As the younger girls came in, and flung their hats on the bed, their
sister turned on them reproachfully.

"Martie, mama's furious!" she said. "And I do think it's perfectly
terrible, you and Sally running round town at all hours like this.
It's after six o'clock!"

"I can't help it if it is!" Martie said cheerfully. "Pa home?"

She asked the all-important question with more trepidation than she
showed. Both she and Sally hung anxiously on the reply.

"No; Pa was to come on the four-eleven, and either he missed it, or
else something's kept him down town," Lydia said in her flat, gentle
voice. "Len's not home either ..."

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!" Martie ejaculated
piously, with her gay, wild laugh. "Tell Lyd who we met, Sally!" she
called back, as she ran downstairs.

She dashed through the dining room, noting with gratitude that dear
old Lyd had set the table in spite of her disapproval. Beyond the
big, gloomy room was an enormous pantry, with a heavy swinging door
opening into a large kitchen. In this kitchen, in the dim light from
one gas jet, and in the steam from sink and stove, Mrs. Monroe and
her one small servant were in the last hot and hurried stages of
dinner-getting.

Martie kissed her mother's flushed and sunken cheek; a process to
which Mrs. Monroe submitted with reproachful eyes and compressed