Susie

“ Here the door opened, and Susie, who had heard all, ashy pale and trembling in every limb, confronted her lover, more dead than alive, and scarcely able to articulate the words: “God forgive you, Dan, and make you happy. You will never marry Susie Dykes;” and sinking down exhausted from her emotion, the doctor caught her and kissed her forehead. ”

“ Oh, Susie, how can you send me off? You know you are all the world to me! If I lose you, I lose everything. I am alone in the world. There are many loved ones to comfort your father, until he comes to his better nature and calls you back to his heart. Susie, am I to leave you forever?"
The beautiful dark eyes were looking into his, filled with so much love. How could she resist?
"No—no. I shall die, if you leave me—never to come again! Oh, what am I to do? I love you better than my own life, Frank, indeed I do! But, father—oh, how can I desert him? He loves me more than the other children. ”

“ It was Susie who walked over with the key, early in the afternoon, carrying with her a basket of dainties for the travellers’ supper, from Mrs. Grant, a woman who knew how to be a good neighbor, and to make life pleasant with cheap kindnesses. Susie’s black eyes danced, and her heart sang within her as she set the table in the little parlor and lighted a fire in the kitchen stove, ready to make a fresh cup of tea whenever the widow and her son should arrive. ”

“ Susie's eyes threatened to overflow.
"Oh, don't cry, Susie," said her mother, in alarm, "or I shall have to put up my umbrella. Go and build a castle with Tom, and take Amy. I trust her to you. Nurse and I must get the babies home."
Susie always rose to any demand made upon her, and was proud of being trusted. She gathered Dick's shells and seaweed and glittering stones skilfully into his pail, and was really helpful in rolling up the rugs and cushions. She was so pleased to see his rather thin, unsteady legs gathering strength as they wobbled slowly over the sand. ”

“ Clara approached her, and patted her white shoulder, saying, “Poor Susie! I have come to comfort you in your trouble. I know all about it, and I am so sorry, but I blame my brother far more than I do you;” at the mention of Dan, Susie sobbed aloud. “He is so cruel to you after all your loving him.”
“Don’t blame him too much,” sobbed Susie. “He could not help it. If I were handsome and educated like Miss Marston, he would love me always; but it is so hard. I wonder why I cannot die. Every hour is harder and harder to bear.” ”

“ Imagine Susie's surprise when she saw around the sides of the room many birds sitting silently upon limbs cut from trees, and among them her own husband, as proud and beautiful as he had ever been before the cruel man had killed him! She quickly flew to the limb and perched beside her loved one. ”

“ I do wish, Susie, you would dress better. You make me feel terribly sheepish sometimes. You can afford to dress well."
"I have decided to get a new dress," said Susan. "What shall it be? and how shall it be made? Something for the street."
"Oh, I know exactly what you ought to have," Gertrude said with enthusiasm. "A dark-blue merino, a shade lighter than a navy, with blue velvet bretelles. You would look superb in it, Susie: you'd be made over new."
"I never looked superb in anything," said Susan with a smile through which one saw a heartache. ”

“ The sight of all this and my own shameful comforts, three wax candles and blazing fire and dry roof, and Susie and Joanie for friends!
Oh me, Susie, what is to become of me in the next world, who have in this life all my good things! ”

“ Susie was upright, honest as the day. Mrs Fortescue was a crooked-minded woman; but very straight people are, as a rule, apt not to see the crookedness of their friends. Susie liked every one at Langdale, just as much as the Colonel liked them. She was heartily pleased to see her friend, and told her so, frankly. Susie was not wearing her grey barège, and the supporting silk lining could not therefore sustain her; but she was very neatly dressed in an old black serge which she had altered with her own clever fingers, and which fitted her plump form to perfection. ”

“ Nature plays strange tricks. Susie, the daughter of farmer Adair, was as beautiful in the face as any angel could be, and her form was as perfect as that of the Cnidian Venus. Her motion when she walked was music, and as she sat in statuesque repose, the undulations of her queenly form were those of perfect ease, grace and strength. ”

