To-night her father, in his library, heard the sweet, true tones of her voice in “Lesbia” and “Believe Me,” and remembered his mother singing those same old songs.  But when a silence followed he remembered only faulty Martie, awkwardly making Rodney Parker welcome at the most inconvenient time her evil genius could have suggested, and he presently went into the sitting room with the familiar scowl on his face.

On the next Sunday Rodney hired a Roman-nosed, rusty white horse at Beetman’s, and for two hours he and Martie drove slowly about.  They drove up past the Poor House to the Cemetery, and into the Cemetery itself, where black-clad forms were moving slowly among the graves.  The day was cold, with a bleak wind blowing; the headstones looked bare and forlorn.

At half-past three, driving down the Pittsville road, back toward Monroe, Rodney said: 

“Why don’t you come and have tea at our house, Martie?”

Martie’s heart rose on a great spring.

“Why—­would your mother—­” She stopped short, not knowing quite how to voice her hesitation.  Had she expressed exactly what was in her mind she might have said:  “First, won’t your mother and sisters snub me?  And secondly, is it quite correct, from a conventional standpoint, for me to accept your casual invitation?”

“Sure.  Mother’ll be delighted—­come on!” Rodney urged.

“I’d love to!” Martie agreed.

“You know, the beauty about you, Martie, is that you’re such a good pal,” Rodney said enthusiastically as he drove on.  “I’ve always wanted a pal.  You and I like the same things; we’re both a little different from the common run, perhaps—­I don’t want to throw any flowers at us, but that’s true—­and it’s wonderful to me that living here in this hole all your life you’re so up-to-date—­so darned intelligent!”

This was nectar to Martie’s soul.  But she had never been indulged so recklessly in personalities before, and she did not quite know how to meet them.  She wanted to say the right thing, to respond absolutely to his mood; a smile, half-deprecating, half-charmed, fluttered on her lips when Rodney talked in this fashion, but even to herself her words seemed ill-chosen and clumsy.  A more experienced woman, with all of Martie’s love and longing surging in her heart, would have vouchsafed him just that casual touch of hand on hand, that slight, apparently involuntary swerve of shoulder against shoulder that would have brought the boy’s arms about her, his lips to hers.

It was her business in life to make him love her; the only business for which her mother and father had ever predestined her.  But she knew nothing of it, except that no “nice” girl allowed a boy to put his arm about her or kiss her unless they were engaged.  She knew that girls got into “trouble” by being careless on these matters, but what that trouble was, or what led to it, she did not know.  She and Sally innocently believed that some mysterious cloud enveloped even the most staid and upright girl at the touch of a man’s arm, so that of subsequent events she lost all consciousness.  A girl might attract a man by words and smiles to the point of wishing to marry her, but she must never permit the slightest liberties, she must indeed assume, to the very day of her marriage, that the desire for marriage lived in the heart of the man alone.