Lydia lay wide awake for a long time.  There was no doubt of it now; she and her mother had told each other several times during the last month or two that there was still doubt.  But she was not mistaken to-night in thinking that Len’s breath was strong from something alcoholic, that Len’s eager, loose-lipped speech, his unusual manner—­She went over and over the words she would use in telling her mother all about it in the morning.  The two women would carry heavy hearts on Len’s account for the whole cold, silent day.  But they would not tell Pa—­no, there was nothing sufficiently serious as yet to tell Pa!

CHAPTER V

Martie and Sally loitered through the village, past the post-office and the main shops and down through the poorer part of the town.  They entered a quiet region of shabby old houses, turned into a deserted lane, and opened the picket gate before Dr. Ben’s cottage.  The little house in winter stood in a network of bare vines; in summer it was smothered in roses, and fuchsias, marguerites, hollyhocks, and geraniums pressed against the fence.  Marigolds, alyssum, pansies, and border pinks flourished close to the ground, with sweet William, stock, mignonette, and velvet-brown wallflowers.  Dr. Ben had planted all these himself, haphazard, and loved the resulting untidy jumble of bloom, with the lilac blossoms rustling overhead, birds nesting in his willow and pepper trees, and bees buzzing and blundering over his flowers.

The house was not quite definite enough in type to be quaint; it presented three much-ornamented gables to the lane, its windows were narrow, shuttered inside with dark brown wood.  At the back-between the house and the little river, and shut away from the garden by a fence—­were a little barn, decorated like the house in scalloped wood, and various small sheds and out-houses and their occupants.

Here lived the red cow, the old white mare, the chickens and pigeons, the rabbits and bees that had made the place fascinating to Monroe children for many years.  Martie said to herself to-day that she always felt like a child when she came to Dr. Ben’s, shut once more into childhood’s world of sunshine and flowers and happy companionship with animals and the good earth.

To-day the old man, with his setter Sandy, was busy with his bookshelves when the girls went in.  Two of the narrow low bay windows that looked directly out on the level of the kitchen path were in this room; the third, the girls knew, was a bedroom.  Upstairs were several unused rooms full of old furniture and piles of magazines, and back of the long, narrow sitting room were a little dining room with Crimson Rambler roses plastered against its one window, and a large kitchen in which old Mis’ Penny reigned supreme.

Here in the living room were lamps, shabby chairs, an air-tight stove, shells, empty birds’ nests, specimens of ore, blown eggs, snakeskins, moccasins, wampum, spongy dry bees’ nests, Indian baskets and rugs, ropes and pottery, an enormous Spanish hat of yellow straw with a gaudy band, and everywhere, in disorderly cascades and tumbled heaps, were books and pamphlets and magazines.