at all, but I could almost say that I thought that!  That is, given the average start, I think a sensible woman has nine chances out of ten of making a marriage successful, whereas there never was a really complete life rounded out by a single woman.”