When she went in, it was to face unpleasantness.  Her mother, with her bonnet strings dangling, was helping Lydia hastily to remove signs of the recent tea party.  Sally was in the kitchen; Len reading opposite his father.

“Come here a minute, Martie,” her father called as I the girl hesitated in the hallway.  Martie came in and eyed him.  “I would like to know what circumstances led to young Parker’s being here this afternoon?” he asked.

“Why—­we were walking, and I—­I suppose I asked him, Pa.”

“You suppose you asked him?”

“Well—­I did ask him.”

“Oh, you did ask him; that’s different.  You had spoken to your mother about it?”

“No.”  Martie swallowed.  “No,” she said again nervously.  There was a silence while her father eyed her coldly.

“Then you ask whom you like to the house, do you?  Is that the idea?  You upset your mother’s and your sister’s arrangement entirely at your own pleasure?” he suggested presently.

“I didn’t think it was so much to ask a person to have a cup of tea!” Martie stammered, with a desperate attempt at self-defense.  She felt tears pressing against her eyes.  Lydia would have been meek, Sally would have been meek, but Martie’s anger was her nearest weapon.  It angered her father in turn.

“Well, will you kindly remember in future that your ideas of what to ask, and what not to ask, are not the ideas by which this house is governed?” Malcolm asked magnificently.

“Yes, sir.”  Martie stirred as if to turn and go.

“One moment,” Malcolm said discontentedly.  “You thoroughly understand me, do you?”

“Yes, sir.”  Martie’s eyes met Len’s discreetly raised over the edge of his book and full of reproachful interest.  She went into the kitchen.

The spell of a nervous silence which had held the dining room was broken.  Mrs. Monroe and Lydia talked in low tones as they went to and fro; Len shifted his position; Sally coming in with a plate of sliced bread hummed contentedly.  Martie appeared in her usual place at supper, not too subdued to win a laugh even from her father with some vivacious imitation of Miss Tate rallying the children for Sunday School.  Happiness was bubbling like a spring in her heart.

After dinner, the dishes being piled in the sink to greet Belle on Monday morning, she went to the piano and crashed into “Just a Song at Twilight,” and “Oh, Promise Me,” and “The Two Grenadiers.”  These and many more songs were contained in a large, heavy album entitled “Favourite Songs for the Home.”  Martie had a good voice; not better than Sally’s or Lydia’s, but Sally and Lydia rarely sang.  Martie had sung to her own noisy accompaniment since she was a child; she loved the sound of her own voice.  She had a hunger for accomplishment, rattled off the few French phrases she knew with an unusually pure accent, and caught an odd pleasing word or an accurate pronunciation eagerly on the few occasions when lecturers or actors in Monroe gave her an opportunity.