s
Edward Tenney. Suddenly they found the plural pronoun: we must do that;
that doesn't interest us; Pa must not suspect our affair.

"The Cluetts are going to be in Pittsville," said Wallace one day. "I
want you to meet them. You'll like Mabel; she's got two little kids.
She and Jesse have been married only six years. And they'll like you,
too; I've told 'em you're my girl!"

"Am I?" said Martie huskily. They were alone in Sally's little house,
and for answer he put his arms about her. "Do you love me, Wallace?"
she asked.

The question, the raised blue eyes, fired him to sudden passion. They
kissed each other blindly, with shut eyes. After that, whenever they
might, they kissed, and sometimes Martie, ignorant and innocent,
wondered why the memory of his hot lips worried her a little.

There was nothing wrong in kissing! Martie still said to herself that
of course they would not marry; yet when she was with Wallace she loved
the evidences of her power over him, and seemed unable, as he was
unable, to keep from the constant question: "Do you love me?"

In late June the Cluetts--pretty faded Mabel, her two enormous babies,
her stepson Lloyd, and Jesse, the husband and father--all came to
Pittsville for a few days' leisure before rehearsals began. Lloyd was a
"light juvenile," off as well as on the stage. Jesse played father,
judge, guardian, prime minister, and old family doctor in turn. Mabel,
rouged and befrilled, still made an attractive foil for Wallace as the
hero. Martie liked them all; their chatter of the fairyland of the
stage, their trunks plastered with labels, their fine voices, their
general air of being incompetent children adrift in a puzzling world.
Deep laughter stirred within her when they spoke of business or of
finance.

They talked frankly, in their three cheap rooms at the "Pittsville
White House," before Wallace's girl. Jesse was pompous; Lloyd boyishly
fretful; Mabel, patient, sympathetic, discouraged, and sanguine by
turns. Martie was enraptured by the babies: Bernadette, a crimped heavy
little brunette of five, and Leroy delicious at three months in limp
little flannel wrappers.

"I'll tell you what, Miss Monroe--I'm going to call you Martha--" said
Mabel, "I'm just about sick of California. I'm not a Californian;
little old New York for mine. I first seen the light of day at the
corner of Sixth Avenue and Sixteenth Street, and I wish to the good
Lord I was there now. You'll never get a