oments of airy
rebellion, said sharply: "If that man hasn't any sense, you ought to
have!"

"We used to be intimate friends a few years ago," Martie offered
mildly. "We had a lot to say."

"A lot that couldn't be said before Pa and me, I suppose?" Lydia asked
bitingly. Martie was silent. "What do you propose to tell Cliff of this
delightful friendship?" Lydia pursued. "And how long a visit do your
friends propose to make?"

"Only until to-morrow. Mrs. Silver wants me to visit them, you know, at
Glen Mary."

"Do you intend to go?" Lydia asked stonily.

"Well, I suppose not. But it would be a wonderful experience, of
course. But I suppose not." Martie sighed heavily. "I really hadn't
thought it out," she pleaded.

"I should think you hadn't! I never heard anything like it," Lydia
said. "I should think the time had come when you really might think it
out--I don't know what things are coming to--"

"Oh, Lyddy dear, don't be so tiresome!" Martie said rudely. Lydia at
once left the room, with a short goodnight, but the interrupted mood of
memories and dreams did not return. Martie sat still a long time,
wrapped in the blanket she caught from the bed, staring vaguely into
space.

"I've got to think it all out," she told herself, "I mustn't
make--another mistake."

And yet when she crept in beside Teddy, and flung her arm about him,
she would not let the half-formed phrase stand. The step that had
brought her splendid boy to her arms was not a mistake.

She slept lightly, and was up at five o'clock. Teddy, just shifting
from the stage when nothing could persuade him to sleep in the morning
to the stage when nothing could persuade him to wake, merely rolled
over when she left him. Martie, bathed, brushed, dressed in white, went
into the garden. They had arranged no meeting, but John came toward her
under the pepper trees as she closed the door.

Again they walked, this time in morning freshness. Martie showed him
the school gate, with "Girls" lettered over it, where she had entered
for so many years. They walked past the church, and up toward the
hills. She said she must get home in time to help Pauline with
breakfast for the augmented family, and John went with her into the old
kitchen, and cut peaches and mixed muffins with the enthusiasm of an
expert, talking all the time.

"But tell me about Adele, John!" she said suddenly, when Lydia and her
father had left the breakfast table, and they two were alone again