Dr. Ben welcomed them eagerly and sent Martie promptly to the kitchen to interview Mis’ Penny on the subject of tea.  The girls were quite at home here, for the old doctor was Rose Ransome’s mother’s cousin, and through their childhood the little gabled house had been the favourite object of their walks.  Sally, alone with her host, began to help him in his hopeless attempt to get his library in order.

“The point is this, Sally,” said Dr. Ben suddenly, after a few innocuous comments on the weather and the health of the Monroe family had been exchanged.  “Have you and Joe Hawkes come to care for each other?”

Sally flushed scarlet.  She had been thinking hard—­for Sally, who was not given to thought—­in the hours since the party for Grandma Kelly.  Now she began readily, with a great air of frankness.

“I’ll tell you, Dr. Ben.  I know you feel as if I was trying to hide something from Ma and Pa, and it’s worried me a good deal, too.  But the truth is, I’ve known Joe all my life, and he’s only a boy, of course—­ever so much younger than I am—­and he has just gotten this notion into his head.  Of course, it’s perfectly ridiculous—­because naturally I am not going to throw my life away in any such fashion as that!  But Joe thinks now that he will never smile again—­”

Thus Sally, kneeling among the books, her earnest, pretty, young face turned toward the doctor, her eyes widely opened, as the extraordinary jumble of words poured forth.  The unpleasant sensation of their last meeting, the confusing feeling that she was not saying what Dr. Ben wanted her to say, beset her.  She felt a sudden, dreadful inclination toward tears, although with no clear sense of a reason for crying.

“I suppose all boys go through their silly stages like measles,” said Sally rapidly.  “And it’s only my misfortune and Joe’s that his first love affair had to be me.  One reason why I haven’t mentioned it at home is—­”

“Then you don’t care for Joe?” the old man asked with his serious smile.

“Oh, Dr. Ben!  Of course, I like Joe enormously, he’s a dear sweet boy,” Sally answered smoothly.  “But you know as well as I do how my father feels toward the village people in Monroe, and while the Hawkeses are just as nice as they can be in their way—­” again Sally’s flow of eloquence was strangely shaken; she felt as a child might, caught up in the arm of a much larger person and rushed along helplessly with only an occasional heartening touch of her feet to the ground—­“after all, that isn’t quite our way, is it?” she asked.  If only, thought the nervous little girl who was Sally, if only she knew what Dr. Ben wanted her to say!

“Why can’t ye be honest with me, Sally?” said the doctor.  “Ye love Joe, don’t ye?”

Sally’s head dropped, the colour rose in her cheeks, and the tears came.  She nodded, and through all her body ran a delicious thrill at the acknowledged passion.

“Ye’ve found each other out, in spite of them all!” said the old man musingly.  “And what does his age or yours, or his place or yours, matter beside that?  They’ve tried to fill you with lies, and you’ve found that the lies don’t hold water.  Well—­”