sweet, big, good-natured tomboy, growing into an eager, amusing,
ignorant young woman, too fond of sleeping and eating.

But there was another Martie--a sensitive, ambitious Martie--who
despised idleness, dependence, and inaction; who longed to live a
thousand lives--to conquer all the world; a Martie who was one day a
great singer, one day a wartime nurse, one day a millionaire's
beautiful bride, the mother of five lovely children, all carefully
named. She would waken from her dreams almost bewildered, blinking
at Sally or at her mother in the surprised fashion that sometimes
made folk call Martie stupid, humbly enough she thought of herself
as stupid, too. She never suspected that she was really "dreaming
true," that the power and the glory lay waiting for the touch of her
heart and hand and brain. She never suspected that she was to Rose
and Grace and Sally what a clumsy young swan would be in a flock of
bustling and competent ducks. Martie did not know, yet, where her
kingdom lay, how should she ever dream that she was to find it?

Rose was going back to stay with her cousin in Berkeley to-morrow,
it was understood, and so had to get home early this afternoon.
Rose, as innocent as a butterfly of ambition or of the student's
zeal, had finished her first year in the State University and was to
begin her second to-morrow.

Monroe's shabby Main Street seemed less interesting than ever when
Rose had tripped away. A gusty breeze was blowing fitfully, whisking
bits of straw and odds and ends of paper about. The watering cart
went by, leaving a cool wake of shining mud. Here and there a
surrey, loaded with stout women in figured percales, and dusty,
freckled children, started on its trip from Main Street back to some