“Trust the women to gossip!” the doctor said, impatiently.

“Well, nobody minds their gossip!” his daughter assured him.  “And for my part I think it’s a shame that a girl can’t come back home as simply as that, if she wants to!” she added, boldly.

“Don’t talk nonsense!” her father said, mildly.  “You think,” he added, reluctantly, “that it wasn’t a good thing for her, eh?”

“Well—­” Alix began.  “She doesn’t seem like other married women,” she said, doubtfully.  “And the only thing is, will she ever want to go back, if she isn’t rather—­rather coerced.  Martin is odd, you know; he has a kind of stolid, stupid pride.  He wrote her weeks ago and asked her to come, and she wrote back that if he would find her a cottage, she would; she couldn’t go to his boarding-house, she hated boarding!  Martin answered that he would, some day, and she said to me, ‘Oh, now he’s cross!’ Now, mind you,” Alix broke off vehemently, “I’d change the entire institution of marriage, if it was me!  I’d end all this—­”

“Well, we won’t go into that!” her father interrupted her, hastily, for Alix had aired these views before and he was not in sympathy with them.  “And I guess you’re right:  the child is a woman now, with a woman’s responsibilities,” he added.  “And her place is with her husband.  They’ll have to solve life together, to learn together.  I’ll speak to Cherry!”

Alix, watching him walk away, thought that she had never seen Dad look old before.  She saw the shadow on his kind face all the rest of that day.

It was only the next morning when he opened the question with Cherry.

It was a brilliant morning, with spring already in the air.  Cherry, on the porch steps, was reading a letter from Martin.  Her father sat down beside her.  She had on one of her old gowns, and bathed in soft sunlight, looked eighteen again.  Emerald grass was already filming the ground about the house; from under the deep rich brown of the forest flooring spring had thrust a million tiny spears of green.  The redwoods wore plushy plumes of blue new foliage, and a wild lilac at the edge of the clearing drifted like pale smoke against the dark woods.  Everywhere life was soaking and bursting after heavy rains; the very posts of the garden fence were sprouting little feathery tips.  The air was sweet and pungent and damp and fresh, the sky high and blue, and across the granite face of Tamalpais a last scarf of mist was floating.

“Well, what has Martin to say?” asked the doctor.

“Oh, he doesn’t like it much!” Cherry said, making a little face.  “He describes the village as perfectly hopeless.  He’s moved into the little house in E Street, and gotten two stoves up.”

“And when does he want his girl?” her father pursued.

“He doesn’t say,” Cherry answered, innocently.  “I think he is really happier to have me here, where he knows I am well off!” she said.  “I know I am,” she ended after a moment’s thought.