hat old, idle Martie, wandering
under the trees of Main Street and planning so hopefully for the future.

On the day before she left, exhilarated with the confusion, the new hat
she had just bought, the packed trunks, she went to see her mother. It
was a strange hour that she spent in the old sitting room, in the cool,
stale, home odours, with the home pictures, the jointed gas brackets
under which she had played solitaire and the square piano where she had
sung "The Two Grenadiers." Outside, in the sunken garden, summer
burgeoned fragrantly; the drawn window shades bellied softly to and
fro, letting in wheeling spokes of light, shutting down the twilight
again. Lydia and her mother, like gentle ghosts, listened to her,
reproving and unsympathetic.

"Pa is angry with you, Martie, arid who can blame him?" said Lydia.
"I'm sure I never heard of such actions, coming from a girl who had
loving parents and a good home!"

This was the mother's note. Lydia was always an echo.

"It isn't as if you hadn't had everything, Mart. You girls had
everything you needed--that party at Thanksgiving and all! And you've
no idea of the TALK in town! Pa feels it terribly. To think that other
girls, even like Rose, who had no father, should have so much more
sense than OUR girls."

Martie talked of Sally's baby. "Named for you, Ma," she told her
mother. And with sudden earnestness she added: "WHY don't you go see it
some day? It's the dearest baby I ever saw!"

Mrs. Monroe, who had a folded handkerchief in her bony, discoloured
fingers, now pressed it to her eyes, shaking her head as she did so.
Lydia gave Martie a resentful look, and her mother a sympathetic one,
before she said primly:

"If Sally Monroe wanted Ma and me to go see her and her baby, why
didn't she marry some man Pa could have been proud of, and have a
church wedding and act in a way becoming to her family?"

To this Martie had nothing to say. She left messages of love for Len
and for her father. Her mother and sister came with her for good-byes
to the old porch with its peeling dark paint and woody rose-vines.

"Pa said at noon that you had 'phoned you wanted to come say good-bye,"
said her mother mildly. "I hope you'll always be happy, Martie, and
remember that we did our best for you. If you're a good girl, and write
some day and ask Pa's forgiveness, I think he may come 'round, because
he was always a most affectionate father to his children."

The toneless, li