beamed upon
them.

"Well, how are ye? And your mother's well? Well, and what are ye
buying--trousseaux?"

"We're just looking, Father," Martie giggled. "Looking for husbands
first, and then clothes!"

Laughing, the girls walked with him across the street to Mallon's
Hardware Emporium, where baskets of jelly glasses were set out on the
damp sidewalk, with enamel saucepans marked "29c." and "19c." in black
paint, carpet sweepers, oil stoves, and pink-and-blue glass vases. They
went on to the shoe shop, to the grocery, to the post-office, past the
express office, where Joe Hawkes sat whittling in the sun. They paused
to study with eager interest the flaring posters on the fences that
announced the impending arrival of Poulson's Star Stock Company, for
one night only, in "The Sword of the King." They discovered with
surprise that it was nearly twelve o'clock, bought five cents' worth of
rusty, sweet, Muscat grapes, to be eaten on the way home, and turned
their faces toward the bridge.

But the morning, for Martie, had held its golden moment. When they
passed the Bank, Sally had been dreaming, as Sally almost always was,
but Martie's eyes had gone from shining gold-lettered window to window,
and with that new, sweet suffocation at her heart she had found the
object of her searching--the satiny crest of Rodney Parker's sleek
hair, the fresh-coloured profile that had been in her waking and
sleeping thoughts since yesterday. He was evidently hard at work;
indeed he was nervous and discouraged, had Martie but known it; he did
not look up.

But Martie did not want him to look up. She wanted only the stimulation
to her thoughts that the sight of him caused, the enchanting
realization that he was there. She had a thrilling vision of herself
entering that bank, a privileged person, "young Mrs. Rodney." Old Judge
Parker coming out of his private office with his hands full of papers
would nod to her with his fatherly smile, Rodney grin the proud yet
embarrassed grin of a man confronted in office hours by his women-folk.

Suddenly Martie decided that she would begin to save money. She and
Sally had jointly fallen heir to a young Durham cow when Cousin Sally
Buckingham died, and the cow being sold for thirty-five dollars,
exactly seventeen dollars and fifty cents had been deposited in the
bank in each girl's name. This was four years ago; neither one ever
dreamed of touching the precious nest-egg; to them it represented
wealth