Rodney Parker was not quite familiar with this well-established precedent.  His sisters were not enough of the village to be asked either to walk or drive with the local swains, and he had been away for several years.  For two Sundays he walked with Martie, and then he asked her to drive.

For the girl, these weeks were suffused with a tremulous and ecstatic delight beyond definition, beyond words.  What she would not have dared to hope, she actually experienced.  No need to boast before Sally and Grace and Florence Frost.  They saw:  the whole village saw.

Martie bloomed like a rose.  She forgot everything—­Pa, Len, the gloomy home, the uncertain future—­for joy.  That her old hat was shabby and her clothes inappropriate meant nothing to Martie; ignorant, unhelped, she stumbled on her way alone.  Nobody told her to pin her bronze braids more trimly, to keep her brilliant skin free from the muddying touch of sweets and pastries, to sew a hook here and catch a looping hem there.  Nobody suggested that she manicure her fine big hands, or use some of her endless leisure to remove the spots from her blue silk dress.

More; the family dared take only a stealthy interest in Martie’s affair, because of Malcolm’s extraordinary perversity and Len’s young scorn.  Malcolm, angered by Lydia’s fluttered pleasure in the honour Rodney Parker was doing their Martie, was pleased to assume a high and mighty attitude.  He laughed heartily at the mere idea that the attentions of Graham Parker’s son might be construed as a compliment to a Monroe, and sarcastically rebuked Lydia when, on a Sunday afternoon, she somewhat stealthily made preparations for tea.  Martie and Rod were walking, and Martie, before she went, had said something vague about coming back at half-past four.

Lydia, abashed, gave up her plan for tea.  But she did what she could for Martie, by inveigling her father into a walk.  Martie and Rod came into an empty house, for Sally was out, no one knew where, and Mrs. Monroe had gone to church where vespers were sung at four o’clock through the winter.

Martie’s colour was high from fast walking in the cold wind, her eyes shone like sapphires, and her loosened hair, under an old velvet tam-o’-shanter cap, made a gold aureole about her face.  Rodney, watching her mount the little hill to the graveyard with a winter sunset before her, had called her “Brunhilde,” and he had been talking of grand opera as they walked home.

Enchanted at finding the house deserted, she very simply took him into the kitchen.  The kettle was fortunately singing over a sleeping fire; Rodney sliced bread and toasted it, while Martie, trying to appear quite at her ease, but conscious of awkward knees and elbows just the same, whisked from pantry to kitchen busily, disappearing into the dining room long enough to lay the tea cups and plates at one end of the big table.

Only a few moments before the little feast was ready, Lydia came rather anxiously into the kitchen.  She greeted Rodney smilingly, seizing the first opportunity for an aside to say to Martie: