But Sally was laughing and panting in a manner new and incomprehensible.  She caught Martie by both hands.  All three, young and not understanding themselves or life, stood laughing a little vaguely in the sharp winter dusk.  Joe was a mighty blond giant, only Martie’s age, and younger, except in inches and in sinews, than his years.  He had a sweet, simple face, rough, yellow hair, and hairy, red, clumsy hands.  A greater contrast to gentle little Sally, with her timid brown eyes and the bloodless quiet of manner that was like her mother and like Lydia, could hardly have been imagined.

“Where’ve you been?” Martie asked.

“We’ve been to church!” dimpled Sally with a glance at Joe.

The pronoun startled Martie.

“We were up in the organ loft,” Joe contributed with his half-laughing, half-nervous grin.

Still bewildered, Martie followed her sister into the dark garden, after a good-night nod to Joe, and went into the house.  Their father reluctantly accepted the girls’ separate accounts of the afternoon:  Sally had been in church, Martie had driven about with Rod and had gone to tea at his house.  Lydia fluttered with questions.  Who was there?  What was said?  Malcolm asked Martie where Rodney had left her.

“At the gate, Pa,” the girl responded promptly.

All through the evening her eyes kept wandering in disapproval toward Sally.  Joe Hawkes!—­it was monstrous.  That stupid, common lout of a boy—­nearly two years her junior, too.

They were undressing, alone in their room, when she spoke of the matter.

“Sally,” said she, “you didn’t really go sit in the choir with Joe Hawkes, did you?”

“Well—­yes, in a way,” Sally admitted, adding indulgently, “he’s such an idiot!”

“How do you mean?” Martie asked sharply.  For Sally to flush and dimple and give herself the airs of a happy woman over the calf-like attentions of this clumsy boy of nineteen was more than absurd, it was painful.  “Sally—­you couldn’t!  Why, you oughtn’t even to be friends with Joe Hawkes!” she stammered.  “He gets—­I suppose he gets twenty dollars a month.”

“On, no; more than that!” Sally said, brushing her fine, silky, lifeless hair.  “He gets twenty-five from the express company, and when he meets the trains for Beetman he gets half he makes.”

Martie stood astounded at her manner.  That one of the Monroe girls should be talking thus of Joe Hawkes!  What mattered it to Sarah Price Monroe how much Joe Hawkes made, or how?  Joe Hawkes—­Grace’s insignificant younger brother!  Sally saw her consternation.

“Now listen, Mart, and don’t have a fit,” she said, laughing.  “I’m not any crazier over Joe than you are.  I know what Pa would say.  I’m not likely to marry any one on thirty dollars a month, anyway.  But listen, Joe has always liked me terribly—­”

“I never knew it!” Martie exclaimed.

“No; well, neither did I. But last year when he broke his leg I used to go in and see him with Grace, and one day she left the room for a while, and he sort of—­broke out—­”