seize this
opportunity of choosing the better life, which was always, he said, a
life of simplicity, frugality, and hard work.

Anna wept and laughed together over this letter--the tenderest laughter
and the happiest tears. It seemed by turns the wildest improbability
that she should be well off, and the most natural thing in the world.
Susie was out. Never had her absence been terrible before. Anna could
hardly bear the waiting. She walked up and down the room, for sitting
still was impossible, holding the precious letters tight in her little
cold hands, her cheeks burning, her eyes sparkling, in an agony of
impatience and anxiety lest something should have happened to delay
Susie at this supreme moment. At the window end of the room she stopped
each time she reached it and looked eagerly up and down the street, the
flower-women and the blessedness of selling daffodils having within an
hour become profoundly indifferent to her. At the other end of the room,
where a bureau stood, she came to a standstill too, and snatching up a
pen began a letter to Peter in Devonshire; but, hearing wheels, threw it
down and flew to the window again. It was not Susie's carriage, and she
went back to the letter and wrote another line; then again to the
window; then again to the letter; and it was the letter's turn as Susie,
fagged from a round of calls, came in.

Susie's afternoon had not been a success. She had made advances to a
woman of enviably high position with the intrepidity that characterised
all her social movements, and she had been snubbed for her pains with
more than usual rudeness. She had had, besides, several minor
annoyances. And to come in worn out, and have your sister-in-law, who
would hardly speak to you at luncheon, fall on your neck and begin
violently to kiss you, is really a little hard on a woman who is already
cross.

"Now what in the name of fortune is the matter now?" gasped Susie,
breathlessly disengaging herself.

"Oh, Susie! oh, Susie!" cried Anna incoherently, "what ages you have
been away--and the letters came directly you had gone--and I've been
watching for you ever since, and was so dreadfully afraid something had
happened----"

"But what are you talking about, Anna?" interrupted Susie irritably. It
was late, and she wanted to rest for a few minutes before dressing to go
out again, and here was Anna in a new mood of a violent nature, and she
was weary beyond measure of all Anna's moods.

"Oh,