if more things were decided than the moment's victory. Then
suddenly, as if in the same breath, they smiled again, and Bryant gave
her a little nod.

"Get your things on," he called. "We're goin' to Poole's Woods. That's
all I want to know."

THE MASQUERADE

The summer boarders had gone, and Marshmead was settling down to a peace
enhanced by affluence. Though the exodus had come earlier than usual
this year, because the Hiltons were sailing for Germany and the Dennys
due at the Catskills, not one among their country entertainers had
complained. Marshmead approved, from a careless dignity, when people
brought money into the town, but it always relapsed into its own customs
with a contented sigh after the jolt of inexplicable requirements and
imported ways. This year had been an especially fruitful one. The
boarders had given a fancy dress party with amateur vaudeville combined,
for the benefit of the old church, and Martha Waterman now, as she
toiled up the hill to a meeting of the Circle, held the resultant check
in one of her plump freckled hands. Martha was chief mover in all
capable deeds, a warm, silent woman who called children "lamb," plied
them with pears, and knew the inner secrets of rich cookery. She was
portly, and her thin skin gave confirmation to her own frequent
complaint of feeling the heat; but though the day had been more sultry
than it was, she would not have foregone the pleasure of endowing the
Circle with its new accession toward the meeting-house fund.

The Circle had been founded in war time when women scraped lint and
sewed with a passionate zeal. Martha was a little girl then, wondering
what the excitement was really about, though, since it had lasted
through her own brief period, she took it that war was a permanent
condition, like bread or weather. Now she often mused over those old
days and thought how marvelous it was that she could ever have been
young enough to see no significance in that time of blood and pain. In
these middle years of hers the Circle was a different affair, but it
kept its loyal being. To-day it met in the basement of the church, and
there, when Martha went plodding in, nearly all the other members were
assembled. Sometimes they sewed for sufferers from varying disasters,
but to-day their hands were idle, and a buzz of talk saluted her. They
looked up as one woman when she entered.

"There she is," called two or three, and Lydia Vesey, the little
dressmake