Even more bewildering was the change in Cherry. There was a
certain hardening that impressed Alix at once. There was a weary
sort of patience, a disillusioned concession to the drabness of
married life. Alix, after meeting some of the other wives at the
mine--there were but five or six--saw that Cherry had been
affected by them. There was general sighing over the housework, a
mild conviction that men were all selfish and unreasonable. "And I
must say," Alix's first letter to her father admitted, "that the
men here are all dogs, except the ones that are under dogs!"

But she allowed the younger sister to see nothing of this. Indeed,
Cherry so brightened under the stimulus of Alix's companionship
that Martin told her that she was more like her old self than she
had been for months. Joyously she divided her responsibilities
with Alix, explaining the difficulties of marketing and
housekeeping, and joyously Alix assumed them. Her vitality
infected the whole household, and, indeed, the mine as well. She
flirted, cooked, entertained, talked incessantly; she bullied
Martin and laughed at him, and it did him good.

Perhaps, thought Alix, rather appalled at Cherry's attitude,
Cherry had been too young for wifehood. Sometimes she spoiled and
humoured Martin, and sometimes quarrelled with him childishly,
scolding and fretting for her own way, and angry with conditions
over which neither he nor she had any control. Alix was surprised
to see the old pout, and hear the old phrase of Cherry's indulged
girlhood: "I don't think this is any FUN!"

"Anne isn't one half as clever or as pretty as Cherry, but she'll