At the moment as she stood leaning against the massive white pillar with a smile on her lips and in her dark eyes, the sunshine glinting warm, red-gold lights in her bronze hair, it seemed as if it would be hard indeed to find any trouble with her so completely was she a picture of radiant, joyous, care-free youth.
Suzanne demolished her bonbon, then proceeded to expatiate on her original proposition.
"The trouble with you," she averred oracularly from her cushions, "is that you are addicted to the vice of contentment."
"Well, why shouldn't she be?" demanded Barbara from the depths of the huge arm-chair which nearly swallowed her diminutive figure. "I'd like to know who has a better right? Hasn't Sylvia this minute got everything anybody in the world could want? If I had been born to live on a hill top, like Sylvia, I'd never leave it."
Suzanne sat up, brandishing a reproachful forefinger at the speaker.
"Barbie Day! I am shocked at you. What would your Aunt Josephine say? Sylvia, she must be packed off at once. She mustn't be allowed to stay even for the party. The flesh pots have gone to her head. Another day at Arden Hall will ruin her for the Cause." And, with a prophetic shake of her head, Suzanne helped herself to a "Turkish Delight" and relaxed among her cushions, the leaf green color of which, contrasting with the pale pink of her gown, made her look rather like a rose, set in its calyx. Suzanne was extraordinarily pretty, much prettier, in fact, than was at all necessary for a young person of distinct literary bent and a pronounced--audibly pronounced--distaste for matrimony. Thus Nature, willfully prodigal, lavishes her gifts.
"Speak for yourself," retorted Barbara with unusual spirit. "If the flesh pots are ruining me they shall continue on their course of destruction without let or hindrance until Wednesday next. I was born poor, I have lived poor and I shall probably die poor, but I am not above participating in the unearned increment when I get a heavenly chance like this blessed week and if anybody says 'Votes for Women' to me in the next five days he or she is likely to be surprised. I am going to turn Lotus Eater for just this once. Don't disturb me." And by way of demonstration Barb tucked one small foot up under her, burrowed even deeper in the heart of the big chair and closed her eyes with a sigh of complete satisfaction.
In the meanwhile Sylvia had absentmindedly plucked a scarlet spray from the vine which was swaying in the September breeze just above her head and her eyes were thoughtful. Unwittingly, the others had stirred mental currents which lay always fairly near the surface with her, suggested problems which had been asserting themselves of late rather continuously. The generous-hearted little schoolgirl Sylvia who had wanted to gather all the lonely people in the world into her Christmas family, the puzzled Sylvia who even five years ago had been tormented by the baffling question why she had so much and others so little was still present in the Sylvia of almost two and twenty who considered herself quite grown up and sophisticated and possessed a college diploma.
"I don't know that I am so viciously contented as you seem to think, Suzanne," she said, "and I haven't the slightest intention of staying on my hill top, as you mean it, Barb. But I can't just come down off it and go tilting at windmills at random. I've got to know what my job is, and I don't at all, at present--can't even guess at it. All the rest of you girls had your futures neatly outlined and sub-topiced. Nearly every one in the class knew, when she graduated last June, just what she wanted to do or had to do next. Every one was going to teach or travel, or 'slum' or study, or come out or get married. But poor me!" Sylvia shrugged humorously, though her eyes were still thoughtful. "I haven't any startling gifts or urgent duties. I haven't the necessity of earning bread and butter, nor any special cause to follow. It is really hopeless to be so--" She groped for a word then settled on "unattached."
"There is more than one male who would be willing to remedy that defect, I'm thinking," chuckled Suzanne wickedly. "How about the person who disburses these delectable bonbons? Won't he do for a cause?"