In her changes of status and habitat the thing that hurt Susan most was the fact that the transition fixed her, apparently for all time, among the Susans. She had been named Susan for an aunt with money, but the money had gone to foreign missions when Susie was six. In college she had always been Susie to those who did not call her Miss Parker. Her introduction to the library in the Hoosier capital was, of course, as Miss Parker; but she saw Miss Susan looming darkly ahead of her. She visualized herself down the gray vistas, preyed upon daily by harassed women in search of easy catercorners to club papers, who would ask at the counter for Miss Susan. And she resented, with all the strength of her healthy young soul, the thought of being Miss Susan.
Just why Sue and Susie express various shades of character and personal atmosphere not hinted in the least by Susan pertains to the psychology of names, and is not for this writing. Susie was a small human package with a great deal of yellow hair, big blue eyes, an absurdly small mouth and a determined little nose. As a child and throughout her college years she had been frolicsome and prankish. Her intimates had rejected Sue as an inappropriate diminutive for her. Sue and Susie are not interchangeable. Sue may be applied to tall, dark girls; but no one can imagine a Susie as tall or dark. In college the girls had by unanimous consent called her Susie, with an affectionate lingering upon the second syllable and a prolongation of the “e.”
To get exactly the right effect, one should first bite into a tart gooseberry. In her corridor at Vassar it had been no uncommon thing to speak of her affectionately as Susie the Goosie. Another term of endearment she evoked was Susie the Syracuse Goosie, usually when she was in disgrace with the powers.
And Susie was the least bit spoiled. She had liked these plays upon her name. Her sayings and doings were much quoted and described in those good old days before she became Miss Susan Parker on a public library payroll. An admiring classmate had suggested the writing of a book to be called the Susiness of Susie. And Susie was funny—every one admitted that she was. She left behind her at college a reputation as a past mistress of the unexpected, and a graceful skater over the thin ice of academic delinquency. She had liked the admiration of her classmates and had more or less consciously played for it. She did not mind so much being small when it was so clear that her compact figure contributed so considerably to her general Susiness.
And the manner of the way in which Susan became Susie again fell in this wise:
Last summer the newest certain rich man in Indianapolis, having builded himself a house so large that his wife took the children and went abroad to be comfortable, fell under the fascinations of a book agent, who equipped his library with four thousand of the books that are books. The capitalist really meant to read them when he got time—if he ever did; and, in order that he might the more readily avail himself of his library when leisure offered, he acted upon the agent’s hint that it should be scientifically catalogued. The public librarian had suggested Miss Parker as a competent person for the task; and Logan, the owner of the unread books, having been pleased with the candidate’s appearance, had suggested that she live in the house while doing the work, to be company for his wife’s aunt, who was marooned there during Mrs. Logan’s absence. Logan thereupon went to Alaska to look at an investment. The aunt proved agreeable and the big Logan house was, of course, a much pleasanter place than Susan’s boarding house, where she had been annoyed by the efforts of one or two young gentlemen to flirt with her. Though her isolation emphasized the passing of her Susiness, she was reasonably happy, and set up her typewriter among the new books to do the cataloguing. In the long, eventless evenings she read to the aunt or cut leaves, and felt the years of her Susihood receding.
And it was not until the very last week of her stay in the Logan house that Miss Susan Parker experienced a recrudescence of her Susiness.
II
Late one afternoon, midway of September, Susie, who had just returned from a stroll, stood on the Logan portico watching the motors flit past, and thinking a little mournfully that in a few days she must go back to her boarding house and her place behind the library counter. It was then that she observed Mr. Webster G. Burgess on his doorstep adjoining, viewing the urban landscape reflectively. He was hatless and in his hand he held a bit of yellow paper that resembled a telegram. Noting Susie’s presence on the Logan veranda, he crossed the lawn in her direction. She knew from a personal item in the afternoon paper that Mr. Burgess had returned from his vacation, and that Mrs. Burgess was to follow at once, accompanied by her younger sister, Miss Wilkinson; and that she was to entertain immediately Mr. Brown Pendleton, a wealthy young American explorer and archæologist, who was coming to Indiana to deliver the dedicatory address at the opening of the new Historical Museum at the state university. Mrs. Burgess always entertained all the distinguished people who visited Indianapolis, and it had occurred to Susan that by the exercise of ordinary vigilance she might catch a glimpse of Brown Pendleton during his stay at the house next door. Webster Burgess was a banker who had inherited his bank, and he had always found life rather pleasant going. His wife diverted him a good deal, and the fact that she played at being a highbrow amused him almost more than anything else. He had kept his figure, and at forty-two was still able to dance without fear of apoplexy. He chose his haberdashery with taste, and sometimes he sent flowers to ladies without inclosing his wife’s card; but his wife said this was temperamental, which was a very good name for it.
Susie, holding her ground as Burgess advanced, composedly patted the head of one of the bronze lions that guarded the entrance to the Logan doors.