undesired they seemed to-night to panting and glowing and
glorified eighteen! Anne, with Alix's erratic help, kept house for
her uncle, and was supposed to keep a sharp eye on Cherry, too.
But she hadn't been sharp enough to keep Martin Lloyd from asking
her to marry him, exulted Cherry, as she stood breathless and
laughing in the dark hallway.

Cherry had never had any other home than this shabby brown
bungalow, and she knew every inch of the hall, even without light
to see it. She knew the faded rugs, and the study door that
swallowed up her father every day, and the table where Alix had
put a great bowl of buttercups, and the glass-paned door at the
back through which the doctor's girls had looked out at many a
frosty morning, and red sunset, and sun-steeped summer afternoon.
But even the old hall had seemed transformed to-night, lighted
with a beauty quite new, scented with an immortal sweetness.

Hong came out of the dining room; the varnished buttercups
twinkled in a sudden flood of light. He had come to put a folded
tablecloth into the old wardrobe that did for a sideboard, under
the stairs. Cherry, descending to earth, smiled at him, and
crossed the hall to the sitting-room door.

An older woman might have gone upstairs, to dream alone of her new
joy, but Cherry thought that it would be "fun" to join the family,
and "act as if nothing had happened!" She was only a child, after
all.

Consciously or unconsciously, they had all tried to keep her a
child, these three who looked up to smile at her as she came in.