head and shoulders above them all, would have worked gloriously to
reestablish them. She supposed that she loved them dearly. But so
terrible was the hunger of her heart for her share of life--for
loving, serving, planning, and triumphing--that she would have swept
them all aside like cobwebs to grasp the first reality flung her by
fate.

Not to stagnate, not to smother, not to fade and shrink like Lydia--
like Miss Fanny at the library, and the Baxter girls at the post-
office! Every healthy young fibre of Martie's soul and body rebelled
against such a fate, but she could not fully sense the barriers
about her, nor plan any move that should loosen her bonds. Martie
believed, as her parents believed, that life was largely a question
of "luck." Money, fame, friends, power, to this man; poverty and
obscurity and helplessness to that one. Wifehood, motherhood, honour
and delight to one school girl; gnawing, restless uselessness to the
next. "I only hope you girls are going to marry," their mother would
sometimes say plaintively; "but I declare I don't know who--with all
the nice boys leaving town the way they do! Pa gives you a good
home, but he can't do much more, and after he and I go, why, it will
be quite natural for you girls to go on keeping house for Len--I
suppose."

Martie's sensitive soul writhed under these mournful predictions.
Dependence was bitter to her, Len's kindly patronage stung her only
a little less than his occasional moods of cheerful masculine
contempt. He meant to take care of his sisters, he wasn't ever going
to marry. Pa needn't worry, Len said. The house was mortgaged,
Martie knew; their father's business growing less year by year;
there would be no great inheritance, and if life was not satisfying