The children were playing contentedly in the road, Suzanna assured herself. And finding them so, she wandered disconsolately back to the front porch, where seated in a little rocking chair she stared straight before her. She felt as one thrown suddenly from a great height. One moment she had been thrillingly happy, the next, the bitter fruit of disappointment touched her lips. So events occur lightningly quick in this world. The day itself was as beautiful as it had been an hour before, yet its sun had ceased to shine for little Suzanna, since the crowning touch of The Dress, the poetic completeness of it, was denied her.

Years ago it seemed she had wakened in the morning after dreaming of a rose gown with its glimpses of cool green flickering through rows of open lace; but no more could she dream, since that lace was now condemned to blindness, unable even to hint at concealed beauties, and this because Economy, the stern god of the Procter home, so ordained.

Two tears at last found their slow way down her cheek. Not the least of her woe was caused by the realization that now the dress was ingloriously what Maizie had termed it, a pale pink lawn at ten cents a yard, bearing no appeal to her imagination, fulfilling no place in Suzanna's great Scheme of Things.

Suzanna's distress, as the days passed, did not abate. She never spoke of the dress, nor did she go to look at it as it hung shrouded in cheese cloth in the hall closet upstairs. No longer did she look forward with delight to the day when feelingly she should recite the troubles and the heroism of "The Little Martyr of Smyrna."

Instead she went quietly about performing her customary duties, finding for the time no real zest in life.

Mrs. Procter, innocent of the cause of Suzanna's listlessness, spoke no word. She wondered why the child had lost interest in the festival, indeed in all things pertaining to the occasion. It was difficult, she finally decided, to know how to cope with a child so complex, so changeable. She determined to treat the new mood with indifference, as being the most potent method. So she asked of Suzanna the performance of daily duties just as usual. When she discovered Suzanna gazing at her, Maizie close beside her with the same degree of reflection in her gray eyes, Mrs. Procter grew uncomfortable, then a trifle irritable. Both children seemed to regard her as an alien, one, for the time, quite outside their pale.

Suzanna, then, had taken Maizie into her confidence.

"One needs be clairvoyant," Mrs. Procter told her husband one evening, "to know what passes through small minds."

"Clairvoyant and full of patience," he answered, looking up from his color book. "I can remember even now my own sensations when at times my mother failed to go with me into my land of dreams."

Mrs. Procter cast her memory back over the events of several days.

"I can't think what has so changed Suzanna," she said at last; "I've disappointed her, I fear, about something or other. Dear me, what insight versatile children do demand in a mother. And Suzanna takes everything so very seriously. And Maizie stares at me too, with a little bewildered expression. It's strange that Maizie, with all her literalness, can understand at times Suzanna's disappointments when her fancies are not given due value. For, of course, it is some fancy of Suzanna's that I've either not noticed, or perhaps laughed at." She paused to smile at her husband.

"Such children come of giving them an inventor father, an 'impractical genius,' as I've heard myself in satire called."

She flushed up angrily at this.

"You've done wonderfully well," she said, and believed the assertion; just as though at forty to weigh nails correctly and to sell so many yards of garden hose a week was a fine measure of success. "And your name will go ringing down the ages." She would never let him lose confidence in his own powers. Circumstances alone had thrown him into a mediocre position in a small town, but they should never hold him down.

He grew beneath her look; beneath her belief in him. And so the conversation ended on the personal note; ended with hands clasped and fond eyes seeing each the other's charm after many years.

Suzanna, arranging the pantry the next morning, sought her mother upstairs with a domestic announcement.

"The vinegar bottle is empty," she said.

"And the gherkins all ready," cried Mrs. Procter. "Will you run over to Mrs. Reynolds and ask her for some vinegar, Suzanna?"

Listlessly, Suzanna returned downstairs, and from the pantry procured a cup. Slowly she left the house, walked down the front path and across the road to Mrs. Reynolds' home. Arrived there, she went round to the back door and knocked with slack knuckles.

Mrs. Reynolds, a white cloth tied about her forehead, opened the door. She gave out redolently the pungent odor of the commodity Suzanna sought to borrow.

Mrs. Reynolds was stout and comfortable looking ordinarily. A quaint and interesting personality, sprung from Welsh parentage, she fitted into the life of Anchorville only because of a certain natural adaptability. She seemed to belong to a wilder, more passionate people than those plain lives which surrounded her.

Suzanna knew her tenderness, her tragic depressions. She loved her deep voice, her resonant tones, all her quick changes of mood, and her occasional strange ways of expression, revealing her understanding of men and women's vagaries.

Mrs. Reynolds adored Suzanna. She had said often there was one thing she coveted from her neighbor, and that was her neighbor's child.

Mrs. Reynolds had no children and in that deplorable fact lay her keenest unhappiness.

She greeted Suzanna cordially.

"Come in, Suzanna, come in," she said. "I've been using vinegar and red pepper all morning," she continued, as she went her way to the pantry with Suzanna's cup. "I've one of my old headaches."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Suzanna, with immediate sympathy. "Have you been worrying?"

"Not more than usual, Suzanna," said Mrs. Reynolds with a sigh. "Here's your vinegar. Hold it steady. Vinegar's a bad thing to spill."

"Thank you," said Suzanna, politely, as she received the cup. And then: "I don't see why you should worry. You have no children. It's mother's many children that sometimes give her worry."

