red indeed. The
truth was, she was doing a thing she had a talent for.

"And I'm not tired!" she marveled. The change of air was responsible
for that, of course.

She went back to her forgotten cabin, singing beneath her breath. It
had a rather tousled air, but in her new enthusiasm she went through it
like a whirlwind. She attacked her own room first, and created
spotless order in it. Then she went at the living-room. Then--it was
with a curious reluctance--she climbed the stairs to Francis's absurd
little curtained balcony.

Francis, evidently, did not sleep so very well, or he had not that
night at all events. The couch was very tossed, one pillow lay on the
ground with a dent in its midst as if an angry hand had thrust it
there, and, most unfairly, hit it after it was down. The covers were
"every which way," as Marjorie said, picking them up and shaking them
out with housewifely care. Francis's pajamas and a shabby brown terry
bath-robe lay about the floor, the bathrobe in a ridiculously lifelike
position with both its sleeves thrown forward over the pillow, as if it
were trying to comfort it for all it had been through.

Everything had aired since morning, so she disguised the couch again in
its slip-cover, put the cretonne covers back on the pillows, and the
couch stood decorous and daytime-like again. She laid her hand on the
pillow for a moment after she was all through, as if she were touching
something she was sorry for.

"Poor Francis!" she said softly, smiling a little. "After all, he
isn't so terribly much older than I am." She felt suddenly motherly
toward him, and like being very kind. That maltreated pillow was so
funny and boylike. "It isn't a bit like the storybooks," she mused.
"In them you get all thrilled because a man is so masterful. Well,"
Marjorie tried to be truthful, even when she was alone with herself and
the couch, "I guess I was thrilled, a little, when he carried me off
that way. I certainly couldn't have gone if I'd known about the
housework business. But now, the only part of him I like is when he
_isn't_ sitting on me. . . . I wonder if I'll ever be the same person,
after all this?"

She never would. But, though she wondered, she did not really think
that she was changing or would change. As a matter of fact, she had
made more decisions, gone through more emotions, and become more of a
woman in the little time since Francis had carried her off than in all
he