"Why aren't you girls at home sewing for the poor?" demanded a
pleasant voice over their shoulders. The girls wheeled about to
smile into the eyes of Father Martin. A tall spare old man, with
enormous glasses on his twinkling blue eyes, spots and dust on his
priestly black, and a few teeth missing from his kindly, big, homely
mouth, he beamed upon them.

"Well, how are ye? And your mother's well? Well, and what are ye
buying--trousseaux?"

"We're just looking, Father," Martie giggled. "Looking for husbands
first, and then clothes!"

Laughing, the girls walked with him across the street to Mallon's
Hardware Emporium, where baskets of jelly glasses were set out on
the damp sidewalk, with enamel saucepans marked "29c." and "19c." in
black paint, carpet sweepers, oil stoves, and pink-and-blue glass
vases. They went on to the shoe shop, to the grocery, to the post-
office, past the express office, where Joe Hawkes sat whittling in
the sun. They paused to study with eager interest the flaring
posters on the fences that announced the impending arrival of
Poulson's Star Stock Company, for one night only, in "The Sword of
the King." They discovered with surprise that it was nearly twelve
o'clock, bought five cents' worth of rusty, sweet, Muscat grapes, to
be eaten on the way home, and turned their faces toward the bridge.

But the morning, for Martie, had held its golden moment. When they
passed the Bank, Sally had been dreaming, as Sally almost always
was, but Martie's eyes had gone from shining gold-lettered window to