True, she was not alone. Miss Goucher was admirable in her way; though a middle-aged spinster, after all, unused to the sharp temptations and fierce competitions of metropolitan life. It was not a house-mother Susan would need; the wolves lurked beyond the door--shrewd, soft-treading wolves, cunningly disguised. How could a child, a charming and too daring child--however gifted--be expected to deal with these creatures? The thought of these subtle, these patient ones, tracking her--tracking her--chilled us to hours-long wakefulness in the night! Then with the morning a letter would come, filled with strange men's names. We compared notes, consulted together--shaking unhappy heads. We wrote tactful letters to Heywood Sampson, begging him, but always indirectly, to keep an eye. We ran down singly for nights in town, rescued--the verb was ours--Susan and Miss Goucher from their West 10th Street boarding-house, interfered with their work or other plans, haled them--the verb, I fear, was theirs--to dinner, to the opera or theater, or perhaps to call on someone of ribbed respectability who might prove an observant friend. God knows, in spite of all resolutions, we did our poor best to mind Susan's business for her, to brood over her destiny from afar! And God knows our efforts were superfluous! The traps, stratagems, springes in her path, merely suspected by us and hence the more darkly dreaded, were clearly seen by Susan and laughed at for the ancient, pitiful frauds they were. The dull craft, the stale devices of avarice or lust were no novelties to her; she greeted them, _en passant_, with the old Birch Street terrier-look; just a half-mocking nod of recognition--an amused, half-wistful salute to her gamin past. It was her gamin past we had forgotten, Phil and I, when we agonized over Susan's inexperienced youth. Inexperienced? Bob Blake's kid! If there were things New York could yet teach Bob Blake's kid--and there were many--they were not those that had made her see in it "Birch Street--on a slightly exaggerated scale"! But, as the Greeks discovered many generations ago, it is impossible to be high-minded or clear-sighted enough to outwit a secret unreason in the total scheme of things. Else the virtuous, in the Greek sense, would be always the fortunate; and perhaps then would grow too self-regarding. Does the last and austerest beauty of the ideal not flower from this, that it can promise us nothing but itself! You can choose a clear road, yet you shall never walk there in safety: Chance--that secret unreason--lurks in the hedgerows, myriad-formed, to plot against you. "_Hélas!_" as the French heroine might say. "Diddle-diddle-dumpling!" as might say Susan.... Meaning: That strain, Ambo, was of a higher mood, doubtless; but do return to your muttons.