with his friends, I could really make it worth your while. . . ."
"So awfully good of you, Violet; only I'm not, as it happens."
Oh the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly and even truthfully! Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed! Susy remembered how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn afternoon in New Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutary glimpse of the way in which, as the years passed, and she lost her freshness and novelty, she would more and more be used as a convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner of errands, nursery governess or companion. She called to mind several elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who still wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered its jargon, but had long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices. Never in the world would she join their numbers.
Mrs. Melrose's face fell, and she looked at Susy with the plaintive bewilderment of the wielder of millions to whom everything that cannot be bought is imperceptible.
"But I can't see why you can't change your plans," she murmured with a soft persistency.
"Ah, well, you know"—Susy paused on a slow inward smile—"they're not mine only, as it happens."
Mrs. Melrose's brow clouded. The unforeseen
