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"S Is For Shiftless Susanna"
by
“Jim, it doesn’t say that!” But Susanna’s eyes were kindling with joy at the thought. “Oh, Jim, what a chance! Doesn’t that look as if he really liked you!”
“Liked YOU, you mean,” Jim said, giving her the letter. “Now I call that a very friendly, decent thing for them to do,” young Mr. Fairfax went on musingly. “If you and she like each other, Sue–“
“Oh, don’t worry, we will!” Mrs. Fairfax was always sure of her touch upon a feminine heart.
“Wonder why he didn’t think of Mrs. Reid or Mrs. Polk?” said Jim.
“Oh, Jim, they are sort of–stiff, don’t you know?” Susanna returned to her coffee, seasoning Jim’s cup carefully before she added, with a look of naive pleasure that Jim thought very charming: “You know I rather THOUGHT that Mr. Thayer liked me just that one day I saw him!”
“Well, you’ll like her,” Jim prophesied. “She’s very sweet and gentle, not very strong. They live right up the line there somewhere. She rarely comes into town. Old Thayer is devoted to her, and he always seems–” Jim hesitated. “I don’t know,” he went on, “I may be all wrong about this, Sue, but Thayer always seems to be protecting her, don’t you know? I don’t imagine he’d want to run her up against society women like Jane Reid and Mrs. Polk. You’re younger and less affected; you’re approachable. I don’t know, but it seems to me that way. Anyway,” he finished with supreme satisfaction, “I wouldn’t take anything in the world for this chance! It shows the old man is really in earnest.”
“He says she’ll be at the office at eleven,” said Susanna. “That means I must get the ten twenty-two.”
“Sure. And take a taxi when you get to town. Got money? Got the right clothes?”
“Hydrangea hat,” Susanna decided aloud. “New pongee, and pongee coat hung in careless elegance over my arm. As the last chime of eleven rings I will step into your office–“
“I hope to goodness you will!” said Jim, with an anxious look. “You’ll really get there, won’t you, Sue? No slips?”
This might have seemed overemphatic to an unprejudiced outsider. But no one who really knew Susanna would have blamed her young husband for an utter disbelief in the likelihood of her getting anywhere at any given time. Susanna’s one glaring fault was a cheerful indifference to the fixed plans of others. Engagements she forgot, ignored, or cancelled at the last minute; dinner guests, arriving at her lovely home, never dreamed how often the consternation of utter surprise was hidden under the hilarious greetings of hostess and host. Dressmakers and dentists charged Susanna mercilessly for forgotten appointments; but an adoring circle of friends had formed a sort of silent conspiracy to save her from herself, and socially she suffered much less than she deserved.
“But some day you’ll get an awful jolt; you’ll get the lesson of your life, Sue,” Jim used to say, and Susanna always answered meekly:
“Oh, Jim, I know it!”
“My mother used to have a nursery rhyme about me,” she told Jim on one occasion. “It was one of those ‘A is for Amiable Annie’ things, you know; ‘K is for Kind little Katie, whose weight is one hundred and eighty’–you’ve heard them, of course? Well, ‘S was for Shiftless Susanna.’ I know the next line was, ‘But such was the charm of her manner’–but I’ve forgotten the rest. Whether mother made that up for my especial benefit or not, I don’t know.”
“Well, you have the charm all right,” Jim was obliged to confess, for Susanna had an undeniable genius for adjustment and placation. Nobody was angry long at Susanna, perhaps because so many other people were always ready to step in gladly and fill any gaps in her programme. She was too popular to be snubbed. And her excuses were always so reasonable!
“You know I simply lose my mind at the telephone,” she would plead. “I accept anything then–it never occurs to me that we may have engagements!” Or, “Well, the Jacksons said Thursday,” she would brilliantly elucidate, “and Mrs. Oliver said the twentieth, and it never OCCURRED to me that it was the same day!”