fore they'll advertise. Probably he's a widower. Object:
matrimony; that mostly is a widower's main object in life; and you
can't show 'em nothing except when you bury 'em."

"I'd die before I'd answer that sort of a thing!" said Mary Warren
hotly.

"You would," replied Annie. "I know that. I knew it all along.
That's why I had to take it into my own hands." Again the cynical
smile of Annie Squires, twenty-two.

"Your own hands--what do you mean by that?"

"I might as well tell you. I've been writing to him in your name!
I've sent him a _picture_ of you--I got it in the bureau drawer. And
he's crazy over you!"

Mary Warren looked at her with wrath, humiliation and offended dignity
showing in her reddened cheeks.

"You had the audacity to do that, Annie! How _dared_ you? How _could_
you?"

"Well, I was afraid of the lake for you, and I knew that something had
to be done, and you wouldn't do it. I've got quite a batch of letters
from him. He's got three hundred and twenty acres of land, eight cows,
a horse and a mule. He has a house which is all right except it lacks
the loving care of a woman! Well, stack that up against this room.
And we can't even keep this for very long.

"Listen, Mary," she said, coming over and putting both her broken hands
on her friend's shoulders. "God knows, if I could keep us both going I
would, but I don't make money enough for myself, hardly, let alone you.
You don't belong where you've been--you wouldn't, even if you was well
and fit, which you ain't. Mollie, Mollie, my dear, what is there ahead
for you? We _got_ to do some thinking. It's up to us right now.
You're too good for the lake or the poor farm--or--why, you _belong_ in
a home. Keep house? I wish't I knew as much as you do about that."

"I'll tell you," she resumed suddenly. "I'll tell you what let's do!
A stenographer down at our office does all these letters for me--she's
a bear, come to correspondence like that. Now, I'll have her get out a
letter from you to him that will sort of bring this thing to a head one
way or the other. We'll say that you can't think of going out there to
marry a man sight-unseen----"

"No," said Mary Warren. "The lake, first." She was wringing her
hands, her cheeks hot.

"But now, as a housekeeper----" After a long and perturbed silence
Annie spoke again. "That's the real live idea, Sis! That's the dope!
You might _think_ of going out there as a housekeeper, just