"Your mother'd have worries even without you all," returned Mrs. Reynolds. "Won't you sit down a spell, Suzanna?"

"No, I can't, mother's waiting." Suzanna walked toward the door, pausing on her way to glance about her. "My, but you're very clean here," she said, appreciatively. "Your cleanness is different from ours. Ours doesn't show so."

"There's no little hands to clutter things up," said Mrs. Reynolds, but her voice wasn't glad.

Suzanna, intuitively sensing the real trouble, said: "Reynolds slammed the door this morning, Mrs. Reynolds. We heard the slam in our dining-room and my mother jumped." Suzanna quite innocently borrowed Mrs. Reynolds' way of referring to her husband.

Mrs. Reynolds' face darkened. "Yes, I know he did. That man is getting more like a bear every day."

"He liked our twin that went away, Mrs. Reynolds. He wasn't like a bear when he played with her."

At this statement Mrs. Reynolds suddenly threw her apron over her head and sobbed: "That's just it, Suzanna, that's just it; there aren't any little cluttering fingers about."

Suzanna set the vinegar cup carefully down on the table, the while her keenly sensitive mind worked rapidly. Those gifts which by dint of their frequency in her own home seemed rather overdone were actually missed here! A strong, deep sympathy for Mrs. Reynolds' disappointment grew within her, but did not entirely crowd out the thought that through this very disappointment her own burning desire might be brought to pass. She now went swiftly and touched the weeping woman.

"Mrs. Reynolds," she began, "will you tell me how you feel about cutting pink goods away from under lace. Can you afford to do that?"

Mrs. Reynolds' apron came down with a jerk, and for a second she stared her perplexity at the upturned, earnest little face. Then with quick understanding which revealed her real mother-spirit, she answered: "Why land, Honey-Girl, Reynolds makes pretty good money at times. I guess we can do about as we please in most simple ways."

"Well, then, keep your apron down," advised Suzanna; "and just think this thought over and over: 'Reynolds is not going to be cross any more!' Thank you again for the vinegar, I must be going now."

It was not without misgiving that Suzanna started immediately to put her secret plan into execution. And her judicious side urged the completion of all details before she said anything to those most nearly concerned in her new move. Only to Maizie, whose constant attendance she skillfully managed to elude while she made her simple preparations, did she at last give any confidence, and it was in this manner she spoke:

"There's going to be a great change, Maizie; and tonight you must manage to stay awake to do something for me."

Maizie, at once interested, grew wildly expectant. Though she could send up no airships of her own, she loved to contemplate Suzanna's daring flights.

"I'll do anything, Suzanna," she promised.

So Suzanna gave Maizie her news. Hearing it, Maizie's lips quivered, but she kept back the tears by the exercise of great control. They were upstairs in their own room. It was late afternoon. Peter was out playing. Mrs. Procter, the baby with her, was downtown ordering groceries.

"Now, you mustn't cry, Maizie," said Suzanna; "it all had to be, and what is to be is for the best." Suzanna quoted from Mrs. Reynolds. "Go downstairs and get father's dictionary."

Maizie obeyed, returning quickly with the desired book.

"And now stand at the window so as to tell me when you see mother coming."

So Maizie took her stand while Suzanna labored hard with the pen. An hour passed. Once Suzanna flew downstairs to the kitchen, then returned to her work. At last, Maizie in excited tones announced that her mother and the baby had turned the corner. Suzanna laid down her pen.

"Well, it's all finished," she said.

Maizie looked at her sister. Now the tears came, blurring the big gray eyes.

"You mustn't cry, Maizie," said Suzanna, trying to subdue her own emotions.

"Couldn't you just wear the dress as it is?" asked Maizie in a small voice, touching the crux of the whole matter, the cause of the great change.

"I just couldn't," Suzanna returned. "It wouldn't be a rose blossom, you see, Maizie, when it could just as well be one."

Maizie nodded. Perhaps she understood Suzanna's sense of waste. Undoubtedly her grief at Suzanna's contemplated step had sharpened her sensibilities. Vague stirrings told her that the artist in Suzanna had been desperately hurt; and for the once her imagination thrilled as did her sister's to the dress as a Rose Blossom. She knew with passion that it could not remain simply pink lawn cut and slashed into a mere garment.

So she went softly to Suzanna and touched her gently.

"I'll help you all I can, sister," she said.

So it was that just as the clock was striking nine, little Maizie stole from her room—shared as long as she remembered with Suzanna—crept down the stairs and into the parlor where her father sat studying, as always, a formidable book, the while her mother sat sewing, her chair drawn close to his. Maizie went straight to the quiet figure.

"Mother," she said, "Suzanna told me to stay awake till the clock struck nine and then to give you this."

"This" was a note folded into the shape of a cocked hat, which Suzanna thought very elegant. Mrs. Procter, accustomed to Suzanna's ways, unfolded the note, smiled at the large printed letters, sighed a little at the thought of the great effort put into their forming, read once, twice, then sat up very straight. The note thus told its own story:

"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Procter, attracted by the strange, almost solemn silence. "What's the trouble, Jane?"

She handed the note to him, waited while he read it through not once, but many times, as she had.

He passed it back to her. "Shall we go for her?" he asked.

But she shook her head. "Sometimes I don't know just how to act where Suzanna's concerned," she said. She folded the note. "No, sometimes I feel just helpless."