er, Lyd, and he's really seriously
reconsidering it. You see the instant Pa dies, the Bank will foreclose,
for neither you nor I have a cent, and Len is tied up for years with
the Estates--"

Martie began to speak eagerly and quickly. But her voice died before
Lydia's look.

"Martie! How can you! Speaking of Pa's death in that callous,
cold-blooded way; when poor Ma hasn't been buried three years--and now
dear old Grandma Sark--"

Lydia fumbled for a handkerchief, and began to sob. After a few
moments, in which Martie only offered a few timid pats on her shoulder
for consolation, she suddenly dried her eyes, and began with bitter
clearness:

"I know who has done this, Mart! I don't say much, but I see. I see now
where all your petting of Pa, and humouring Pa, was leading! Oh, how
can you--how can you--how CAN you! My home, the dear old Monroe place,
that three generations of us--but I won't stand it! I feel as if Ma
would rise up and rebuke me! No, you and Pa can decide what you please,
but no power on earth will make me--and where would we live, might I
ask? We couldn't go to the Poor House, I suppose?"

"Pa'd build a lovely house, smaller and more modern, on the Estates,"
Martie explained. Lydia assumed a look of high scorn.

"Oh, indeed!" she said, gulping and wiping her eyes again. "Indeed! Is
that so? Move out there so that Len would prosper, so that there would
be one more house out on that DESOLATE flat field--very well, you and
Pa can go! But I stay here!"

And trembling all over, as she always did tremble when forced into
anything but a mildly neutral position, Lydia went upstairs. The dinner
hour was embittered by a painful discussion and by more tears.

Malcolm was somewhat inclined to waver toward Lydia's view, but Martie
was firm. When Lydia tearfully protested that, just as it stood, the
house would made an ideal "gentleman's estate," Martie mercilessly
answered that at its present level, without electric light or garage or
baths, it was just so much "old wood and plaster." Lydia winced at this
term as if she had been struck.

"How would you pay taxes and interest, if anything happened to Pa?"
Martie demanded briskly.

"We would have no rent to pay," Lydia countered quickly, red spots
burning in her cheeks, and giving her mild face an unusually wild look.
"Why do people own their homes, if there's no economy in it?"

"Rent doesn't come to three thousand a year!" Martie reminded her.
Lydia lo