Susannah sighed. "I understand your situation perfectly. I don't know how you're to know I'm all right--morally or just in the matter of mere honesty. For there's nobody but me to tell you that I'm moral and honest. And of course I'm prejudiced." "Well, anyway I'm going to risk it. I'm engaging you now. It is understood--ten dollars a week; and alternate Thursdays and Sundays out. I don't want you until tomorrow because I want my former maid out of the house before you come. Now will you promise me that you'll take the nine train tomorrow?" "I promise," Susannah agreed. "But that reminds me," the woman came on another difficulty, "what's to guarantee that you'll stay with me?" "I guarantee," Susannah said steadily, "that if you keep to your end of the agreement, I'll stay with you at least three months." The woman sparkled. "All right, I'll expect you tomorrow on the nine train. I'll be there with the Ford to meet you. Here are the directions." She scribbled busily on a card. Susannah walked home as one who treads on air. The veil of apathy had broken. And in spite of her headache, which caught her by fits and starts, her mood broke into a joy so wild that it sent her pirouetting about the room. "Glorious Lutie, I never felt so happy in my life. So gayly, grandly, gorgeously, gor-gloriously happy! All my troubles are over. I'm safe." And on the strength of that security, she washed and ironed her lavender linen suit. Her headache was better again. Perhaps if she went out now to an early dinner, it might disappear altogether. But how languorous she felt, how indisposed to effort. She would sit and read a while. She opened _Pickwick Papers_ on its last pages. She had almost finished the book. "I suppose it will be a long time before I have a chance to do any more reading," she meditated. "So I think I'll finish this. You've helped me through a hard passage in my life, Charles Dickens, and I thank you with all my heart."