jar of honey, or a loaf of cake, had been contributed to Cherry's
dinner by the interested women in the near-by cottages. In all,
there were not a dozen families at the "Emmy Younger," and Cherry
was watched with interest and sympathy during her first efforts at
housekeeping.

By midwinter she had settled down to the business of life, buying
bacon and lard and sugar and matches at the store of the mine,
cooking and cleaning, sweeping and making beds. She still kissed
Martin good-bye every morning, and met him with an affectionate
rush at the door when he came home, and they played Five Hundred
evening after evening after dinner, quarrelling for points, and
laughing at each other, while rain sluiced down on the "Emmy
Younger," and dripped on the porch. But sometimes she wondered how
it had all come about, wondered what had become of the violent
emotions that had picked her out of the valley home, and
established her here, in this strange place, with this man she had
never seen a year ago.

Of these emotions little was left. She still liked Martin, she
told herself, and she still told him that she loved him. But she
knew she did not love him, and in such an association as theirs
there can be no liking. Her thoughts rarely rested on him; she was
either thinking of the prunes that were soaking, the firewood that
was running low, the towels that a wet breeze was blowing on the
line; or she was far away, drifting in vague realms where feelings
entirely strange to this bare little mining camp, and this hungry,
busy, commonplace man, held sway. Cherry was in the position of a
leading lady mysteriously forced into a minor role; she had never
known what she wanted in life, and was learning now in a hard