as not like one's
dreams, but it was life, this curious success that had come to the
husband of a woman like Adele, the odd, inarticulate little clerk in a
furniture store. She wondered if it had come in time to save the
divorce, wondered where John was living, what change this extraordinary
event had made in his life.

Her own share in it came to seem unreal, as all the old life was
unreal. Gradually, what Monroe did and thought and felt began to seem
the real standard and the old life the false. Martie agreed with Lydia
that the little Eastman girl had a prettier voice than any she had ever
heard in New York; she agreed with Rose that the Woman's Club was
really more up-to-date than it was possible for a club to be in the big
Eastern city.

"I know New York," smiled Rose, "and of course, I love it. Rod and I
have been there twice, and we do have the best times! And I admit that
Tiffany's and the big shops and so on, well, of course, they're
wonderful! We stayed there almost three weeks the last time, and we
just WENT every moment of the time--"

Martie, leaning on the desk before her and smiling vaguely, was not
listening. The other woman's words had evoked a sudden memory of the
early snows and the lights in the Mall, of the crashing elevated trains
with chestnut-sellers' lights blowing beneath them, of summer dawns,
when the city woke to the creeping tide of heat, and of autumn
afternoons, when motor cars began to crowd the Avenue, and leaves
drifted--drifted--in the Park. To Rose she answered duly: "You must
have had great fun!" But to herself she said: "Ah, you don't know MY
New York!"

CHAPTER III

One wet January night Malcolm came home tired and cross to find his
younger daughter his only company for dinner. Lydia had been sent for
in haste, by Mrs. Harry Kilroy, whose mother was not expected to live,
said the panting messenger, thereby delicately intimating that she WAS
expected to die. Teddy was as usual at Aunt Sally's.

Martie coaxed the fire to a steady glow, and seated herself opposite
her father with a curiosity entirely unmixed with the old apprehension.
Pa was unmistakably upset about something.

Under her pleasant questioning it came out. Old Tate and Cliff Frost
had come into the office of the Monroe Estates that afternoon to make
him an offer for the home site. Martie could see that her father
regretted that Lydia and Lydia's horrified protests were missing.

"I looked them in the