Susan went out into the kitchen then and took up her neglected work. She made a great clatter of pans and dishes, and she sang lustily at her "mad song," and at several others. But every now and then, between songs and rattles, she would stop and listen intently; and twice she climbed halfway up the back stairs and stood poised, her breath suspended, her anxious eyes on that closed studio door.
Yet supper that night was another very ordinary occurrence, with Keith and his father talking of the war and Susan waiting upon them with a cheerfulness that was almost obtrusive.
In her own room that night, however, Susan addressed an imaginary
Keith, all in the dark.
"You're fine an' splendid, an' I love you for it, Keith, my boy," she choked; "but you don't fool your old Susan. Your chin is up, jest as I said 'twould be, an' you're marchin' straight ahead. But inside, your heart is breakin'. Do you think I don't KNOW? But we ain't goin' to let each other KNOW we know, Keith, my boy. Not much we ain't! An' I guess if you can march straight ahead with your chin up, the rest of us can, all right. We'll see!"
And Susan was singing again the next morning when she did her breakfast dishes.
At ten o'clock Keith came into the kitchen.
"Where's dad, Susan? He isn't in the studio and I've looked in every room in the house and I can't find him anywhere." Keith spoke with the aggrieved air of one who has been deprived of his just rights.
Susan's countenance changed. "Why, Keith, don't you—that is, your father—Didn't he tell you?" stammered Susan.
"Tell me what?"
"Why, that—that he was goin' to be away."