“Miss Fanny is still there; she always speaks so affectionately of you, Martie,” said Lydia eagerly and tremulously.  Martie perceived that in some mysterious way Lydia was ill at ease.  Lydia did not quite know how to deal with a younger sister who was yet a widow, and had lived in New York.

“There was an awful lot of talk about getting her out of the Library,” contributed Sally; “they said the Streets were at the back of it; they wanted to put a man in!  There was the greatest excitement; we all went down to the Town Hall and listened to the speeches—­it was terrific!  I guess the Streets and their crowd felt pretty small, because they got—­what was it, Len?”

“Seventeen votes out of one hundred and eleven!” Len said, not moving his eyes from the road before him.

“My house is right down there, next door to Uncle Ben’s,” said Sally, craning her neck suddenly.  “You can’t see it, but no matter; there’s lots of time!  Here’s the Hawkes’s place; remember that?”

“I remember everything,” Martie said, smiling.  “We’re nearly home!”

The old Monroe house looked shabby, even in the spring green.  Martie had seen the deeper, fresher green of the East for six successive springs.  The eucalyptus trees wore their tassels, the willows’ fresh foliage had sprung over the old rusty leaves.  A raw gateway had been cut, out by the old barn, into Clipper Lane, and a driveway filled in.  Tired, confused, train-sick, Martie got down into the old yard, and the old atmosphere enveloped her like a garment.  The fuchsia bushes, the marguerites so green on top, so brown and dry under their crown of fresh life, the heliotrope sprawling against the peeling boards under the dining-room windows, and tacked in place with strips of kid glove—­how well she knew them!

They went in the side door, and through the dark dining room, odorous of vegetable soup and bread and butter.  An unearthly quiet held the house.  Pa’s door was closed; Martie imagined the room darker and more grim than ever.

Lydia had given her her old room; the room in which she and Sally had grown to womanhood.  It was as clean and bare as a hotel room.  Lydia and Sally had discussed the advisability of a bowl of flowers, but had decided flowers might remind poor Mart of funerals.  Martie remembered the counterpane on the bed and the limp madras curtains at the windows.  She put her gloves in a bureau drawer lined with folded newspaper, and hung her wraps in the square closet that was, for some unimaginable reason, a step higher than the room.

Lydia sat on the bed, and Sally on a chair, while Martie slowly moved about her new domain.  The children had gone into the yard, ’Lizabeth and Billy charged not to let their little cousin get his clothes dirty; when the trunks came, with his overalls, he could get as dirty as he pleased.

The soiled, tumbled contents of the hand bag, after the five days’ trip, filled Martie with a sort of weary concern.  She stood, puzzling vaguely over the damp washcloth that was wrapped about a cake of soap, the magazines of which she had grown so tired, the rumpled night-wear.