The next day she did clean the chicken house, and did go down to spend the afternoon with Miss Fanny.  But freedom danced in her veins; on the third afternoon she and Wallace took a long walk, and stopped to see Dr. Ben, and, sitting on two barrels behind the old railway station, ate countless cherries and apricots.  Again—­and again—­they went to Pittsville.  Sally was in their confidence and feasted them in the little flat or went with them on their innocent expeditions.

From their third meeting, it was cheerfully taken for granted that Wallace and Martie belonged to each other.  Martie never knew what he really felt, any more than he dreamed of the girlish amusement and distrust in which she held him.  They flirted only, but they swiftly found life uninteresting when apart.  They never talked of marriage, yet every time they parted it was reluctantly, and never without definite plans for another immediate meeting.  Wallace began to advise Martie not to eat the rich things that made her sick; Martie counselled him about his new suit, and listened, uneasy and ashamed, to a brief, penitential reference to “crazy” things he had done, as a “kid.”  He promised her never to drink again and incidentally told her that his real name was Edward Tenney.  Suddenly they found the plural pronoun:  we must do that; that doesn’t interest us; Pa must not suspect our affair.

“The Cluetts are going to be in Pittsville,” said Wallace one day.  “I want you to meet them.  You’ll like Mabel; she’s got two little kids.  She and Jesse have been married only six years.  And they’ll like you, too; I’ve told ’em you’re my girl!”

“Am I?” said Martie huskily.  They were alone in Sally’s little house, and for answer he put his arms about her.  “Do you love me, Wallace?” she asked.

The question, the raised blue eyes, fired him to sudden passion.  They kissed each other blindly, with shut eyes.  After that, whenever they might, they kissed, and sometimes Martie, ignorant and innocent, wondered why the memory of his hot lips worried her a little.

There was nothing wrong in kissing!  Martie still said to herself that of course they would not marry; yet when she was with Wallace she loved the evidences of her power over him, and seemed unable, as he was unable, to keep from the constant question:  “Do you love me?”

In late June the Cluetts—­pretty faded Mabel, her two enormous babies, her stepson Lloyd, and Jesse, the husband and father—­all came to Pittsville for a few days’ leisure before rehearsals began.  Lloyd was a “light juvenile,” off as well as on the stage.  Jesse played father, judge, guardian, prime minister, and old family doctor in turn.  Mabel, rouged and befrilled, still made an attractive foil for Wallace as the hero.  Martie liked them all; their chatter of the fairyland of the stage, their trunks plastered with labels, their fine voices, their general air of being incompetent children adrift in a puzzling world.  Deep laughter stirred within her when they spoke of business or of finance.