Susy

“ Dear little Wings, you prick up your ears, and I know you like it, too. I wish you had a soul, so you could be taken to church, and christened like a baby."
Just here Susy was startled by a sudden laugh from cousin Percy, who had for some moments been walking behind the pony unobserved.
"You're enough to frighten any one to death," she screamed, "creeping about like a cat." ”

“ Then Dotty would plant both feet firmly on Susy's chest, and say, in her teasing little voice, as troublesome as the hum of a mosquito,—
"Won't you tell me 'tory—tell me a 'tory—tell me a 'tory, Susy."
"Well, what do you want to hear?"
Now, it was natural for Susy to feel cross when she was sleepy. It cost her a hard struggle to speak pleasantly, and when she succeeded in doing so, I set it down as one of her greatest victories over herself. The Quaker motto of her grandmother, "Let patience have her perfect work," helped her sometimes, when she could wake up enough to remember it. ”

“ He says your head is as full of airy notions as a dandelion top. I love Queen Mab as if she was my own sister," continued Flossy, in a pettish tone. "You know I do, Susy. I always thought, if anything should happen to Queen Mab, and I lost her, I should certainly dress in mourning; now you needn't laugh."
"O, I can't help laughing, when anybody makes such a fuss over a doll," replied Susy, with a curl of the lip. "Anything that isn't alive, and hasn't any sense, and don't care for you! I like canary birds, and babies, and ponies, and that's enough to like." ”

“ Her violet pupils dilated, trembled, and then quickly shifted as she suddenly stiffened into an attitude of scornful indifference, almost grotesque in its unreality. His eyes slowly turned to the window, the door, the candles on the table and the chair before it, and then came back to her face again. Then he drew a deep breath.
“I give no heed to the idle gossip of servants, Susy,” he said slowly. “I have no belief that you have ever contemplated anything worse than an act of girlish folly, or the gratification of a passing caprice. ”

“ As he passed the angle of the old garden he hesitated, but, strong in his resolution, he put the recollection of last night behind him, and rode by without raising his eyes.
“Clarence!”
It was HER voice. He wheeled his horse. She was standing behind the grille in the old wall as he had seen her standing on the day he had ridden to his rendezvous with Susy. A Spanish manta was thrown over her head and shoulders, as if she had dressed hastily, and had run out to intercept him while he was still in the stable. ”

“ I wouldn't have been you, Susy Parlin, when you had your last canary bird, and let him choke to death."
"O, no, Flossy, I didn't let him choke: I forgot to put any seed in the bottle, and he stuck his head in so deep, that he smothered to death."
"I don't know but smothering is as bad as choking," said Florence; "and now your new bird will be sure to come to some bad end."
"You're always saying hateful things," exclaimed Susy, a good deal vexed. "I like Grace Clifford ten times as well, for she's a great deal more lady-like." ”

“ Peyton was stouter and stronger fibred; the wonderful Californian climate had materialized her figure, as it had their Eastern fruits and flowers, but it was stranger that “Susy”—the child of homelier frontier blood and parentage, whose wholesome peasant plumpness had at first attracted them—should have grown thinner and more graceful, and even seemed to have gained the delicacy his wife had lost. Six years had imperceptibly wrought this change; it had never struck him before so forcibly as on this day of Susy's return from the convent school at Santa Clara for the holidays. ”

“ That had been Susy's discovery: for the first time she was among awakening minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From their cramped and uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed to keep out mean envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above all the din and confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like those ancestral figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman households.
No, the task she had undertaken for want of a better gave Susy no sense of a missed vocation: "mothering" on a large scale would never, she perceived, be her job. ”

“ Susy had a foolish dread of being laughed at.
"Creeping like a cat," echoed Percy, "while you creep like a snail! What will you take for your pony, that can fly in the air like a bird, but can't walk on the ground any better than a goose?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Susy, quite excited: "if you want to see anybody ride fast, just look here." And she started the pony at full speed, regardless of Prudy, who was so frightened, that she seized poor Wings by his flowing mane, and called out for her sister to stop. ”

