But Alix voiced their feelings one summer afternoon when she was sauntering into the village at her cousin’s side, and began for the first time a faint criticism of Martin.

“What makes Dad mad,” Alix opined, “is that Martin had it all arranged before he asked him!  Took advantage of Dad, in a way.  I don’t think he would have felt so if they both were kids, but after all, Martin’s twenty-eight—­” Her voice fell.  “Anne,” she began, hesitatingly, “sometimes when Mrs. North says so gaily that Martin was a terror in college, and kept his whole family worrying, I feel sort of sorry for Cherry!  She doesn’t know as much of life as we do,” twenty-one-year-old Alix finished soberly.

“I know!” Anne said quickly, perhaps a little glad to find a point where Cherry needed sympathy.

“I have a feeling that Dad thinks,” Alix pursued, “that it was just because it was Cherry’s first beau-I mean that Cherry waked up suddenly, don’t you know?  It was as if she said to herself, ’Why, I’m a woman!  I can get kissed and get married and all the rest of it!’—­I’m expressing this beautifully,” stumbled Mix.

“I often wonder Uncle Lee doesn’t forbid it!” Anne said.  She had never had even a flitting thought of such a thing before, but she spoke now as if the engagement had had her heartiest disapproval from the first.

“Oh, no—­why should he!” Alix remonstrated.  “Martin may be the best man in the world for her.  I confess,” the girl added frankly, “I can’t stand his aunt.  I always used to like Mrs. North, too.  But lately, when she’s begun to tell Cherry that he is extravagant, and she must save his money for him, and that he’s often been in love before, but this time she’s sure it is the real thing, and that Martin has his father’s delicate stomach—–­”

Anne laughed out, in a merry fashion not usual with her of late.

“Oh, Alix, she didn’t!”

“Oh, yes, she did!  And it makes me sort of sick.  What does Cherry care about anybody’s delicate stomach!” Alix fell silent, broke out again abruptly:  “Anne—­do you suppose she’ll have a baby?”

Anne flushed.  She considered this remark rather indelicate, and yet she liked Alix’s recognition of her superior knowledge of the subject.

“I think it very likely!” she answered calmly, after a moment’s hesitation.  Her first impulse had been to answer, “I think it very unlikely!”

“She doesn’t know anything about babies!” Alix said, somewhat worried.

“I don’t, either!” Anne confessed with honesty, her brow troubled.  “I’ve read things, here and there.  I know something, of course.  But I don’t know much!”

“We’ve all read Dickens—­and the Classic Myths, and things,” Alix submitted.  “And of course she went with us the day Dad took us to Faust!  Is that about all there is to it, Nance?”