Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/342

household, nothing could be jollier than the life the two women led together. The death of her father was no personal loss to Susan; she had seen him only in her brief school vacations; he was a reserved and silent man, wholly absorbed in making a fortune. He had always had the theory that when the fortune was big enough, and Susan was old enough to leave school, he would take some leisure, enjoy himself, and become acquainted with his daughter. But Death had other plans for Mr. Sweetser. He cut him down one night, before that interval of leisure had arrived, and before Susan was old enough to leave school, but not before the fortune had grown large enough to satisfy the utmost wants of any reasonable being. More because of her own interest in study than from any exercise of authority or even influence on her guardian's part, Susan remained at school two years after her father's death. During these two years she held, by virtue of her independence and her riches, a position in the school which was hardly that of a scholar. A young lady who had a carriage and horses at her command, and thousands of dollars every quarter for the expenditure of which she was responsible to nobody but herself, was not likely to be held in much restraint by her teachers. Madame Delancy was only too glad to avail herself of Miss Sweetser's carriage on occasion; and Miss Sweetser's generosity, in countless ways, smoothed difficulties in the Delancy