at was wrapped about a cake of soap,
the magazines of which she had grown so tired, the rumpled night-wear.

"I suppose I should hang these up; we may not get the trunks to-night."

"Oh, you will!" Lydia reassured her. A certain blankness fell on them
all. It was the glaring spring hour of four o'clock; not lunch time,
nor dinner time, nor bed time, nor time to go to market. Suddenly a
tear fell on Martie's hand; she sniffed.

"Ah, don't, Mart!" Lydia said, fumbling for her own handkerchief. "We
know--we know how hard it is! Your husband, and Ma not here to welcome
you--"

The sisters cried together.

But she slept well in the old walnut bed, and enjoyed a delicious,
unfamiliar leisure the next morning, when Teddy was turned out to the
safety of the yard, and Pa, after paternally reassuring her as to her
welcome and pompously reiterating that her old father's home was hers
for the rest of her life, was gone. She and Lydia talked deeply over
the breakfast table, while Pauline rattled dishes in the kitchen and a
soft fog pressed against the windows.

Martie had said that she was going over to Sally's immediately after
breakfast, but, in the old way, time drifted by. She went upstairs to
make her bed, and she and Lydia talked again, from doorway to doorway.
When they were finally dressed to walk down town, Lydia said that she
might as well go to market first; they could stop at Sally's afterward.

Teddy galloped and curveted about them; Monroe enchanted Teddy. The
sunshine was just pushing back the fog, and the low hills all about the
town were coming into view, when Martie took her son in to meet Miss
Fanny.

Grayer and thinner, the librarian was otherwise unchanged. The old
strong, coarse voice, the old plain dress, serviceable and comfortable,
the old delighted affection. Miss Fanny wore glasses now; she beamed
upon Teddy as she put them on, after frankly wiping her eyes.

She made a little fuss about Martie's joining the Library, so that
Teddy could take home "Davy and the Goblin."

They went out into the warming, drying Main Street again; everywhere
Martie was welcomed. In the shops and on the street humble old friends
eyed her black respectfully.

The nervousness that she had felt about coming back began to melt like
the mist itself. She had dreaded Monroe's old standards, dreaded Rose
and Len, and the effect her poverty must have on them. Now she began to
see that Rose mattered as little here as she had