"I don't see what on earth ever made me marry your father, Susan," she said, starting up half an hour later, when her daughter appeared with the tray. "Everybody knew the Treadwells couldn't hold a candle to my family." "I wouldn't worry about that now, mother," replied Susan briskly, while she placed the tray on a little table at the head of the couch. "Sit up and eat these oysters." "I'm obliged to worry over it," returned Mrs. Treadwell irritably, while she watched her daughter arrange her plate and pour out the green tea from the little Rebecca-at-the-well teapot. "I don't see what got into my head and made me do it. Why, his branch of the Treadwells had petered out until they were as common as dirt." "Well, it's too late to mend matters, so we'd better turn in and try to make the best of them." She held out an oyster on the end of a fork, and her mother received and ate it obediently. "If I could only once understand why I did it, I think I could rest easier, Susan." "Perhaps you were in love with each other. I've heard of such a thing." "Well, if I was going to fall in love, I reckon I could have found somebody better to fall in love with," retorted Mrs. Treadwell with the same strange excitement in her manner. Then she took up her knife and fork and began to eat her luncheon with relish. At five o'clock that afternoon, when Susan reached the house in Prince Street, Virginia, with her youngest child in her arms, was just stepping out of a dilapidated "hack," from which a grinning negro driver handed a collection of lunch baskets into the eager hands of the rector and Mrs. Pendleton, who stood on the pavement. "Here's Susan!" called Mrs. Pendleton in her cheerful voice, rather as if she feared her daughter would overlook her friend in the excitement of homecoming. "Oh, you darling Susan!" exclaimed Virginia, kissing her over the head of a sleeping child in her arms. "This is Jenny--poor little thing, she hasn't been able to keep her eyes open. Don't you think she is the living image of our Saint Memin portrait of great-grandmamma?" "She's a cherub," said Susan. "Let me look at you first, Jinny. I want to see if you've changed."