That was the beginning, and after it, although it was arranged
between them all that nothing should be changed, and that nobody
but themselves should share the secret, somehow life seemed
different. Two or three days after the momentous day of the
raising of the rose tree, Martin Lloyd went to his mine at El
Nido, and the interrupted current of life in the brown bungalow
supposedly found its old groove.

But nothing was the same. The doctor, in the first place, was more
silent and thoughtful than the girls had ever seen him before.
Anne and Alix knew that he was not happy about Cherry's plans, if
the younger girl did not. He sighed, sat silently looking off from
his book in the summer evenings, fell into deep musing even at his
meals. With Alix only he talked of the engagement, and she knew
from his comments, his doubtful manner, that he felt it to be a
mistake. The ten years' difference between Cherry and Martin
distressed him; he spoke of it again and again. In June he sent
Cherry to a long-planned house-party at Menlo Park, but the girl
came back after the third day. "I didn't have any fun," she
confessed, "I had to tell Olive, about me and Martin, I mean. The
boys there were all KIDS!"

Cherry was changed, too, and not only in the expected and natural
ways, Alix thought. She had always had a generous share of the
family devotion, but she entirely eclipsed the others now. Her
daily letter from Martin, her new prospects, not only increased
her importance in the other girls' eyes, but innocently inflated
her own self-confidence. She received a diamond ring, and although
at her father's request she did not show it for a few weeks,
eventually it slipped mysteriously from the little chamois bag on