One wet January night Malcolm came home tired and cross to find his younger daughter his only company for dinner.  Lydia had been sent for in haste, by Mrs. Harry Kilroy, whose mother was not expected to live, said the panting messenger, thereby delicately intimating that she was expected to die.  Teddy was as usual at Aunt Sally’s.

Martie coaxed the fire to a steady glow, and seated herself opposite her father with a curiosity entirely unmixed with the old apprehension.  Pa was unmistakably upset about something.

Under her pleasant questioning it came out.  Old Tate and Cliff Frost had come into the office of the Monroe Estates that afternoon to make him an offer for the home site.  Martie could see that her father regretted that Lydia and Lydia’s horrified protests were missing.

“I looked them in the eye,” said Malcolm, wiping his moustache before he gave her an imitation of his own scorn, “and I said, ’Gentlemen, before the home that was my father’s, and will be my son’s, passes from my hands, those hands will be dust!’”

“But why do they want it?” asked Martie after duly applauding this sentiment.

She was rapidly thinking.  The old house was mortgaged, and doubly mortgaged.  It was useless to the average buyer, for besides the fact that the neighbourhood was no longer Monroe’s best, it was four feet below street level.  It was surrounded by useless shabby barns and outhouses, it was five times too large for the diminished family, and, in case of Pa’s death—­and Pa was nearly seventy—­it must fetch what it might, for between Len’s constant need of money for the Estates, and Lydia’s mild helplessness, there could be no holding it for a fair price.

“For the new High School—­for the new High School!” her father said impatiently.  For perhaps twenty years he had had occasional offers for the property, and had always scornfully refused them.

“Yet I think that’s rather touching, Pa,” Martie said.

“What’s touching?” he asked suspiciously, after a moment in which he obviously tried to see any touching aspect in the affair.

“Why, to have the Monroe High School on the old Monroe site!” Martie said innocently.  “Of course Mr. Tate and Cliff Frost know what it means to you, and yet I suppose they realize that the neighbourhood is changing, and that those shops have come in, this side of the bridge, and that, even if we lived here ten years more, we couldn’t twenty.  I agree with your decision, Pa, of course; but at the same time, I see that no other plot in Monroe would be so fitting!”

Malcolm stirred his tea, raised the cup, and drank off the hot fluid with great gusto.  A faint frown darkened his brow.

“And, pray, where would the family live?” he asked presently.

“Where we ought to be now,” Martie answered promptly.  “In the Estates.  I have been thinking lately, Pa, that nothing would give that development such prestige as to have you there!  Put up as pretty a house as you choose, build a drive, and put in a handsome fence, but be Malcolm Monroe of the Monroe Estates!”