“The Gall!” ejaculated Martie.

“Oh, no, Mart—­he didn’t mean it that way.  Really he didn’t.  He just wanted—­to hold my hand, you know—­and that.  And he never thinks of money, or getting married.  And, Mart, he’s so grateful, you know, for just a moment’s meeting, or if I smile at him, going out of church—­”

“I should think he might be!” Martie interpolated in fine scorn.

“Yes, I know how you feel, Martie,” Sally went on eagerly, “and that’s true, of course.  I feel that way myself.  But you don’t know how miserable he makes himself about it.  And does it seem wrong to you, Mart, for me just to be kind to him?  I tell him—­I was telling him this afternoon—­that some day he’ll meet some nice sweet girl younger than he, and that he’ll be making more money then—­you know--”

Her voice faltered.  She looked wistfully at her sister.

“But I can’t see why you let a big dummy like that talk to you at all!” Martie said impatiently after a short silence.  “What do you care what he thinks?  He’s got a lot of nerve to dare to talk to you that way.  I—­well, I think Pa would be wild!”

“Oh, of course he would,” Sally agreed in a troubled voice.  “And I know how you feel, Martie, with Joe’s aunt working for the Parkers, and all,” she added.  “I’ll—­I’ll stop it.  Truly I will.  I’m only doing it to be considerate to Joe, anyway!”

“You needn’t do anything on my account,” Martie said gruffly.  “But I think you ought to stop it on your own.  Joe is only a kid, he doesn’t know beans—­much less enough to really fall in love!”

She lay awake for a long time that night, in troubled thought.  Cold autumn moonlight poured into the room; a restless wind whined about the house.  The cuckoo clock struck eleven—­struck twelve.

At all events she had gone driving with Rodney; she had had tea at the Parkers’—­

CHAPTER IV

“I honestly think that some of us ought to go down to-night and see Grandma Kelly,” said Lydia at luncheon a week later.  November had come in bright and sunny, but with late dawns and early twilights.  Rodney Parker’s college friend having delayed his promised visit, the agitating question of the Friday Fortnightly had been temporarily laid to rest, but Martie saw him nearly every day, and family and friends alike began to change in their attitude to Martie.

“I’ll go,” she and Sally said together—­Martie, because she was in a particularly amiable mood; Sally, perhaps because old Mrs. Kelly was Joe Hawkes’s grandmother.

“Well, I wish you would, girls,” their mother said in her gentle, complaining voice.  “She’s a dear old lady—­a perfect saint about getting to church in all weathers!  And while Pa doesn’t care much about having you so intimate with the Hawkeses, he was saying this morning that Grandma Kelly is different.  She was my nurse when all four of you were born, and she certainly was interested and kind.”