“ Was it strange that Susy felt vexed when she found that her nice little surprise was all spoiled?
"Try to be patient," said Mrs. Parlin, gently. "Remember how young and thoughtless your sister is. She never means any harm."
"O, but, mamma," replied Susy, "she keeps me being patient all the whole time, and it's hard work."
So Susy, in her vexation, said to Prudy, rather sternly, "You little naughty thing, to go and tell when you promised not to! You're almost as bad as Dotty. "What makes you act so?" ”

“ Susy mused, letting the moonlight filter through her lazy lashes.
People with a balance had always been Susy Branch’s bugbear; they were still, and more dangerously, to be Susy Lansing’s. She detested them, detested them doubly, as the natural enemies of mankind and as the people one always had to put one’s self out for. ”

“ Was there no other possible solution, no new way of ordering their lives? No—there was none: he could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and leisure, could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat Fulmers, for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow in New Hampshire, the slatternly servants, uneatable food and ubiquitous children. How could he ask Susy to share such a life with him? ”

“ She watched the nimble fingers as they passed the worsted thread over the pin-heads, making stitches as fast as Susy could wink.
"It looks like a tiny snake all sticked through the hole in the spool," said Prudy, eager with curiosity. "If you ain't a-goin' to speak, I don't know what I shall do, Susy Parlin!"
When poor Susy could not pretend any longer not to hear, she answered Prudy, half vexed, half laughing, "O, dear, I s'pose you'll tease and tease till you find out. Won't you never say a word to anybody, never?" ”

“ You'll send him a wire at once, and come with me tomorrow, and meet him there instead of in this nasty sloppy desert. . . . Oh, Susy, if you knew how hard life is for me in Scotland between the Prince and Fred you couldn't possibly say no!"
Susy still wavered; but, after all, if Strefford were really bound for Ruan, why not see him there, agreeably and at leisure, instead of spending a dreary day with him in roaming the wet London streets, or screaming at him through the rattle of a restaurant orchestra? ”

“ So it seemed that Annie had eaten it all. Susy ran back to Prudy's sitting-room, where her little guests were seated, and said, trying not to laugh,—
"Please, ma'am, I just made some eel-jumbles and things, and a dog came in and stole them."
"Very well, Betsey," said Mrs. Piper, serenely; "make some more."
"Yes, make some more," echoed Mr. Piper; and added, "chain up that dog."
"But real honest true," said Susy, "the fruit-cake is all gone out of the chest. You ate it up, you know, Annie; but it's no matter: we'll cut up some cookies, or, may be, mother'll let us have some oyster-crackers." ”

“ He knew on how frail a thread the popularity of the penniless hangs, and how miserably a girl like Susy was the sport of other people’s moods and whims. It was a part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they liked they so often had to do what they disliked. But the keeping of his promise was a greater bore than he had expected. Susy Branch had become a delightful habit in a life where most of the fixed things were dull, and her disappearance had made it suddenly clear to him that his resources were growing more and more limited. ”

“ There, Susy, don't you cry," she added, applying a moral lesson to her sister's wounded feelings, like a healing plaster; "he's dreadful wicked, and one of these days he'll get hurt his own self; a horse'll strike him!"
"Yes, a horse'll strike him!" echoed Dotty Dimple.
"But what good will that do Wings?" moaned Susy. "Evil for evil only makes things worse." ”

“ But, in spite of his preoccupation, he was startled and even awkwardly impressed with a change in Susy's appearance. She was wearing, for the first time, a long skirt, and this sudden maturing of her figure struck him, as a man, much more forcibly than it would probably have impressed a woman, more familiar with details. He had not noticed certain indications of womanhood, as significant, perhaps, in her carriage as her outlines, which had been lately perfectly apparent to her mother and Mary, but which were to him now, for the first time, indicated by a few inches of skirt. ”