“ Susie suffered as much as he did. Her impulse was to throw herself on her knees, and kiss his hands, and comfort him; but she knew that he was interested in her only because she was Margaret’s friend. At last he got up, and taking his pipe from his pocket, filled it silently. She was terrified at the look on his face. The first time she had ever seen him, Susie wondered at the possibility of self-torture which was in that rough-hewn countenance; but she had never dreamed that it could express such unutterable agony. ”

“ It was like a new pleasure to have so new a reason; she would affirm, without delay, her option, her volition; taking this personal possession of what surrounded her was a fair affirmation to start with; and she really didn't care if she made it at the cost of alarms for Susie. Susie would wonder in due course "whatever," as they said at the hotel, had become of her; yet this would be nothing either, probably, to wonderments still in store. Wonderments in truth, Milly felt, even now attended her steps: it was quite as if she saw in people's eyes the reflection of her appearance and pace. ”

“ While he spoke he watched Susie with his small keen eyes, sharpened by the habit of observing wild game, waiting for her face to betray to him exactly what she felt toward Abner. But it was not for nothing that Susie had learnt the art of being all things to all men. Badger’s eyes were a little too eager, and she was quick to see it. ”

“ She stamped her foot, her little bare foot. “I am not Miss Batters. I am Susie.” Her tone had changed with a vengeance. Her manner too. She was every inch a queen. A few feet more. “Can I not be Susie to you?”
I turned away. I only wanted to get hold of myself. She put my head in such a whirl. But before I had a chance of finding out whereabouts I was her voice rang out like a boatswain’s whistle.
“I hate sailor men.” I turned again to stare. “And I hate the sea!”
Before I could slip a word in edgeways she had swung herself round and vanished down the companion ladder. ”

“ Day after day wore on, and, to Dame Barringer's delight and Susie's dismay, Mr. Leon did not come.
"He is such a businessman," thought trusting Susan, "he can't get away from Keokuk. But he'll be sure to write." So Susie put on her sun-bonnet and hurried up to the post-office: "Any letters for me, Mr. Whaler?" The artful and indefinite plural was not disguise enough for Miss Susie, so she added, "I was expecting a letter from my aunt." ”

“ I would have give my life to save you any little care or trouble. I never dreamed of nobody but you--not that I was half good enough for you, but because I did not know any better man around here. Ef it ain't too late, Susie, I ask you to be my wife. I will love you and care for you, good and true."
Before this solemn little speech was finished, Susie was crying and biting her bonnet-strings in a most undignified manner. "Hush, Al Golyer!" she burst out. "You mustn't talk so. You are too good for me. ”

“ Susie, under her mother's careful showing, knit me a pair of red mittens, warming to the heart and delightful to the eyes; and I piled up wood and carried water for Mother, and by vigorous economy earned money enough to buy Susie a great candy heart as big as my two [26] hands, that had the picture of two doves tied together by a blue ribbon on one side, and on the other two very red hearts skewered together by an arrow.
No work of art ever gave greater and more unmingled delight. ”

“ Susie, her pretty, childish face drawn and blanched into a wan beauty, put her arms about her sick little son and looked at her stepfather. He had never failed her.
He did not fail her now. He sold the land he had accumulated field by field; he sold the great flock of sheep, every one of which he could call by name; he mortgaged the house over the protesting head of his now bedridden mother; he sold the horse and cow, and the very sticks of furniture from the room where Susie had grown up and where the crazy grandfather of Susie's children had known a peaceful old age and death. ”

“ Susie turned and went out of the shop with an almost breaking heart, and sitting down on a door-step near, she burst into tears. Her disappointment was the more keen and bitter because she had felt so sure of success; and when at last, chilled and benumbed with the cold, she turned back towards the main road, she had no heart to inquire anywhere else. Everybody would look upon her as a thief now, because she had been seen with Elfie and the policeman; and full of this thought, she turned into Fisher's Lane and went home. ”

