red delight.
Dreamily manipulating the cards, she remembered that twilight meeting.
"Are you still a little devil, Martie ... I'm going to find out." Again
they were walking slowly toward the bridge. "How many people have told
you you've grown awfully pretty, Martie? ... You and I'll get together
on the lists. ..."

The girl stopped, with arrested fingers and absent eyes. The rapture of
remembering thrilled her young body like a breath of flame blown
against her. She breathed with deep, slow respirations, holding her
breath with a risen breast, and letting it go with a long sigh. Now and
then she looked with an ashamed and furtive glance from her mother's
gray head and Lydia's busy fingers to Sally's absorbed face under the
opaque white globe of the gaslight, almost as if she feared that the
enchantment that held heart and brain would be visible to watching eyes.

"Mind you," Lydia was saying in a low tone, "Flora said that Lou acted
very queer, from the very moment she went in--Lou asked her if she
wanted to look at poor Mr. Lowney, and Flora went in, and he was all
laid out, with flowers and all, in that upstairs room where Al died.
Grandma Lowney was there, and--oh, quite a few others, coming and
going, Mrs. Mallon and the Baxter girls. Flora only stayed a minute,
and when she and Lou went out, she says, 'Lou, has Annie Poett been
here since he was taken sick?' and Lou began to cry and said that her
mother answered the telephone when Annie called up last week, and it
seems Annie asked was Joe Lowney sick and Mrs. King said 'No.'"

"For heaven's sake!" Mrs. Monroe said, incredulous and absorbed.

"Well, that's what Flora said. But mind you, Ma, on Tuesday night
little Hildegarde King went to the door, and she says that Annie Poett
came in and went upstairs--Lou was dishing supper, you know the Allens
and Mrs. Gorman were there for the funeral, and they were all at
table--and, by the way, Flora says that Lou says that Lizzie Alien was
there in that house for three days--that is, it was nearly three days,
for they stayed for supper Wednesday night--and that Lizzie never
raised her hand to ONE THING, just did nothing but sit around and cry,
and say what a good brother Joe was!"

"Did you ever!" commented Mrs. Monroe.

"Anyway, nobody got up from the table, and all they had for it was
Hildegarde's word, and she wasn't sure it was Annie. Grandma Lowney was
asleep--they'd gotten her to lie down; she took more care of