sung to her own noisy accompaniment since she was a child; she loved
the sound of her own voice. She had a hunger for accomplishment,
rattled off the few French phrases she knew with an unusually pure
accent, and caught an odd pleasing word or an accurate pronunciation
eagerly on the few occasions when lecturers or actors in Monroe gave
her an opportunity.

To-night her father, in his library, heard the sweet, true tones of
her voice in "Lesbia" and "Believe Me," and remembered his mother
singing those same old songs. But when a silence followed he
remembered only faulty Martie, awkwardly making Rodney Parker
welcome at the most inconvenient time her evil genius could have
suggested, and he presently went into the sitting room with the
familiar scowl on his face.

On the next Sunday Rodney hired a Roman-nosed, rusty white horse at
Beetman's, and for two hours he and Martie drove slowly about. They
drove up past the Poor House to the Cemetery, and into the Cemetery
itself, where black-clad forms were moving slowly among the graves.
The day was cold, with a bleak wind blowing; the headstones looked
bare and forlorn.

At half-past three, driving down the Pittsville road, back toward
Monroe, Rodney said:

"Why don't you come and have tea at our house, Martie?"

Martie's heart rose on a great spring.

"Why--would your mother--" She stopped short, not knowing quite how