“‘Frenny?’” echoed Cherry, who had laughed until actual tears stood in her eyes.

“That’s short for ‘friend,’ do you see?  Because of this platonic intellectual friendship that started everything, you know.  She’d catch up his hand and say, ’Frenny, show Uncle what an aristocratic hand you’ve got.’  My dear, she’ll keep me awake nights repeating things he’s said to her:  ’He’s so wonderful, Alix.  He’s the simplest and at the same time the cleverest man I ever knew.’”

“He sounds awful to me,” Cherry said.

“He’s not, really.  Only it seems that he belongs to the oldest family in America, or something, and is the only descendent—­”

“Money?” Cherry asked, interestedly.

“No, I don’t think money, exactly.  At least I know he is getting a hundred a month in his uncle’s law office, and Dad thinks they ought to wait until they have a little more.  She’ll have something, you know,” Alix added, after a moment’s thought.

“Your cousin?” Martin asked, taking his pipe out of his mouth.

“Well, her father went into the fire-extinguisher thing with Dad,” Alix elucidated, “and evidently she and Justin have had deep, soulful thoughts about it.  Anyway, the other day she said—­you know her way, Cherry—­’Tell me, Uncle, frankly and honestly, may Justin and I draw out my share for that little home that is going to mean so much to us—­’”

“I can hear her!” giggled Cherry.

“Dad immediately said that she could, of course,” Alix went on.  “He’s going to look the whole thing up.  He was adorable about it.  He said, ‘It will do more than build you a little home, my dear!’”

“We’ll get a slice of that some time,” Cherry said, thoughtfully, glancing at her husband.  “I don’t mean when Dad dies either,” she added, in quick affection.  “I mean that he might build us a little home some day in Mill Valley.”

“Gee, how he’d love it!” Alix said, enthusiastically.

“I married Cherry for her money,” Martin confessed.

“As a matter of fact,” Cherry contradicted him, vivaciously, animated even by the thought of a change and a home, “we have never even spoken of it before, have we, Mart?”

“I never heard of it before,” he admitted, smiling, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe.  “If I leave the ‘Emmy Younger’ in October, and go into the Red Creek proposition, I shall be making a good deal myself.  But it’s pleasant to know that Cherry will come in for a nest-egg some day!”

“Mart doesn’t care a scrap for money!” Cherry said to her sister, in the old loyal way.  Since Alix’s arrival she had somehow liked Martin better.  Perhaps Alix brought to her sister with a whiff of the old atmosphere, the old content, the old pride, and the old point-of-view.  Presently the visitor boldly suggested that they should both go home together for the wedding, and Martin, to Cherry’s amazement, agreed good-naturedly.

“But, Mart, how’ll you get along?” his wife asked, anxiously.  She had fumed and fussed and puttered and toiled over the care of these four rooms for so long that it seemed unbelievable that her place might be vacated even for a day.