Martie walked to the window, and stood looking out for a long time.  When she came back to Sally her face was pale, her breast moving stormily, and her eyes glittering.

“They’re engaged, I suppose?” Martie said.

Sally did not speak.  But her eyes answered.

“Sally,” said her sister, in a voice thick with pain, as she sat down on the bed, “am I to blame?  Could I have done differently?  Why does this come to Rose, who has everything now, and pass me by?  I—­I don’t want to be like—­like Lyd, Sally; I want to live!  What can I do?  Oh, my god,” said Martie, rising suddenly and beginning to walk to and fro, with her magnificent mane of hair rolling and tumbling about her shoulders as she moved, “what shall I do?  There is a world, out there, and people working and living and succeeding in it—­and here I am, in Monroe—­dying, dying, dying of longing!  Sally ...” and with tears wet on her cheeks, and her mouth trembling, she came close to her sister.  “Sally,” whispered Martie unsteadily, “I care for—­him.  I wanted nothing better.  I thought—­I thought that by this time next year we might—­we might be going to have a baby—­ Rodney and I.”

She flung back her head, and went again to the window.  Sally burst into bitter crying.

“Oh, Martie—­Martie—­I know!  I know!  My darling, splendid, glorious sister—­so much more clever than any one else, and so much better!  I think it’ll break my heart!”

And in each other’s arms, nineteen and twenty-one wept together at the bitterness of life.

The days wore by, and Rose came smiling home for Christmas, and early in the new year Martie and Sally were asked to a pink luncheon at the Ransome cottage, finding at each chair two little tissue-paper heart-shaped frames initialled “R.  P.” and “R.  R.” with kodak prints of Rose and Rodney inside.  The Monroe girls gave Rose a “linen shower” in return, and the whole town shared the pleasure of the happy pair.

Martie had enough to think of now.  Not even the thoughts of the prospective bride could dwell more persistently on her own affairs than did Martie’s thoughts.  Rose, welcome at the Parkers’, envied and admired even by Ida and May and Florence; Rose, prettily buying her wedding finery and dashing off apt little notes of thanks for her engagement cups and her various “showers”; Rose, fluttering with confidences and laughter to the admiring Rodney, with the diamond glittering on her hand; these and a thousand other Roses haunted Martie.  Lydia and her mother admired and marvelled with the rest.  Lydia it was who first brought home the news that the young Parkers were to be married at Easter, Sally learned from Rose’s own lips that they were to spend a week in Del Monte as honeymoon.