adiant self-confidence and
self-expression. Martie saw herself buying gowns for the wedding,
whisking in and out of Monroe's shops, stopped by affectionate and
congratulatory friends. She was dining at Mrs. Barker's, dignified, and
yet gracious and responsive, too. Dear old Judge Parker was being
courteous to her; Mrs. Parker advising Rodney's young wife. There were
grandchildren running over the old place. Martie remembered the big
rooms from long-ago red-letter days of her childhood. How she would
love her home, and what a figure of dignity and goodness Mrs. Rodney
Parker would be in the life of the town.

Oh, dear God--it was not so much to ask! People were getting married
all the time; Rodney Parker must marry some one. Lydia was unwed, Sally
had no lover; but out of so rich and full a world could not so much be
spared to Martie? Oh, how good she would be, how generous to Pa and the
girls, how kind to Ida and May!

Martie bowed her head on her knees. If this one thing might come her
way, if it might be her fate to have Rodney Parker love her, to have
the engagement and the wedding follow in their happy order, she would
never ask more of God; gaining so much she would truly be good, she
would live for others then!

When she raised her face it was wet with tears.

CHAPTER II

The next morning, when the younger girls came down to breakfast, they
found only the three women in the kitchen. An odour of coffee hung in
the air. Belle was scraping burned toast at the sink, the flying, sooty
particles clinging to wet surfaces everywhere. Lydia sat packing cold
hominy in empty baking-powder tins; to be sliced and fried for the noon
meal. Mrs. Monroe, preferring an informal kitchen breakfast to her own
society in the dining room, was standing by the kitchen table,
alternating swallows from a saucerless cup of hot coffee with
indifferent mouthfuls of buttered cold bread. She rarely went to the
trouble of toasting her own bread, spending twice the energy required
to do so in protests against the trouble.

Lydia had breakfasted an hour ago. Sally and Martie sliced bread,
pushed forward the coffee pot, and entered a spirited claim for cream.
It was Saturday morning, when Leonard slept late. Pa was always late.
Lydia was anxious to save a generous amount of cream for the sleepers.

"Len often takes a second cup of coffee when he's got lots of time,"
Lydia said.

"Well, I don't care!" Martie said, suddenly serious.