“ He dreamed again of his life at school, his accidental meeting with Susy at Santa Clara, the keen revival of his boyish love for his old playmate, now a pretty schoolgirl, the petted adopted child of wealthy parents. ”

“ There was an interval of slight awkwardness, which Susy endeavored to displace. “There has been,” she remarked, with easy conversational lightness, “quite an excitement about our French teacher being changed. The girls in our class think it most disgraceful.”
And this was all she could say after a separation of four years! Clarence was desperate, but as yet idealess and voiceless. At last, with an effort over his spoon, he gasped a floating recollection: “Do you still like flapjacks, Susy?” ”

“ Parlin believed she would lay the lesson to heart quite as well without more words. It was a bitter lesson. Susy loved dumb creatures dearly, and was just becoming very fond of Dandy.
In the midst of her trouble, and while her eyes were swollen with tears, her cousin Percy came with Wings and the sleigh to give her the promised ride. Susy no longer cared for going out: it seemed to her that her heart was almost broken.
"Well, cousin Indigo, what is the matter?" said Percy; "you look as if this world was a howling wilderness, and you wanted to howl too. What, crying over that bird? Poh! ”

“ The sleighing was gone long ago. The roads were dismal swamps. "Wings" would have a rest till "settled going." Susy's skates were hung up in a green baize bag, to dream away the summer.
The mocking-bird performed his daily duties of entertaining the family, besides learning a great many new songs. Susy said she tried not to set her heart on that bird.
"I'll not give him a name," she added, "for then he'll be sure to die! My first canary was Bertie, and I named the others Berties, as fast as they died off. The last one was so yellow that I couldn't help calling him Dandelion ”

“ It is impossible to describe the deep significance which Susy's blue eyes gave to this expression. After a pause she went on—
“No! We must never meet again, Clarence, unless Mary Rogers helps. She is my best, my ONLIEST friend, and older than I; having had trouble herself, and being expressly forbidden to see him again. You can speak to her about Suzette—that's my name now; I was rechristened Suzette Alexandra Peyton by mamma. And now, Clarence,” dropping her voice and glancing shyly around the saloon, “you may kiss me just once under my hat, for good-by.” ”

“ He remembered letters that had passed between her and Captain Pinckney—letters that she had openly sent to notorious Southern leaders; her nervous anxiety to remain at the Rancho; the innuendoes and significant glances of friends which he had put aside—as he had this woman's message! Susy had told him nothing new of his wife—but the truth of HIMSELF! And the revelation came from people who he was conscious were the inferiors of himself and his wife. To an independent, proud, and self-made man it was the culminating stroke. ”

“ Oh, Susy, whatever you do, don’t miss your chance! You can’t conceive of the wicked plotting and intriguing there will be to get him—on all sides, and even where one least suspects it. You don’t know what horrors women will do—and even girls!” A shudder ran through her at the thought, and she caught Susy’s wrists in vehement fingers. “But I can’t think, my dear, why you don’t announce your engagement at once. ”

“ He wanted above all things to get away from sentiment, from seduction, from the moods and impulses and flashing contradictions that were Susy. Susy was not a great reader: her store of facts was small, and she had grown up among people who dreaded ideas as much as if they had been a contagious disease. But, in the early days especially, when Nick had put a book in her hand, or read a poem to her, her swift intelligence had instantly shed a new light on the subject, and, penetrating to its depths, had extracted from them whatever belonged to her. ”

“ Prudy had bought a shawl-pin for her mother, a fierce little wooden soldier for aunt Madge, and something for everybody else but Susy. Not that she forgot Susy. O, no! but one's money does not always hold out, even at Christmas time.
"Why," said Mr. Parlin, "what is this sticking fast to the sole of my new slipper? Molasses candy, I do believe." ”