ryden, my friend there." Martie said, in answer to her
mild look of questioning. "Don't you remember that I told you he had
written a play that no manager would produce?"

"You didn't tell ME, dear," Lydia amended, darning industriously.

"Oh, yes, I did, Lyddy! I remember telling you!"

"No, dear, perhaps you thought you did," Lydia persisted.

"Oh, well! Anyway, I wrote and suggested that he try to get it
published instead, and my dear--it's to be published next month. Isn't
that glorious?"

"That is all worn under the arms," Lydia murmured over an old waist
that had been for months in her sewing basket, "I believe I will cut
off the buttons and give it to the poor!"

"The old idiot!" Martie mused over her letter.

"Does his wife encourage this writing, Martie?"

"Adele? She isn't with him now at all. She's left him, in fact. I
believe she wants a divorce."

"Oh?" Lydia commented, in a peculiar tone.

"He wrote me that some weeks ago," Martie explained, suddenly flushing.
"She was a queer, unhappy sort of woman. She and this doctor of hers
had some sort of affair, and the outcome was that she simply went to
friends, and wrote John a hysterical girly-girly sort of letter--"

"John?"

"Mr. Dryden, that is."

"He must be crushed and heartbroken," Lydia said emphatically.

"Well, no, he isn't," Martie said innocently. "He isn't like other
people. If she wants a divorce--John won't mind awfully. He's
really--really unusual."

"He must be," Lydia said witheringly, and trembling a little with
excitement, "to let his own wife leave him while he writes letters
asking the advice of a--a--another woman who is recently--recently
widowed!"

Martie glanced at her, smiled a little, shrugged her shoulders, and
calmly re-read her letter.

Lydia resumed her work, a flush on her cheeks.

"He can't have much respect for you, Martie," she said quietly, after a
busy silence.

Martie looked up, startled.

"John can't? Oh, but Lyddy, you don't know him! He's such an innocent
goose; he absolutely depends upon me! Why, fancy, he's the man who
wanted me to open the boarding-house so that he and his wife could live
there--he's as simple as that!"

"As simple as what?" Lydia asked with her deadly directness.

"Well--I mean--that if there were anything--wrong in his feeling for
me--" Martie floundered.

"Oh, Martie, Martie, Martie, I tremble for you!" Lydia said sadly. "A
married man, and you a married woman! My dear