"We could send that?" submitted Susan, but Billy answered by signaling a carriage, and placing his little family inside.
"Oh, Bill, you plutocrat!" Susan said, sinking back with a great sigh of pleasure.
"Well, my wife doesn't come home every day!" Billy said beaming.
Susan felt, in some subtle climatic change, that the heat of the summer was over. Mission Street slept under a soft autumn haze; the hint of a cool night was already in the air.
In the dining-room, as she entered with her baby in her arms, she saw that a new table and new chairs replaced the old ones, a ruffled little cotton house-gown was folded neatly on the table. A new, hooded baby-carriage awaited little Billy.
"Oh, BILLY!" The baby was bundled unceremoniously into his new coach, and Susan put her arms about her husband's neck. "You OUGHTN'T!" she protested.
"Clem and Mrs. Cudahy sent the carriage," Billy beamed.
"And you did the rest! Bill, dear--when I am such a tired, cross apology for a wife!" Susan found nothing in life so bracing as the arm that was now tight about her. She had a full minute's respite before the boys' claims must be met.
"What first, Sue?" asked Billy. "Dinner's all ordered, and the things are here, but I guess you'll have to fix things---"
"I'll feed baby while you give Mart his milk and toast," Susan said capably, "then I'll get into something comfortable and we'll put them off, and you can set the table while I get dinner! It's been a heavenly week, Billy dear," said Susan, settling herself in a low rocker, "but it does seem good to get home!"
The next spring all four did indeed go up to the woods, but it was after a severe attack of typhoid fever on Billy Senior's part, and Susan was almost too much exhausted in every way to trust herself to the rough life of the cabin. But they came back after a month's gypsying so brown and strong and happy that even Susan had forgotten the horrors of the winter, and in mid-summer the "Protest" moved into more dignified quarters, and the Olivers found the comfortable old house in Oakland that was to be a home for them all for a long time.
Oakland was chosen because it is near the city, yet country-like enough to be ideal for children. The house was commonplace, shabby and cheaply built, but to Susan it seemed delightfully roomy and comfortable, and she gloried in the big yards, the fruit trees, and the old-fashioned garden. She cared for her sweet-pea vines and her chickens while the little boys tumbled about her, or connived against the safety of the cat, and she liked her neighbors, simple women who advised her about her plants, and brought their own babies over to play with Mart and Billy.