Walking home under a jaded moon, yawning and cold in the revulsion from hours of excitement and the change from the heated rooms to the cold night air, Lydia was complacently superior; they were certainly warm-hearted, hospitable people, the Hawkeses, and she was glad that they, the Monroes, had paid Grandma the compliment of going.  Sally, hanging on Lydia’s arm, was silent.  Martie, on her other arm, was smilingly reminiscent.  “That Al Lunt was a caution,” she observed.  “Wasn’t Laura Carter’s dance music good?  Wasn’t that maple walnut cake delicious?” She had eaten goodness knows how much ice cream, because she sat at table between Reddy Johnson and Bernard Thomas, and every time Carrie David or any one asked them if they wanted any more ice cream, Bernie had put their saucers in his lap, and told Carrie that they hadn’t had any yet.

Len suddenly came up behind his sisters, frightening them with a deep “Boo!” before he emerged from the blackness to join them.

“Javva good time?” he asked, adding carelessly, “I was there.”

“Yes, you were!” Martie said incredulously.  “You wish you were!”

“Honest, I was,” Len said.  “Honest I was, Lyd.”

“Well, you weren’t there until pretty late, Len,” Lydia said in mild disapproval.

“Lissun,” Len suggested pleadingly.  “Tell Pa I brought you girls home from Hawkes’s—­go on!  Lissun, Lyd, I’ll do as much for you some time—­”

“Oh, Len, how can I?” Lydia objected.

“Well, I went in, honest, early in the evening,” the boy asserted eagerly.  “But I can’t stand those boobs and roughnecks, so I went down town for a while.  Then I came back and waited until you girls came out of the gate.  I’ll cross my heart and hope to die if I didn’t!”

“If Pa asks me—­” Lydia said inexorably.

For a few moments they all walked together in the dark.  Then Len said suddenly: 

“Say, Mart, I saw Rod Parker to-night.  He was down town, and he asked me how my pretty sister was!”

“Did he?” Martie spoke carelessly, but her heart leaped.

“He talked a lot about you,” went on Len, “he’s going to call you up in the morning about something.”

“Oh—?” Martie mused.  “I shouldn’t wonder if it was about a dance we were talking about,” she said thoughtfully.  She was quite acute enough to see perfectly that Len was trying to enlist her silence in his cause should their father make a general inquiry, and philosophical enough to turn his mood to her own advantage.  “Lissun, Len,” said she, “if I try to have a party you’ll get the boys you know to come, won’t you?  There are always too many girls, and I want it to go off nicely.  You will, won’t you?”

“Sure I will,” Len promised heartily.  He and his sister perfectly understood each other.

They all went quietly upstairs; Len to dreamless sleep, Sally to thrilled memories of Joe—­Joe—­Joe, and Martie to shifting happy thoughts of the evening and its little triumphs, thoughts that always came back to Len’s talk with Rodney.  Rodney had asked Len for his pretty sister.