“Is Rodney making love to you, Martie?” Rose called gaily, “he does that to every one—­he’s perfectly terrible!”

“How many children has Sally now?” Florence Frost, sickly, emaciated, asked with a sort of cluck.

“Four,” Martie answered, smiling.

“Gracious!” Florence said, drawing her shawl about her.

“Poor Sally!” Rose said, with the merry laugh that accompanied everything she said.

Cliff did not talk to Martie at all, nor to any of the other women.  He and the other men talked politics after dinner, in real country fashion.  The women played a few rubbers of bridge, and Rose had not forgotten a prize, in tissue-paper and pink ribbon.  The room grew hot, and the men’s cigars scented the close air thickly.

Rose said that she supposed she should be able to offer Martie a cigarette.

“It would be my first,” Martie said, smiling, and Rose, giving her shoulders a quick little impulsive squeeze, said brightly:  “Good for you!  New York hasn’t spoiled you!”.

When at eleven o’clock Martie went upstairs for her wraps, Rose came, too, and they had a word in private, in the pretty bedroom.

“Martie—­did Cliff say that you and he were going on a—­on a sort of picnic on Sunday?”

“Why, yes,” Martie admitted, surprised, “Sally is going down to the city to see Joe, and I’ll have the children.  I happened to mention it to Cliff, and he suggested that he take us all up to Deegan’s Point, and that we take a lunch.”

Innocently commenced, the sentence ended with sudden self-consciousness.  Martie, putting a scarf over her bronze hair saw her own scarlet cheeks in the mirror.

“Yes, I know!” Rose cocked her head on one side, like a pretty bird.  “Well, now, I have a plan!” she said gaily, “I suggest that Cliff take his car, and we take ours, and the Ellises theirs, and we all go—­children and all!  Just a real old-fashioned family picnic.”

“I think that would be fun,” Martie said, with a slow smile.

“I think it would be fun, too,” Rose agreed, “and I’ve been sort of half-planning something of the sort, anyway!  And—­perhaps, just now,” she added sweetly, “it would be a little wiser that way.  You see, I understand you, Martie, and I know we seem awfully small and petty here, but—­since we are in Monroe, why, isn’t it better not to give any one a chance to talk?  Well, about the picnic!  Ida and May always bring cake; I’ll take the fried chicken; and Mrs. Ellis makes a delicious salad—­”

Martie’s heart was beating high, and two little white lines marked the firm closing of her lips.  Rose’s brightly flung suggestion as to the impropriety of her going off for the day with Clifford, Teddy, and Ruth, was seething like a poison within her.  But presently she was mechanically promising sandwiches, and Rose was so far encouraged that she could give Martie’s arm a little squeeze in farewell.