“ Reid thought her a tiresome woman, and hoped sincerely that some one else would chaperone the girls when they first went to London. His intention, however, was to secure Florence before that date. He thought he had already made an impression on her, and if Mrs Fortescue did not help him, Susie Arbuthnot would. Susie was the very soul of romance. Behind Susie’s red face shone a soul, the kindest and most chivalrous in the world; and Susie’s true heart beat for all that she considered true in love and bravery. A man must be brave, and a man must be loving. ”

“ Yet the men whose happiness she played with believed in Susie's representation of herself as quite well-meaning, and other women who saw through her liked her in spite of their annoyance; and—after all the other things I have said—I am bound, in sincerity, to admit that I liked her too. ”

“ Susie hesitated for a moment.
“I think he has an extraordinarily good face,” she said at last gravely. “I’ve never seen a man whose honesty of purpose was so transparent.”
Susie Boyd was so lazy that she could never be induced to occupy herself with household matters and, while Margaret put the tea things away, she began to draw the caricature which every new face suggested to her. She made a little sketch of Arthur, abnormally lanky, with a colossal nose, with the wings and the bow and arrow of the God of Love, but it was not half done before she thought it silly. ”

“ These children remembered their pledge, and they made Susie so happy that she almost forgot her lameness. She was a cheerful, pleasant, good little girl, and her schoolmates, who had begun by pitying her and trying to help her, soon loved to be with her.
“May I sit with Susie, Miss Ware?” became a frequent request.
“Susie dear, here’s a cake I’ve brought you,” one would say at recess.
“Take half my apple, Susie.”
[Pg 262]
NOTHING SHALL HURT YOU.
[Pg 263] One day, as Susie was on her way to school she met a large drove of oxen. Poor little girl! ”

“ Susan replied dryly.
"Well, it is, Susie. You've got lots more money now than you know what to do with: you don't need that money at all."
"Don't I?"
"No, you don't, Susie: you know you don't. You never go into society, and you wear your dresses the same way all the time, just as Grandma Summerhaze does. But I'm just making my début"—and Gertrude flushed and tossed her head with a pretty confusion, because she was conscious of having made a sounding speech—"and I need lots of things, such as the rest of the girls have." ”

“ Susie was never nearer fainting in her life. She sat in her bed, her cold hands clasped tightly round her knees, her eyes fixed on this dreadful apparition, unable to speak or move, paralysed by terror. This was the end, then, of all her hopes and ambitions—to come to Pomerania and die like a dog. Then the sickening feeling of fear gave way to one of overwhelming wrath when she found that all the man wanted was to light her stove. ”

“ It was at this instant that Susan, hearing the god of adventure sounding the call to arms, became Susie again.
“I’m very glad to see you, Mr. Burgess,” she replied; and ceasing to fondle the bronze lion’s left ear she gave the banker her hand. “Summer is hanging on,” observed Susie; “it’s quite warm this evening.”
“It is, indeed, and most of our neighbors seem to be staying away late; but I’m glad you’re back.”
[9] Susie was glad he was back. Her superficial knowledge of Mr. Webster Burgess bore wholly upon his standing as a banker. ”

“ And so Elizabeth had returned from her first visit to her Eldorado full of mingled feelings. And all the time she was learning that great lesson of life: that the fairy bowers which beckon us to come away and play give pure pleasure only when viewed from the stony pathway that leads up to the schoolhouse of duty. But that was a lesson Elizabeth took many years to learn.
So she merely glanced up the creek and sighed as they climbed the hill. She said nothing to Susie of all it meant to her. For Susie, though a very dear girl, was not a person who understood. ”

“ Every one in the school is to take part. The primary class are to dance round a May-pole; and then there are to be garland-bearers and maids of honor, so we'll all be something; but of course Susie will have the highest honor."
Susie's happy look of a moment before was gone. That word honor had set her to thinking.
"What is the matter?" asked Sadie, mistaking the cause of her changed expression. "Don't you want us to be in it?"
"Want you to be in it! Of course I do," cried Susie. "You must think me a monster of selfishness. I only wish you could all be queens." ”