"Pa tell you to watch for me?" he asked fearfully.

"No." Martie, sitting on the top step and hugging her knees,
answered indifferently. "It's not ten yet. What you been doing?"

"Oh, nothing!" Len passed her and went in.

As a matter of fact, he had called for his chum, sauntered into the
candy store for caramels, joined the appreciative group that watched
a drunken man forcibly ejected from Casserley's saloon, visited the
pool room and witnessed a game or two, gone back into the street to
tease two hurrying and giggling girls with his young wit, and
drifted into a passing juggler's wretched and vulgar show. This, or
something like this, was what Len craved when he begged to "go out
for a while" after dinner. It was sometimes a little more
entertaining, sometimes less so; but it spelled life for the
seventeen-year-old boy.

He could not have described this to Martie, even had he cared to do
so. She would not have understood it. But she felt a vague yearning,
too, for lights and companionship and freedom, a vague envy of
Leonard.

The world was out there, beyond the gate, beyond the village. She
was in it, but not of it. She longed to begin to live, and knew not
how. Ten years before she had been only a busy, independent, happy
little girl; turning to her mother and sister for advice, obeying
her father without question. But Pa and Lydia, and Len with his
egotism, and Ma with her trials, were nothing to Martie now. In
battle, in pestilence, or after a great fire, she would have risen