Lydia sat on the bed, and Sally on a chair, while Martie slowly moved about her new domain. The children had gone into the yard, 'Lizabeth and Billy charged not to let their little cousin get his clothes dirty; when the trunks came, with his overalls, he could get as dirty as he pleased.

The soiled, tumbled contents of the hand bag, after the five days'

trip, filled Martie with a sort of weary concern. She stood, puzzling vaguely over the damp washcloth that was wrapped about a cake of soap, the magazines of which she had grown so tired, the rumpled night-wear.

"I suppose I should hang these up; we may not get the trunks to-night."

"Oh, you will!" Lydia rea.s.sured her. A certain blankness fell on them all. It was the glaring spring hour of four o'clock; not lunch time, nor dinner time, nor bed time, nor time to go to market. Suddenly a tear fell on Martie's hand; she sniffed.

"Ah, don't, Mart!" Lydia said, fumbling for her own handkerchief. "We know--we know how hard it is! Your husband, and Ma not here to welcome you--"

The sisters cried together.

But she slept well in the old walnut bed, and enjoyed a delicious, unfamiliar leisure the next morning, when Teddy was turned out to the safety of the yard, and Pa, after paternally rea.s.suring her as to her welcome and pompously reiterating that her old father's home was hers for the rest of her life, was gone. She and Lydia talked deeply over the breakfast table, while Pauline rattled dishes in the kitchen and a soft fog pressed against the windows.

Martie had said that she was going over to Sally's immediately after breakfast, but, in the old way, time drifted by. She went upstairs to make her bed, and she and Lydia talked again, from doorway to doorway.

When they were finally dressed to walk down town, Lydia said that she might as well go to market first; they could stop at Sally's afterward.

Teddy galloped and curveted about them; Monroe enchanted Teddy. The sunshine was just pushing back the fog, and the low hills all about the town were coming into view, when Martie took her son in to meet Miss f.a.n.n.y.

Grayer and thinner, the librarian was otherwise unchanged. The old strong, coa.r.s.e voice, the old plain dress, serviceable and comfortable, the old delighted affection. Miss f.a.n.n.y wore gla.s.ses now; she beamed upon Teddy as she put them on, after frankly wiping her eyes.

She made a little fuss about Martie's joining the Library, so that Teddy could take home "Davy and the Goblin."

They went out into the warming, drying Main Street again; everywhere Martie was welcomed. In the shops and on the street humble old friends eyed her black respectfully.

The nervousness that she had felt about coming back began to melt like the mist itself. She had dreaded Monroe's old standards, dreaded Rose and Len, and the effect her poverty must have on them. Now she began to see that Rose mattered as little here as she had mattered when Martie was struggling in East Twenty-sixth Street. Rose "went" with the Frosts and the Streets and the Pattersons now. Her intimate friend was Dr.

Ellis's wife, a girl from San Francisco.

"Shall we go in for a minute, and make a little visit?" said Lydia, as she had said years ago, whenever they pa.s.sed the church. Martie nodded.

They creaked into the barnlike shabbiness of the edifice; the little red light twinkled silently before the altar. Clara Baxter was tiptoeing to and fro with vases. Teddy twisted and turned, had to be b.u.mped to his knees, was warned in a whisper that he must not talk.

Father Martin was not well; he had an a.s.sistant, Lydia said. The bishop wanted to establish a convent here, and old Mrs. Hanson had left eleven hundred dollars for it. Gertie Hanson lived in Fruitvale; she was married to a widower. She had threatened to fight the will, but people said that she got quite a lot of money; the Hansons were richer than any one thought. Anyway, she had not put up a gravestone to her mother yet, and Alice Clark said that Gertie had said that she couldn't afford it.

"Why, that house must have been worth something!" Martie commented, picking up the threads with interest.

"Well, wouldn't you think so!" Lydia said eagerly.

The morning had been so wasted that Sally was in a whirl of dinner-getting when they reached her house. She had her hearty meal at noon on the children's account; her little kitchen was filled with smoke and noise. To-day she had ma.s.ses of rather dark, mushy boiled rice, stewed neck of lamb, apples, and hot biscuits. Martie, fresh from New York's campaign of dietetic education, reflected that it was rather unusual fare for small children, but Sally's quartette was healthy-looking enough, and full of life and excitement. 'Lizabeth set the table; there was great running about, and dragging of chairs.

Martie studied her sister with amused admiration. There was small room for maternal vapours in Sally's busy life. Her matter-of-fact voice ruled the confusion.

