During the rest of the meal no other subject was discussed.

The evening was bright with memories and dreams for Martie.  When a large dish of stewed apples in tapioca had been eaten, the whole family rose and left the room, and Belle, the little maid, came in wearily, alone, to attack the disordered table.  For two hours the sound of running water and the dragging of Belle’s heavy feet would be heard in the kitchen.  Meanwhile, Belle’s mother, in a small house down in the village, would keep looking at the clock and wondering whatever had become of Belle, and Belle’s young man would loiter disconsolately at the bridge, waiting.

The three Monroe girls and their mother went into the parlour, Malcolm going across the hall to a dreary library, where he had an old-fashioned cabinet desk, and Lenny gaining a reluctant consent to his request to go down to “Dutch’s” house, where he and Dutch would play lotto.

“Why doesn’t Dutch Harrison ever come here to play lotto?” Martie asked maliciously.  “You go to Dutch’s because it’s right down near Bonestell’s and Mallon’s and the Pool Parlour!” Leonard shot her a threatening glance, accepted a half-permission, snatched his cap and was gone.

The parlour was large, cold, and uncomfortable, its woodwork brown, its walls papered in dark green.  Lydia lighted the fire, and as Leonard had made his escape, Belle brought up a supplementary hodful of coal.  Martie lighted two of the four gas jets, and settled down to solitaire.  Sally read “Idylls of the King.”  Lydia and her mother began to sew, the older woman busy with mending a hopelessly worn table-cloth, the younger one embroidering heavy linen with hundreds of knots.  Lydia had been making a parasol top for more than a year.  They gossiped in low, absorbed tones of the affairs of friends and neighbours; the endless trivial circumstances so interesting to the women of a small town.

There were two gas jets, also on hinged arms, beside the white marble fireplace, and one of these Sally lighted, taking her father’s comfortable chair.  A hood of thin plum-coloured flannel, embroidered in coloured flowers, was on the mantel, with shells, two pink glass vases, and a black marble clock.  On the old square piano, where yellowing sheets of music were heaped, there was a cover of the same flannel.  Albums and gift books, Schiller’s “Bell” with Flaxman plates, and Dante’s “Inferno” with Dore’s illustrations—­lay on the centre table; Martie pushed them back for her game.

She looked a mere overgrown, untidy girl, to whose hair, belt, finger-nails, and shoes she might have attended with advantage.  But Martie was a bride to-night, walking the realm of Romance.

She had never had an admirer, nor had Sally.  Neither girl admitted it, but it was true.  Poor Lydia had had a taste of the joy of life, and a full measure of the sorrow, seven years ago, when Clifford Frost, twelve years her senior, at thirty-one the perfect match, had singled her out for his favour.  Martie and Sally could remember how pleasantly exciting it was to have Cliff Frost so much at the house, how Lydia laughed and bloomed!  Lydia had been just Sally then:  her age, and her double.