r out.

As the years went by she quoted her mother more and more. The rather
silent Mrs. Monroe had evidently left a fund of advice behind her.
Nothing was too trivial to be affected by the memory of Ma's opinion.

"Nice thick cream Williams is giving us," Lydia might say at the
breakfast table. "Dear Ma used to say that good cream was half the
secret of good coffee!" "I remember Ma used to say that marigolds were
rather bold, coarse flowers," she confided to Martie, "and isn't it
true?"

Her appetite for the news of the village was still insatiable; it was
rarely uncharitable, but it never ended. Martie came to recognize
certain tones in Lydia's voice, when she and Alice Clark or Angela
Baxter or young Mrs. King were on the shady side porch. There was the
delicately tentative tone in which she trod upon uncertain ground: "How
do you mean she's never been the same since last fall, Lou? I don't
remember anything special happening to Minnie Scott last fall." There
was a frankly and flatly amazed tone, in which Lydia might say: "Well,
Clara told me yesterday about Potter Street, and if you'll tell me what
POSSESSED that boy, I'll be obliged to you!" And then there was the
tone of incredible announcement: "Alice, I don't know that I should
tell this, because I only heard it last night, but I haven't been able
to think of one other thing ever since, and I believe I'll tell you; it
won't go any further. Mrs. Hughie Wilson came in here last night, and
we got to talking about old Mrs. Mulkey's death--"

And so on, for perhaps a full hour. Martie, smiling over her darning,
would hear Alice's gratifying, "Well, for pity!" and "Did you EVER!" at
intervals. Sometimes she herself contributed something, a similar case
in New York, perhaps, but the others were not interested. They knew,
without ever having expressed it, that there is no intimacy like that
of a small village, no novelty or horror that comes so closely home to
the people of the Eastern metropolis as did these Monroe events to
their own lives.

Martie loved her sister, and they came to understand each other's ways
perfectly. Teddy was happy with Aunt Lyd when his mother was at the
Library, and Lydia liked her authority over the child and his
companionship. There was no peace in the old house, for all her silent
meekness, unless Lydia's curious sense of justice was satisfied, and
Martie took pains to satisfy it.

One memorable day, just before Christmas, Martie ope