“Say—­I’m awful sorry to be so late.  Gosh!  I ran all the way home.  I thought you’d be on the late train, Pa, and I waited to walk up with you!” said Lenny, falling upon cooling mutton, boiled potatoes glazed and sticky, and canned corn.

“Where did you wait?” his father asked, laying one of his endless traps for an untruth.

“Bonestell’s,” Lenny answered, perceiving and evading it.

“Young Hawkes drove me up,” Malcolm said in a mollified tone.

“Oh?” Lenny’s mouth opened innocently.  “That’s the way I missed you!”

The inevitable ill-temper on their father’s part being partly dissipated by this time, the girls were free to begin a conversation.  Martie’s happiness was flooding her spirit like a golden tide; she was conscious, under all the sordid actualities of a home dinner, that something sweet—­sweet—­sweet—­had happened to her.  She bubbled news.

Grace Hawkes actually was going to work Monday—­Rose was going back to visit Alma—­they had met Doc’ Ben, hadn’t they, Sally?  Oh, and Rodney Parker was home!

“Lucky stiff!” Lenny commented in reference to Rodney.

“He’s awfully nice!” Martie said eagerly.  “He walked up with us!”

“With us—­with you!” Sally corrected archly.

“What time was that?” their father asked suddenly.

“About—­oh, half-past four or five.  Sally and I went down for the mail.”

“Rodney Parker ...”  Leonard began.  “Say, mama, this is all cold,” he interrupted himself to say coaxingly.

“I’ll warm it for you, Babe,” Lydia said, rising as her mother began to rise, and reaching for the boy’s plate.

“Don’t call me babe!” he protested.

His older sister gave his rough head a good-natured pat as she passed him.

“You’re all the baby we have, Lenny—­and he was an awfully sweet baby, wasn’t he, ma?” she said.

“Rodney Parker’s going to be in the Bank; I bet he doesn’t stay,” Leonard resumed.  “Could you get me into the Bank, Pa?”

“Dear me—­I remember that boy as such a handsome baby, before you were born, Martie,” her mother said.  “And to think he’s been through college!”

“I wish I could go to college, you bet!” observed Lenny.  His father shot him a glance.

“Your grandfather was a college graduate, my son, and as you know only an accident cut short my own stay at my alma mater—­hem!” he said pompously.  “I have no money to throw away; yet, when you have decided upon a profession, you need only come to your father with a frank, manly statement of your plans, and what can be done will be done; you know that.”  He wiped his moustache carefully, and glanced about, meeting the admiring gaze of wife and daughters.

“If you’ve got any sense, you’ll go, Len,” Martie said.  “I wish you’d let me go study to be a trained nurse, Pa!  Miss Fanny wants me to go into the lib’ary.  I bet I could do it, and I’d like it, too ...”