ttled on
recklessly, anxious only to avoid silence; hardly conscious of what she
said. The effect of the cool, fresh air was lost upon Martie to-day;
she was fired to fever-pitch by Rodney's nearness.

He had not ever said anything exactly loverlike, she said to herself,
with a sort of breathless discontent, when she was setting the table
for a cold supper that night. But he had brought his friend to them
after all! She must not be exacting. She had so much--

"I beg your pardon, Cousin Allie?" she stammered. Her obnoxious
relative, a stout, moustached woman of fifty, warming her skirts at the
fire, was smiling at her unkindly.

"You always was a great one to moon, Martha!" said Mrs. Potts, "I's
asking you what you see in that young feller to make such a to-do
about?"

"Then you don't like him?" Martie countered, laughing. Mrs. Potts
bridled. Her favourite attitude toward life was a bland but suspicious
superiority; she liked to be taken seriously.

"I didn't say I didn't like him," she answered, accurately, a little
nettled. "No, my dear, I didn't say that. No. I wouldn't say that of
any young man!" she added thoughtfully.

Smiling a dark smile, she looked into the fire. Martie, rather
uncomfortable, went on with her task.

"He's seemed to admire our Mart in a brotherly sort of way since the
very beginning," Lydia explained, anxious as usual to say the kind
thing, and succeeding as usual in saying the one thing that could hurt
and annoy. "He's quite a boy for the girls, but we think our Martie is
too sensible to take him seriously, yet awhile!" And Lydia gave her
sister a smile full of sweet significance.

"HOPE she is!" Mrs. Potts said heavily. "For if that young feller means
business I miss MY guess!"

"Oh, for pity's sake--can't a man ask a girl to go walking without all
this fuss!" Martie burst out angrily. "I NEVER heard so
much--crazy--silly--talk--about--nothing!"

The last words were only an ashamed mumble as she disappeared
kitchenward.

"H'm!" said Mrs. Potts, eying Lydia over her glasses. "Kinder touchy
about him just the same. Well! what's he to that young feller used to
come see you, Lydia? Ain't the Frosts and the Parkers kin?"

"I really think she's the most detestable old woman that ever was!"
Martie said, when the three girls were going to bed that night. Lydia,
loitering in her sister's room for a few minutes, made no denial.

"Well, by this time to-morrow night the party will be near