g escapades were not all his own. His exaggerated expressions
of affection for herself were only a part of this ebullient sense of
romance. But he was amusing.

"Bon soir, papillon!" he said at her gate. "How about a meet to-morrow?
Tie a pink scarf to thy casement if thy jailer sleeps. Seriously, leave
us meet, kid. Leave us go inter Bonestell's with the crowd--watto? I'll
wait for youse outside the Library at three."

"With the accent on the WAIT," said Martie significantly. But she did
not think of Rodney that evening. She thought of Sally and of Wallace
Bannister.

Fortunately for her, it did not occur to her father to cross-examine
her on any other event of the day except the circumstance that she had
been seen walking with an unknown young man. This was food for much
advice.

"I don't like it, my daughter," said Malcolm, rubbing his shins
together and polishing his glasses as he sat by the fire. "I don't like
it at all. I don't like this tendency to permit familiarities with this
young man and that young man--all very well for a while, but not the
sort of thing a young man chooses in a WIFE."

Martie, looking at him respectfully, as she placed a red Queen on a
black King, felt in her heart that she would like to kill him.

The next afternoon she decided to clean the chicken house, one of the
tasks in which her strange nature delighted. To splash about with hose
and broom, tip over the littered drinking trough, wash cobwebs from the
windows with a well-directed stream of water; in these things Martie
found some inexplicable satisfaction. She went upstairs after luncheon
to get into old clothes, came down half an hour later with her best hat
on, walked straight out of the gate and down town.

Wallace was waiting, elated at her punctuality. Martie explaining her
fear that some one might report their meeting to her father, they
waited openly at Masset's corner, boarded the half-past three o'clock
trolley, and went to Pittsville.

Pittsville was two miles away, but this adventure had all the charm of
foreign travel to Martie. Every house interested her, the main street
of the little town might have been Broadway in New York. The people
looked different, she said. She and Wallace laughed their way through
the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store, enjoyed a Floradora Special composed of
bananas, ice cream, nuts, whipped cream, maple syrup, and cherries, and
finally bought six cream puffs and carried them to Sally.

Sally's