“You haven’t asked me about my clothes, Mrs. Marshall,” she said.  “Don’t you think I did pretty well with this skirt?”

Elviry glanced at the blue serge skirt.  “It’ll do,” she answered listlessly.

Lydia looked at Dave desperately.  At that moment there was a light step in the dining-room, and Margery came into the kitchen.  When she saw Lydia she gasped.

“Hadn’t you heard?  Oh, Lydia!  You came anyhow!” and suddenly Margery threw herself down and sobbed with her face in Lydia’s lap.

Elviry threw her apron over her head and Dave, with a groan, dropped his head on his chest.  For a moment, there was only the crackling of the fire in the stove and Margery’s sobs to be heard.

Then Dave said, “What did you come for, Lydia?  You only hurt yourself and you can’t help us.  I don’t know what to do!  God!  I don’t know what to do!”

“I don’t see why everybody acts so,” cried Elviry, “as if what you’d done was any worse than every one else’s doings.”

Margery raised her head.  “Of course it’s worse!  A thousand times worse!  I could have stood Dad’s even having an Indian wife, better than this.”

Dave looked at Margery helplessly and his chin quivered.  Lydia noticed then how old he was looking.

“I want Margery and her mother to pack up and go away—­for good,” said Dave to Lydia.  “I’ll close up here and follow when I can.  None of these cases will ever come to anything in our state court.  It’s the disgrace—­and the way the women folks take it.”

“I—­I’ve been thinking,” said Lydia, timidly, “that what you ought to do—­”

Margery was sitting back on the floor now and she interrupted bitterly.  “I don’t see why you should try to help us, Lyd.  Mother’s always treated you dirt mean.”

“It’s not because of your mother,” said Lydia, honestly.  “I couldn’t even try to forgive her—­but—­your father did a great favor to me and once I promised him then to be his friend.  And you, Margery, you were fond of—­of little Patience, and she did love you so!  If she’d lived, I know she’d have wanted me to stand by you.”

“She was a dear little kiddie,” said Margery.  “I always meant to tell you how I cried when she died, and then somehow, you were so silent, I couldn’t.”

The old lines round Lydia’s mouth deepened for a minute, then she swallowed and said,

“I don’t think it would do a bit of good for you all to go away.  The story would follow you.  Mr. Marshall ought to sell out everything and buy a farm.  Let Mrs. Marshall go off for a visit, if she wants to, and let Margery come and stay with me a while and go to college.”

Dave raised his head.  “That’s what I’d rather do, Lydia, for myself.  Just stay here and try to live it down.  I’d like to farm it.  Always intended to.”

Margery wrung her hands.  “Oh, I don’t see how I can!  If it had been anything, anything but the Last Chance.  Everybody will cut me and talk about me.”