artie ruined her skin by injudicious
eating; she could not resist sweets; natural indolence, combined with
the idle life she led, helped to make her too fat. Now and then, in the
express office, in the afternoon, the girls got on the big freight
scales, and this was always a mortification to Martie. Terry Castle and
Joe Hawkes would laugh as they adjusted the weights, and Martie always
tried to laugh, too, but she did not think it funny. Martie might have
seemed to her world merely a sweet, big, good-natured tomboy, growing
into an eager, amusing, ignorant young woman, too fond of sleeping and
eating.

But there was another Martie--a sensitive, ambitious Martie--who
despised idleness, dependence, and inaction; who longed to live a
thousand lives--to conquer all the world; a Martie who was one day a
great singer, one day a wartime nurse, one day a millionaire's
beautiful bride, the mother of five lovely children, all carefully
named. She would waken from her dreams almost bewildered, blinking at
Sally or at her mother in the surprised fashion that sometimes made
folk call Martie stupid, humbly enough she thought of herself as
stupid, too. She never suspected that she was really "dreaming true,"
that the power and the glory lay waiting for the touch of her heart and
hand and brain. She never suspected that she was to Rose and Grace and
Sally what a clumsy young swan would be in a flock of bustling and
competent ducks. Martie did not know, yet, where her kingdom lay, how
should she ever dream that she was to find it?

Rose was going back to stay with her cousin in Berkeley to-morrow, it
was understood, and so had to get home early this afternoon. Rose, as
innocent as a butterfly of ambition or of the student's zeal, had
finished her first year in the State University and was to begin her
second to-morrow.

Monroe's shabby Main Street seemed less interesting than ever when Rose
had tripped away. A gusty breeze was blowing fitfully, whisking bits of
straw and odds and ends of paper about. The watering cart went by,
leaving a cool wake of shining mud. Here and there a surrey, loaded
with stout women in figured percales, and dusty, freckled children,
started on its trip from Main Street back to some outlying ranch.

As the three girls, arms linked, loitered across the square, Dr. Ben
Scott--who was Rose Ransome's mother's cousin and was regarded as an
uncle--came out of the Court House and walked toward his buggy. The
dre