omething every single minute. Just think--Nat has even made special
arrangements here in the pension, so that the children all have second
helpings to everything. And when I go up to bed I can think of my music,
instead of lying awake calculating and wondering how I can make things
come out at the end of the month. Oh, Susy, that's simply heaven!"

Susy's heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be taught again
the lesson of indifference to material things, and instead she was
hearing from Grace Fulmer's lips the long-repressed avowal of their
tyranny. After all, that battle with poverty on the New Hampshire
hillside had not been the easy smiling business that Grace and Nat had
made it appear. And yet ... and yet....

Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which hung
irresponsibly over Grace's left ear.

"What's wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she generally
knows," Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.

"It's the way you wear it, dearest--and the bow is rather top-heavy. Let
me have it a minute, please." Susy lifted the hat from her friend's
head and began to manipulate its trimming. "This is the way Maria Guy or
Suzanne would do it.... And now go on about Nat...."

She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her husband's
triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for his work, the
fine ladies' battles over their priority in discovering him, and the
multiplied orders that had resulted from their rivalry.

"Of course they're simply furious with each other-Mrs. Melrose and Mrs.
Gillow especially--because each one pretends to have been the first to
notice his 'Spring Snow-Storm,' and in reality it wasn't either of them,
but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-critic we've known for years, who
chanced on the picture, and rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking
for a new painter to push." Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes
to Susy's face. "But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Nat
is beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs. Melrose who
stopped short in front of his picture on the opening day, and screamed
out: 'This is genius!' It seems funny he should care so much, when I've
always known he had genius-and he has known it too. But they're all so
kind to him; and Mrs. Melrose especially. And I suppose it makes a thing
sound new to hear it said in a new voice."

Susy looked at her meditatively. "And how should you feel