tage of Lanham's; it's the only vacant house
in the village, and he's promised to wait for the rent, so that
confounded old Norton needn't advance me a cent."

Esther flushed. "What do you suppose makes him act so?" she questioned,
though she knew.

Joe blushed too. "He don't like it because I'm going to work in the
factory when it opens. But Mis' Norton and Sarah have done everything
for me," he added, decidedly.

Up to the time of his engagement Joe had been in the habit of showing
Sarah Norton an occasional brotherly attention, and he would have
continued to do so had not Esther and Mrs. Robinson interfered--Esther
from girlish jealousy, and her mother because she did not approve of the
family, she said. She could not say she did not approve of Sarah, for
there was not a more upright, self-respecting girl in the village. But
Sarah, because of her father's miserliness, often went out for extra
work when the neighbors needed help, and this was the real cause of Mrs.
Robinson's feeling. Unconsciously she made the same distinction between
Sarah Norton and Esther that some of the more ambitious of the village
mothers made between their girls and her own daughter. Then it was
common talk that old Jim Norton, for obvious reasons, was displeased
with Joe's matrimonial plans, but Mrs. Robinson professed to believe
that the wife and daughter were really the ones disappointed. Now Esther
began twisting a button of Joe's coat.

"I don't believe mother'll ask either of 'em to the wedding," said she.

When Mrs. Robinson entered, Esther stood expectant and fearful by the
table. Her mother drew up a chair and reached for the bread.

"I didn't stop anywhere for supper. You've had yours, 'ain't you?"

The girl nodded.

"Joe come?"

"He just left."

But Mrs. Robinson was not to be hurried into divulging the result of her
calls. She remained massively mysterious. Esther began to wish she had
not hurried Joe off so unceremoniously. After her first cup of tea,
however, her mother asked for a slip of paper and a pencil. "I want that
pencil in my machine drawer, that writes black, and any kind of paper'll
do," she said.

Esther brought them; then she took up her sewing. She was not without a
certain self-restraint. Mrs. Robinson, between her sips of tea, wrote.
The soft gurgle of her drinking annoyed Esther, and she had a tingling
desire to snatch the paper. After a last misdirected placing of her cup
in her plate, however, he