The day was as other days, except to Martie.  When the chickens were fed, she and Sally idled for perhaps half an hour in the yard, and then went into the kitchen.  Belle, sooty and untidy, had paused at the kitchen table, with her dustpan resting three feet away from the cold mutton that lay there.  Mrs. Monroe’s hair was in some disorder, and a streak of black from the stove lay across one of her lean, greasy wrists.  The big stove was cooling now, ashes drifted from the firebox door, and an enormous saucepan of slowly cooking beans gave forth a fresh, unpleasant odour.  At all the windows the fog pressed softly.

“Are you going down town, Sally?” the mother asked.

“Well—­I thought we would.  We can if you want!” said Sally.

“If you do, I wish you’d step into Mason & White’s, and ask one of the men there if they aren’t ever going to send me the rest of my box of potatoes.”

“All right!” Martie and Sally put their hats on in the downstair hall, shouted upstairs to Lydia for the shoes, and sauntered out contentedly into the soft, foggy morning.  The Monroe girls never heard the garden gate slam behind them without a pleasant yet undefined sense of freedom.  The sun was slowly but steadily gaining on the fog, a bright yellow blur showed the exact spot where shining light must soon break through.  Trees along the way dripped softly, but on the other side of the bridge, where houses were set more closely together, and gardens less dense, sidewalks and porches were already drying.

The girls walked past the new, trim little houses and the clumsy, big, old-fashioned ones, chattering incessantly.  Their bright, interested eyes did not miss the tiniest detail.  The village, sleepier than ever on the morning of the half-holiday, was full of interest to them.

Mrs. Hughie Wilson was sweeping her garden path, and called out to them that the church concert had netted 327 dollars; wasn’t that pretty good?

A few steps farther on they met Alice Clark, who kept them ten minutes in eager, unimportant conversation.  Her parting remark sent the Monroe girls happily on their way.

“I hear Rodney Parker’s home—­don’t pretend to be surprised, Martha Monroe.  A little bird was telling me that I’ll have to go up North Main Street for news of him after this!”

“Who do you s’pose told her we met Rod Parker?” Martie grinned as they went on.

“People see everything!  Oh, Martie,” said Sally earnestly, “I do hope you are going to marry; no, don’t laugh!  I don’t mean Rod, of course, I’m not such a fool.  But I mean some one.”

“You ought to marry first, Sally; you’re the older,” Martie said, with averted eyes and a sort of delicious shame.

“Oh, I don’t mind that, Martie, if only we begin!” Sally answered fervently.  “When I think of what the next ten years mean for us, it just makes me sick!  Either we’ll marry and have our own homes and children, or we’ll be like Alice, and the Baxters, and Miss Fanny—­”