“If this elaborate and formal meal is dinner, Sally dear, what is supper?”

“Oh, Martie, it’s so delicious to hear you again!  Why, supper will be apple sauce and bread and butter and milk, and gingerbread and cookies.  It’s the same the year round!  I like it, really; after we go up to Pa’s to supper the children don’t sleep well, and neither do I.”

“You haven’t told me yet where Joe is.”

“Oh, I know, and I will!  We get talking, and somehow there’s so much to say.  Why, Joe’s finishing his course at Cooper’s College in San Francisco; he’ll graduate this May.  Dr. J. F. Hawkes; isn’t that fun!”

“A regular doctor!” Martie exclaimed.  “But—­but is he going to be one?”

“Be one!  I should think he is!” Sally announced proudly.  “Uncle Ben says he’s a born doctor—­”

“And how long has it been uncle Ben?”

“Oh, ’Lizabeth adopted him.  He adores the children.”

“He loaned Joe the money,” Lydia said with her old air of delicately emphasizing an unsavoury truth.

Sally gave her younger sister a rather odd look at this, but she did not deny the statement.

“And who keeps the quartette going?” asked Martie, glancing about.

“Joe’s people; and Pa does send barrels of apples and things, doesn’t he, Sally?” Lydia supplied.

“Oh, yes; we only pay twelve dollars rent, and we live very cheaply!” Sally said cheerfully, with another mysterious look.

A day or two later, when they were alone, she told Martie the whole truth.

“It’s Uncle Ben, of course, Mart; you remember his old offer, if ever I had any children?  He pays me twelve hundred a year for my four.  Nobody knows it, not even Lyd.  People would only talk, you know, and it’s none of their affair.  It’s his fad, you know.  We married young, and Joe had no profession.  Uncle Ben thinks the State ought to pay women for bearing children.  He says it’s their business in life.  Women are taking jobs, foregoing marriage, and the nation is being robbed of citizens.  He believes that the hardest kind of work is the raising of children, and the women who do it for the State ought to be paid by the State.  He does it for me, and I feel as if he was a relation.  It’s meant everything to Joe and me, and the children, too.  Sometimes, when I stop to think of it, it is a little queer, but—­when you think of the way people do spend money, for orchids or old books or rugs—­it’s natural after all!  He simply invests in citizens, that’s what he says.  I would have had them anyway, but I suppose, indeed I know, Mart, that there are lots of women who wouldn’t!”

“And is he financing Joe, too?”

“Oh, no, indeed!  Uncle Ben never speaks of money to me; I don’t ever get one cent except my regular allowance.  Why, when Joe was ill, and one of the babies—­Billy, it was—­was coming, he came in to see me now and then, but he never said boo about helping!  Joe is working his way; he’s chauffeur for Dr. Houston; that’s something else nobody knows.”