“My young man has what you’ll consider one serious fault,” said Susan, dimpling.

“Dear, dear!  And what’s that?”

“He’s rich.”

“Peter Coleman, yes, of course he is!” Mrs. Carroll frowned thoughtfully.  “Well, that isn’t necessarily bad, Susan!”

“Aunt Josephine,” Susan said, really shaken out of her nonsense by the serious tone, “do you honestly think it’s a drawback?  Wouldn’t you honestly rather have Jo, say, marry a rich man than a poor man, other things being equal?”

“Honestly no, Sue,” said Mrs. Carroll.

“But if the rich man was just as good and brave and honest and true as the poor one?” persisted the girl.

“But he couldn’t be, Sue, he never is.  The fibers of his moral and mental nature are too soft.  He’s had no hardening.  No,” Mrs. Carroll shook her head.  “No, I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor.  If a man earns his money honestly himself, he grows old during the process, and he may or may not be a strong and good man.  But if he merely inherits it, he is pretty sure not to be one.”

“But aren’t there some exceptions?” asked Susan.  Mrs. Carroll laughed at her tone.

“There are exceptions to everything!  And I really believe Peter Coleman is one,” she conceded smilingly.  “Hark!” for feet were running down the path outside.

“There you are, Sue!” said Anna Carroll, putting a glowing face in the sitting-room door.  “I came back for you!  The others said they would go slowly, and we can catch them if we hurry!”

She came in, a brilliant, handsome young creature, in rough, well-worn walking attire, and a gipsyish hat.  Talking steadily, as they always did when together, she and Susan went upstairs, and Susan was loaned a short skirt, and a cap that made her prettier than ever.

The house was old, there was a hint of sagging here and there, in the worn floors, the bedrooms were plainly furnished, almost bare.  In the atmosphere there lingered, despite the open windows, the faint undefinable odor common to old houses in which years of frugal and self-denying living have set their mark, an odor vaguely compounded of clean linen and old woodwork, hot soapsuds and ammonia.  The children’s old books were preserved in old walnut cases, nothing had been renewed, recarpeted, repapered for many years.

Still talking, the girls presently ran downstairs, and briskly followed the road that wound up, above the village, to the top of the hill.  Anna chattered of the hospital, of the superintendent of nurses, who was a trial to all the young nurses, “all superintendents are tyrants, I think,” said Anna, “and we just have to shut our teeth and bear it!  But it’s all so unnecessarily hard, and it’s wrong, too, for nursing the sick is one thing, and being teased by an irritable woman like that is another!  However,” she concluded cheerfully, “I’ll graduate some day, and forget her!  And meantime, I don’t want to worry mother, for Phil’s just taken a real start, and Bett’s doctor’s bills are paid, and the landlord, by some miracle, has agreed to plaster the kitchen!”