"Yes, oh, yes." Susan still spoke with a preoccupied frown.
"Why, Susan, what's the matter? I thought you'd be glad."
Susan drew a long sigh.
"I am glad, Miss Dorothy. I'm awful glad—for John McGuire. They say it's wonderful, the change in him already. He's so proud an' happy to think he's done it—not sinfully proud, you understand, but just humbly proud an' glad. An' his ma says he's writin' other things now—poems an' stories, an' he's as happy as a lark all day. An' I'm awful glad. But it's Keith hisself that I'm thinkin' of. You see, only yesterday I found him—cryin'."
"Crying!" Miss Dorothy seemed to have forgotten all about her haste to get away. She had Susan's arm in HER grasp now. She had pulled her to one side, too, where they could have a little sheltered place to talk, in the angle of two store windows.
"Yes, cryin'. You see, 't was like this," hurried on Susan. "Mis' McGuire was over, an' I'd been readin' a new poem to her an' him. 'T was a real pretty one, too, if I do say it as shouldn't—the best I ever done; all about how fame an' beauty an' pleasure didn't count nothin' beside workin'. I got the idea out of something I found in a magazine. 'T was jest grand; an' it give me the perspiration right away to turn it into a poem. An' I did. An' 't was that I was readin'. I'd jest got it done that mornin'."
"Yes, yes," nodded Miss Dorothy. "I see."
"Well, I never thought of its meanin' anything to Keith, or of his takin' it nohow wrong; but after Mis' McGuire had gone home (she came out an' set with me a spell first in the kitchen) I heard a queer little noise in the settin'-room, an' I went an' looked in. Keith was at the table, his arms flung straight out in front of him, an' his head bowed down. An', Miss Dorothy, he was cryin' like a baby."
"Oh, Susan, what did you do? What did you say?"
"Say? Nothin'!" Susan's eyes flashed her scorn. "Do you s'pose I'd let that poor lamb know I see him cryin'? Well, I guess not! I backed out as soft as a feather bed, an' I didn't go near that settin'-room for an hour, nor let any one else. I was a regular dragon-fly guardin' it. Well, by an' by Keith comes out. His face was white an' strained-lookin'. But he was smiling, an' he handed out my poem—I'd left it on the table when I come out with Mis' McGuire. 'I found this paper on the table, Susan. It's your poem, isn't it?' he says real cheerful-like. Then he turns kind of quick an' leaves the room without another word.