"Those references are sufficient," Susan said, her confidence restored. "I will make inquiries, and if everything is right, as I have no doubt it is, you can have the house if you should find that it suits you. Will you go over now and look at it? It is scarcely a half block from here." "Yes, if you please: I should like the matter settled as soon as possible." So Susan put on her bonnet and brought a bunch of keys, and walked away with Mr. Falconer to show the house which she had built. And a proud woman was Susan as she did this, and a perfect right had Susan to be a proud woman. She had, indeed, built a model house as far as twenty-six hundred dollars could do this. That amount was never, perhaps, put into brick and mortar in better shape. So Mr. Falconer thought, and so he said very cordially. "Oh," sighed our poor Susan when she was again at home, "how good it seems to have such appreciation!" Susan made inquiries of Mr. Hamilton of the Hamilton Block concerning Mr. Falconer. "Very nice man--very nice man, indeed!" Mr. Hamilton answered briskly: "deals on the square, and always up to time." So the papers were drawn up, and Mr. Falconer paid the first month's rent--forty dollars. "Here, Gertrude," Susan said, handing her sister a roll of bills: "half the rent of my house I shall allow you. Make yourself as pretty as you can with it." "Oh, you blessed darling angel!" Gertrude cried in a transport. "You're the best sister that ever lived, Susie: you really are. Make myself pretty! I tell you I mean to shine like a star with this money. Twenty dollars a month! Delia Spaulding spends five times as much, I suppose. But never mind. I have an eye and I have fingers: I'll make my money do wonders." This Gertrude indeed did. She knew instinctively what colors and what shapes would suit her form and face and harmonize with her general wardrobe. So she wasted nothing in experiments or in articles to be discarded because unbecoming or inharmonious. If Gertrude's toilets were less expensive than Delia Spaulding's, they were more unique and more picturesque. Indeed, there was not in her set a more prettily-dressed girl than Gertrude, and scarcely a prettier girl. Her society among the gentlemen was soon quoted at par, and then rose to a premium. Promptly on the first day of the second month Mr. Falconer called to pay Susan's rent. "How does your friend like the house?" she asked with a pardonable desire to hear her house praised. "Very much indeed. She says it is the most complete house of its kind that she ever saw. Who was your architect, Miss Summerhaze? I ask because the question has been asked of me by a gentleman who contemplates building an inexpensive residence." "I planned the house," Susan answered, a light coming into her face. "Indeed! In all its details?" "Yes, I planned everything." "Have you studied architecture?" "Not until I undertook to plan that house." "That is your first effort? You never planned a house before?"