"If you can't let me have another room, Ambo—I'll have to go."
"Why? Hang it all, Susan, don't be silly! Don't make difficulties where none exist! What an odd, overstrained child you are!" I was a little annoyed.
"Yes," nodded Susan gravely, "I see now why Gertrude left you. But she must be awfully stupid not to know it's only your outside that's made like that!"
Next morning, without a permissive word from me, Susan had Miss Goucher move all her things to a small bedroom at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. This silent flitting irritated me not a little, and that afternoon I had a frank little talk with Miss Disbrow—franker, perhaps, than I had intended. Miss Disbrow at once gave me notice, and left for New York within two hours, letting it be known that she expected her trunks to be sent after her.
"Gutter-snipes are not my specialty," was her parting word.
IV
There proved to be little difficulty in getting myself appointed Susan's guardian. No one else wanted the child.
I promised the court to do my best for her; to treat her, in fact, as I would my own flesh and blood. It might well be, I said, that before long I should legally adopt her. In any event, if this for some unforeseen reason proved inadvisable, I assured the court that Susan's future would be provided for. The court benignly replied that, as it stood, I was acting very handsomely in the matter; very handsomely; no doubt about it. But there was a dim glimmer behind the juridic spectacles that seemed to imply: "Handsomely, my dear sir, but whether wisely or no is another question, which, as the official champion of widows and orphans, I am not called upon to decide."
It was with a new sense of responsibility that I opened an account in Susan's name with a local savings bank, and a week later added a short but efficient codicil to my will.
In the meantime—but with alert suspicions—I interviewed several highly recommended applicants for Miss Disbrow's deserted post; only to find them wanting. Poor things! Combined, they could hardly have met all the requirements, æsthetic and intellectual, which I had now set my heart upon finding in one lone governess for Susan! It would have needed, by this, a subtly modernized Hypatia to fulfill my ideal.