It wasn't late, but everybody had gone in except Miss Susanna and Mr.
Willie, and when I sat down in a rocking-chair Miss Susanna looked at
me as if she didn't know whether to say anything or not, and I saw she
was worried. But before I could ask what was the matter she got up and
kissed me good night and went in, so I asked Mr. Willie.

He wouldn't tell me at first, though I could see he was dying to do it,
but after a while he said Miss Susanna was the sort that found life of
the present day a hard thing to accept, and, fanning himself with his
palm leaf, he looked at me as if I were one of the reasons she found
life hard. "Miss Susanna," he said, "is a lady of the old school where
love and honor were placed above riches and mere material things, and
it was a blow to her to find how readily young people could change
their affections and break their plighted vows and be blind to their
best interests, which was to keep along the same path and not be
tempted out of it by passing people and worldly ambitions." And as he
talked in his fine little cambric-needle voice that sounded as if it
came out of a squeaky cabinet, I knew he was meaning more than he was
saying, and I sat up and listened until he stopped for breath.

"Is that all?" I asked, and got up to go in, "for if it is I don't
think Miss Susanna need worry herself. People in one generation aren't
very different from people in another where self-interest is concerned.
Everybody knows Mrs. Loraine married her husband for his money, though
loving Mr. Spence, and Miss Susanna was one of her bridesmaids; and if
Elizabeth prefers to marry a rich man to a poor one, I don't see
anything new about that." And also I said it wasn't likely that love
and honor were ever going to die out, and a few other things would live
a long time yet, and he need not bother any more than Miss Susanna
concerning present-day young people; and then to my surprise he asked