Susannah did not sleep very well that night. But by morning she had recovered her poise. “Glorious Lutie,” she said wordlessly from her bed, “I think I’ll go seriously to the business of getting a job. It’ll take my mind off—things. I’m going to ignore that little rencontre of yesterday. Don’t you despair. The handsome young employer with his romantic eyes and movie-star eyelashes awaits me somewhere. And just as soon as we’re married, you shall be hung in a manner befitting your birth and station in a drawing-room as big as Central Park. I wish it weren’t so darn hot. Somehow too, I don’t feel so strong about answering ads in person as I did two days ago.”
On her way to breakfast she bought all the newspapers. She spent her morning answering advertisements by letter. She received no replies to this first batch; but she pursued the same course for three days.
“Glorious Lutie,” she addressed the miniature a few days later, “this is beginning to get serious. I am now almost within sight of the end bill in my wad. In point of fact I will not conceal from you that today I pawned my one and only jewel—my jade ring. You don’t know how naked I feel without it. It will keep us for—perhaps it will last three weeks. And after that— However, I don’t think we’ll either of us starve. You don’t take any sustenance and I take very little these days. I wish this weather would change. You are so cool living in that blue cloud, Glorious Lutie, that you don’t appreciate what it’s like when it’s ninety in the shade and still going up. I’m getting pretty sick of it. I guess,” she concluded, smiling, “I’ll make out a list of the friends I can appeal to in case of need.”
The idea seemed to raise her spirits. She sat down and turned to the unused memorandum portion of her diary. Her list ran something like this:
New York—
No. 1—First and foremost—Eloise, who, being an heiress and the owner of a check-book, never has any real cash and always borrows from me.
Providence—
No. 2—Barty Joyce—Always has money because he’s prudent—and the salt of the earth—
P.S. Eloise never pays the money back that she borrows from me—