"--And if Phil Carroll hadn't been whipped and bullied and coaxed and amused and praised for the past six or seven years, and Anna pushed into a job, and Jim and Betsy ruled with an iron hand, you might hear Mrs. Carroll talking about 'bad luck,' too!"
"Well, one thing," said Susan firmly, "we'll do very differently from now on."
"You girls, you mean," he said.
"Jinny and Mary Lou and I. I think we'll keep this place going, Billy."
Billy scowled.
"I think you're making a big mistake, if you do. There's no money in it. The house is heavily mortgaged, half the rooms are empty."
"We'll fill the house, then. It's the only thing we can do, Billy. And I've got plenty of plans," said Susan vivaciously. "I'm going to market myself, every morning. I'm going to do at least half the cooking. I'm going to borrow about three hundred dollars---"
"I'll lend you all you want," he said.
"Well, you're a darling! But I don't mean a gift, I mean at interest," Susan assured him. "I'm going to buy china and linen, and raise our rates. For two years I'm not going out of this house, except on business. You'll see!"
He stared at her for so long a time that Susan--even with Billy!-- became somewhat embarrassed.
"But it seems a shame to tie you down to an enterprise like this, Sue," he said finally.
"No," she said, after a short silence, turning upon him a very bright smile. "I've made a pretty general failure of my own happiness, Bill. I've shown that I'm a pretty weak sort. You know what I was willing to do---"
"Now you're talking like a damn fool!" growled Billy.
"No, I'm not! You may be as decent as you please about it, Billy," said Susan with scarlet cheeks, "but--a thing like that will keep me from ever marrying, you know! Well. So I'm really going to work, right here and now. Mrs. Carroll says that service is the secret of happiness, I'm going to try it. Life is pretty short, anyway,-- doesn't a time like this make it seem so!--and I don't know that it makes very much difference whether one's happy or not!"
"Well, go ahead and good luck to you!" said Billy, "but don't talk rot about not marrying and not being happy!"
Presently he dozed in his chair, and Susan sat staring wide-eyed before her, but seeing nothing of the dimly lighted room, the old steel-engravings on the walls, the blotched mirror above the empty grate. Long thoughts went through her mind, a hazy drift of plans and resolutions, a hazy wonder as to what Stephen Bocqueraz was doing to-night--what Kenneth Saunders was doing. Perhaps they would some day hear of her as a busy and prosperous boarding-house keeper; perhaps, taking a hard-earned holiday in Europe, twenty years from now, Susan would meet one of them again.