Sometimes, walking at Anna’s side to the beach on Sunday, a certain peace and content crept into Susan’s heart, and the deep ache lifted like a curtain, and seemed to show a saner, wider, sweeter region beyond.  Sometimes, tramping the wet hills, her whole being thrilled to some new note, Susan could think serenely of the future, could even be glad of all the past.  It was as if Life, into whose cold, stern face she had been staring wistfully, had softened to the glimmer of a smile, had laid a hand, so lately used to strike, upon her shoulder in token of good-fellowship.

With the good salt air in their faces, and the gray March sky pressing close above the silent circle of the hills about them, she and Anna walked many a bracing, tiring mile.  Now and then they turned and smiled at each other, both young faces brightening.

“Noisy, aren’t we, Sue?”

“Well, the others are making noise enough!”

Poverty stopped them at every turn, these Carrolls.  Susan saw it perhaps more clearly than they did.  A hundred delightful and hospitable plans came into Mrs. Carroll’s mind, only to be dismissed because of the expense involved.  She would have liked to entertain, to keep her pretty daughters becomingly and richly dressed; she confided to Susan rather wistfully, that she was sorry not to be able to end the evenings with little chafing-dish suppers; “that sort of thing makes home so attractive to growing boys.”  Susan knew what Anna’s own personal grievance was.  “These are the best years of my life,” Anna said, bitterly, one night, “and every cent of spending money I have is the fifty dollars a year the hospital pays.  And even out of that they take breakage, in the laboratory or the wards!” Josephine made no secret of her detestation of their necessary economies.

“Did you know I was asked to the Juniors this year?” she said to Susan one night.

“The Juniors!  You weren’t!” Susan echoed incredulously.  For the “Junior Cotillion” was quite the most exclusive and desirable of the city’s winter dances for the younger set.

“Oh, yes, I was.  Mrs. Wallace probably did it,” Josephine assured her, sighing.  “They asked Anna last year,” she said bitterly, “and I suppose next year they’ll ask Betts, and then perhaps they’ll stop.”

“Oh, but Jo-why couldn’t you go!  When so many girls are just crazy to be asked!”

“Money,” Josephine answered briefly.

“But not much!” Susan lamented.  The “Juniors” were not to be estimated in mere money.

“Twenty-five for the ticket, and ten for the chaperone, and a gown, of course, and slippers and a wrap—­Mother felt badly about it,” Josephine said composedly.  And suddenly she burst into tears, and threw herself down on the bed.  “Don’t let Mother hear, and don’t think I’m an idiot!” she sobbed, as Susan came to kneel beside her and comfort her, “but—­but I hate so to drudge away day after day, when I know I could be having gorgeous times, and making friends—–!”