closed, in an enviable state of ecstasy and anticipation. Cherry
had planned to join them, but an experimental week-end was enough.
The camp was in the cool woods, truly, but it was disorderly,
swarming with children, the tents were small and hot, the whole
settlement laughed and rioted and surged to and fro in a manner
utterly foreign to her. She returned, to tell Martin that it was
"horribly common," and weather the rest of the summer in Red
Creek.

"Mrs. Turner is the only woman that I can stand," said Cherry,
"and she was always cooking, in an awful cooking shed, masses and
masses of macaroni and stewed plums and biscuits--and all of them
laughing and saying, 'Girlie, I guess you've got a hollow leg!'
Dearie, I couldn't eat any more without busting!' And sitting
round that plank table--"

Martin shouted with laughter at her, but he sympathized. He had
never cared particularly for the Turners; was perfectly willing to
keep the friendship within bounds.

He sympathized as little with another friendship she made, some
months later, with the wife of a young engineer who had recently
come to the mine. Pauline Runyon was a few years older than her
husband, a handsome, thin, intense woman, who did everything in an
entirely individual way. She took one of the new little bungalows
that were being erected in Red Creek "Park," and furnished it
richly and inappropriately, and established a tea table and a
samovar beside the open fireplace. Cherry began to like better
than anything else in the world the hours she spent with Pauline.
She would have liked to go every day, and every day argued and