"I'm going to take
my coffee black, anyway. I'm getting too fat!"

"Oh, Martie, you are not!" Sally laughed.

"That's foolish--you'll just upset your health!" her mother added
disapprovingly.

Martie's only answer was a buoyant kiss. She and Sally carried their
breakfast into the dining room, where they established themselves
comfortably at one end of the long table. While they ate, dipping their
toast in the coffee, buttering and rebuttering it, they chattered as
tirelessly as if they had been deprived of each other's society and
confidence for weeks.

The morning was dark and foggy, and a coal fire slumbered in the grate,
giving out a bitter, acrid smell. Against the windows the soft mist
pressed, showing a yellow patch toward the southeast, where the sun
would pierce it after a while.

Malcolm Monroe came downstairs at about nine o'clock, and the girls
gathered up their dishes and disappeared in the direction of the
kitchen. Not that Ma would not, as usual, prepare their father's toast
and bacon with her own hands, and not that Lydia would not, as usual,
serve it. The girls were not needed. But Pa always made it impossible
for them to be idle and comfortable over their own meal. If he did not
actually ask them to fetch butter or water, or if he could find no
reasonable excuse for fault-finding, he would surely introduce some
dangerous topic; lure them into admissions, stand ready to pursue any
clue. He did not like to see young girls care-free and contented; time
enough for that later on! And as years robbed him of actual dignities,
and as Monroe's estimate of him fell lower and lower, he turned upon
his daughters the authority, the carping and controlling that might
otherwise have been spent upon respectful employees and underlings. He
found some relief for a chafed and baffled spirit in the knowledge that
Sally and Martie were helpless, were bound to obey, and could easily be
made angry and unhappy.

Lydia, her father's favourite, came in with a loaded tray, just as Len,
slipping down the back stairs, was being stealthily regaled by his
mother on a late meal in the kitchen. Len had no particular desire for
his father's undiluted company.

"Good morning, Pa!" Lydia said, with a kiss for his cool forehead.
"Your paper's right there by the fire; there's quite a fog, and it got
wet."

Hands locked, she settled herself opposite him, and revolved in her
mind the terms in which she might lay before him the youn