"Women like it," persisted Warham. "And I guess Sam's only sowing the usual wild oats, getting ready to settle. No, mother, you let Ruth alone. If she wants him, she'll get him--she or Susan." Mrs. Warham compressed her lips and lowered her eyes. Ruth or Susan--as if it didn't matter which! "Susan isn't _ours_," she could not refrain from saying. "Indeed, she is!" retorted George warmly. "Why, she couldn't be more our own----" "Yes, certainly," interrupted Fanny. She moved toward the door. She saw that without revealing her entire scheme--hers and Ruth's--she could make no headway with George. And if she did reveal it he would sternly veto it. So she gave up that direction. She went upstairs; George took his hat from the front hall rack and pushed open the screen door. As he appeared on the veranda Susan was picking dead leaves from one of the hanging baskets; Ruth, seated in the hammock, hands in lap, her whole attitude intensely still, was watching her with narrowed eyes. "What's this I hear," cried Warham, laughing, "about you two girls setting your caps for Sam Wright?" And his good-humored brown eyes glanced at Ruth, passed on to Susan's wealth of wavy dark hair and long, rounded form, and lingered there. Ruth lowered her eyes and compressed her lips, a trick she had borrowed from her mother along with the peculiarities of her mother's disposition that it fitted. Susan flung a laughing glance over her shoulder at her uncle. "Not Ruth," said she. "Only me. I saw him first, so he's mine. He's coming to see me this evening." "So I hear. Well, the moon's full and your aunt and I'll not interrupt--at least not till ten o'clock. No callers on a child like you after ten." "Oh, I don't think I'll be able to hold him that long." "Don't you fret, Brownie. But I mustn't make you vain. Coming along to the store?" "No. Tomorrow," said Susan. "I can finish in the morning. I'm going to wear my white dress with embroidery, and it's got to be pressed--and that means I must do it myself." "Poor Sam! And I suppose, when he calls, you'll come down as if you'd put on any old thing and didn't care whether he came or not. And you'll have primped for an hour--and he, too--shaving and combing and trying different ties." Susan sparkled at the idea of a young man, and _such_ a young man, taking trouble for her. Ruth, pale, kept her eyes down and her lips compressed. She was picturing the gallant appearance the young Sophomore from Yale, away off in the gorgeous fashionable East, would make as he came in at that gate yonder and up the walk and seated himself on the veranda--with Susan! Evidently her mother had failed; Susan was not to be taken away.