The very word fired the girl. She heard the whine of violins, the click
of fans, the light shuffle of satin-clad feet. Her eyes saw dazzling
lights, shifting colours, in the dull September twilight.

"You could have one at your house," Rodney suggested.

"Of course we could! Our rooms are immense," Martie agreed eagerly.

"To begin--say the last Friday in October!" the boy said. "You look up
the date, and we'll get together on the lists!"

Get together on the lists! Martie's heart closed over the phrase with a
sort of spasm of pleasure. She and Rodney conferring--arranging! The
bliss--the dignity of it! She would have considered anything, promised
anything.

Grace was gone now, and generous little Sally still ahead of them in
the shadows. Martie said a quick, laughing good-night, and ran to join
her sister just before Sally opened the side gate. It was now quite
dark.

The two girls crossed the sunken garden where clumps of flowers bloomed
dimly under the dark old trees, gave one apprehensive glance at the big
house, which showed here and there a dully lighted window, and fled
noiselessly in at the side door. They ran through a wide, bare, unaired
hallway, and up a long flight of unlighted stairs that were protected
over their dark carpeting by a worn brown oilcloth.

Sally, and Martie breathless, entered an enormous bedroom, shabbily and
scantily furnished. The outline of a large walnut bedstead was visible
in the gloom, and the dark curtains that screened two bay windows.
Across the room by a wide, dark bureau, a single gas jet on a jointed
brass arm had been drawn out close to the mirror, and by its light a
slender woman of twenty-seven or eight was straightening her hair. Not
combing or brushing it, for the Monroe girls always combed their hair
and coiled it when they got up in the morning, and took it down when
they went to bed at night. Between times they only "straightened" it.

As the younger girls came in, and flung their hats on the bed, their
sister turned on them reproachfully.

"Martie, mama's furious!" she said. "And I do think it's perfectly
terrible, you and Sally running round town at all hours like this. It's
after six o'clock!"

"I can't help it if it is!" Martie said cheerfully. "Pa home?"

She asked the all-important question with more trepidation than she
showed. Both she and Sally hung anxiously on the reply.

"No; Pa was to come on the four-eleven, and either he missed it, or
else