"Jim, you do as 'Lizabeth tells you, or you'll get another whipping, sir! Pour that milk into the pitcher, Brother. Put on both sugar bowls, darling; Brother likes the brown. Martie, dearest, I am ashamed of this muss, but in two minutes I'll have them all started--there's baby--'Lizabeth, there's baby; you'll have to go up--"

"I'll go up!" Lydia and Martie said together. Martie went through the bare little hallways upstairs, and peeped into shabby bedrooms full of small beds and dangling nightgowns and broken toys.

Mary was sitting up in her crib, tumbled, red-cheeked, tears hanging on her lashes. The room was darkened for her nap; she wore a worn little discoloured wrapper; she clung to her rag doll. Martie, with deathly weakness sweeping over her, smiled, and spoke to her. The baby eyed her curiously, but she was not afraid. Martie picked her up, and stood there holding her, while the knife turned and twisted in her heart.

After a while she wrapped a blanket about Mary, and carried her downstairs. Sally saw that Martie's face was ashen, and she knew why.

Lydia saw nothing. Lydia would have said that Martie had placed poor Wallace's picture on her bureau that morning, and had talked about him, calmly and dry-eyed; so why should she feel so much more for her baby?

Teddy had been a little strange, if eagerly friendly, with his other cousins; but he knew how to treat Mary. He picked up the things she threw down from her high-chair, and tickled her, and made her laugh.

"If this elaborate and formal meal is dinner, Sally dear, what is supper?"

"Oh, Martie, it's so delicious to hear you again! Why, supper will be apple sauce and bread and b.u.t.ter and milk, and gingerbread and cookies.

It's the same the year round! I like it, really; after we go up to Pa's to supper the children don't sleep well, and neither do I."

"You haven't told me yet where Joe is."

"Oh, I know, and I WILL! We get talking, and somehow there's so much to say. Why, Joe's finishing his course at Cooper's College in San Francisco; he'll graduate this May. Dr. J. F. Hawkes; isn't that fun!"

"A regular doctor!" Martie exclaimed. "But--but is he going to BE one?"

"BE one! I should think he is!" Sally announced proudly. "Uncle Ben says he's a born doctor--"

"And how long has it been UNCLE Ben?"

"Oh, 'Lizabeth adopted him. He adores the children."

"He loaned Joe the money," Lydia said with her old air of delicately emphasizing an unsavoury truth.

Sally gave her younger sister a rather odd look at this, but she did not deny the statement.

"And who keeps the quartette going?" asked Martie, glancing about.

"Joe's people; and Pa does send barrels of apples and things, doesn't he, Sally?" Lydia supplied.

"Oh, yes; we only pay twelve dollars rent, and we live very cheaply!"

Sally said cheerfully, with another mysterious look.

A day or two later, when they were alone, she told Martie the whole truth.

"It's Uncle Ben, of course, Mart; you remember his old offer, if ever I had any children? He pays me twelve hundred a year for my four. n.o.body knows it, not even Lyd. People would only talk, you know, and it's none of their affair. It's his fad, you know. We married young, and Joe had no profession. Uncle Ben thinks the State ought to pay women for bearing children. He says it's their business in life. Women are taking jobs, foregoing marriage, and the nation is being robbed of citizens.

He believes that the hardest kind of work is the raising of children, and the women who do it for the State ought to be paid by the State. He does it for me, and I feel as if he was a relation. It's meant everything to Joe and me, and the children, too. Sometimes, when I stop to think of it, it is a little queer, but--when you think of the way people DO spend money, for orchids or old books or rugs--it's natural after all! He simply invests in citizens, that's what he says. I would have had them anyway, but I suppose, indeed I know, Mart, that there are lots of women who wouldn't!"

"And is he financing Joe, too?"

"Oh, no, indeed! Uncle Ben never speaks of money to me; I don't ever get one cent except my regular allowance. Why, when Joe was ill, and one of the babies--Billy, it was--was coming, he came in to see me now and then, but he never said boo about helping! Joe is working his way; he's chauffeur for Dr. Houston; that's something else n.o.body knows."

"I think that's magnificent of Joe!" Martie said, her face glowing.

"He graduates this year," Sally said proudly, "and then I think he will start here. For a long time we thought we'd have to move away then, because every one remembers little Joe Hawkes delivering papers, and working in the express office. But now that the hospital, up toward the Archer place, is really going to be built, Uncle Ben says that Joe can get a position there. It's Dr. Knowles's hospital, and Uncle Ben is his best friend. Of course that's big luck for Joe."

"Not so much luck," Martie said generously, "as that Joe has worked awfully hard, and done well."

"Oh, you don't know how hard, Mart! And loving us all as he does, too, and being away from us!" Sally agreed fervently. "But if he really gets that position, with my hundred, we'll be rich! We'll have to keep a Ford, Mart; won't that be fun?"

"Dr. Ben might die, Sally," Martie suggested.

"That wouldn't make any difference," the older sister said composedly.