d on a long breath, and dried her eyes.

"How much money have you got, dearie?"

"About--I don't know. About four dollars, I think."

"Well, here--" He was all the husband again, stuffing gold pieces into
her purse. "You're going down to the four boat? I'll take you down. And
wire me when you get there, Martie, so I won't worry. And tell Sally I
wish her luck, I'll certainly be glad to hear the news." They were at
the doorway; he put his arm about her. "You DO love me, Mart?"

"Oh, Wallie----!" The tender moment, following upon her hour of lonely
agony, was almost too much. "We--we didn't think--this would be the end
of our happy time, did we?" she stammered. And as they kissed again,
both faces were wet with tears.

Sally met her; a Sally ample of figure and wonderful in complexion. All
the roses of spring were in Sally's smiling face; she laughed and
rejoiced at their meeting with a certain quality of ease and poise for
which Martie was puzzled to account, but which was new to quiet,
conventional Sally. Sally was in the serene mood that immediately
precedes motherhood; all the complex elements of her life were
temporarily lapped in a joyous peace. Of Martie's hidden agony she
suspected nothing.

She took Martie to the tiny house by the river; the plates and spoons
and pillow-slips looked strange to Martie, and for every one of them
Sally had an amused history. Martie felt, with a little twinge of pain,
that she would have liked a handsomer home for Sally, would have liked
a more imposing husband than the tired, dirty, boyish-looking Joe,
would have liked the first Monroe baby to come to a prettier layette
than these plain little slips and flannels; but Sally saw everything
rose-coloured. They had almost no money, she told Martie, with a happy
laugh. Already Sally, who had been brought up in entire ignorance of
the value of money, was watching the pennies. Never had there been
economy like this in Pa's house!

Sally kept house on a microscopic scale that amused and a little
impressed Martie. Every apple, every onion, was used to the last scrap.
Every cold muffin was reheated, or bit of cold toast was utilized. When
Carrie David brought the young householders a roasted chicken, it was
an event. The fowl was sliced and stewed and minced and made into soup
before it went into the family annals to shine forevermore as "the
delicious chicken Cousin Carrie brought us before the baby was born."
Sally's cakes were made