irst time in my remembrance of her, Miss Goucher laughed out
loud. Her laugh--in effect, not in resonance--was like cockcrow. We all
laughed together, and Gertrude vanished.... But ten minutes later found
us with knit brows again, locked in debate. Susan had at length seized
courage to tell me that when she left my house she must, once and for
all, go it completely alone. She could no longer accept my financial
protection. She was to stand on her own feet, for better or worse,
richer or poorer, in sickness or in health. This staggering proposal I
simply could not listen to calmly, and would not yield to! It was too
preposterously absurd.

Yet I made no headway with my objections, until I stumbled upon the one
argument that served me and led to a final compromise, "Dear," I had
protested, really and deeply hurt by Susan's stubborn stand for absolute
independence, "can't you feel how cruelly unkind all this is to me?"

"Oh," she wailed, "unkind? Why did you say that! Surely, Ambo, you don't
mean it! Unkind?"

I was quick to press my advantage. "When you ask me to give up even the
mere material protection of my family? You _are_ my family, Susan--all
the family I shall ever have. I don't want to be maudlin about it. I
don't wish to interfere with your freedom to develop your own life in
your own way. But it's beyond my strength not to plead that all that's
good in my life is bound up with yours. Please don't ask me to live in
daily and hourly anxiety over your reasonable comfort and health.
There's no common sense in it, Susan. It's fantastic! And it is unkind!"

Susan could not long resist this plea, for she felt its wretched
sincerity, even if she knew--as she later told me--that I was making the
most of it. It was Miss Goucher who suggested our compromise.

"Mr. Hunt," she said, "my own arrangement with Susan is this: We are to
pool our resources, and I am to make a home for her, just as if I were
her own mother. I've been able to save, during the past twenty-five
years, about eight thousand dollars; it's well invested, I think, and
brings me in almost five hundred a year. This is what we were to start
with; and Susan feels certain she can earn at least two thousand dollars
a year by her pen. I know nothing of the literary market, but I haven't
counted on her being able to earn so much--for a year or so, at least.
On the other hand, I feel certain Susan will finally make her way as a
writer. So I'd counted on using