Martie The Unconquered | Page 9

quick, laughing good-night, and ran to join her sister just before Sally opened the side gate. It was now quite dark.
The two girls crossed the sunken garden where clumps of flowers bloomed dimly under the dark old trees, gave one apprehensive glance at the big house, which showed here and there a dully lighted window, and fled noiselessly in at the side door. They ran through a wide, bare, unaired hallway, and up a long flight of unlighted stairs that were protected over their dark carpeting by a worn brown oilcloth.
Sally, and Martie breathless, entered an enormous bedroom, shabbily and scantily furnished. The outline of a large walnut bedstead was visible in the gloom, and the dark curtains that screened two bay windows. Across the room by a wide, dark bureau, a single gas jet on a jointed brass arm had been drawn out close to the mirror, and by its light a slender woman of twenty-seven or eight was straightening her hair. Not combing or brushing it, for the Monroe girls always combed their hair and coiled it when they got up in the morning, and took it down when they went to bed at night. Between times they only "straightened" it.
As the younger girls came in, and flung their hats on the bed, their sister turned on them reproachfully.
"Martie, mama's furious!" she said. "And I do think it's perfectly terrible, you and Sally running round town at all hours like this. It's after six o'clock!"
"I can't help it if it is!" Martie said cheerfully. "Pa home?"
She asked the all-important question with more trepidation than she showed. Both she and Sally hung anxiously on the reply.
"No; Pa was to come on the four-eleven, and either he missed it, or else something's kept him down town," Lydia said in her flat, gentle voice. "Len's not home either ..."
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!" Martie ejaculated piously, with her gay, wild laugh. "Tell Lyd who we met, Sally!" she called back, as she ran downstairs.
She dashed through the dining room, noting with gratitude that dear old Lyd had set the table in spite of her disapproval. Beyond the big, gloomy room was an enormous pantry, with a heavy swinging door opening into a large kitchen. In this kitchen, in the dim light from one gas jet, and in the steam from sink and stove, Mrs. Monroe and her one small servant were in the last hot and hurried stages of dinner-getting.
Martie kissed her mother's flushed and sunken cheek; a process to which Mrs. Monroe submitted with reproachful eyes and compressed lips.
"I don't like this, Martie!" said her mother, shaking her head. "What were you and Sally doing to be so late?"
"Oh, nothing," Martie said ashamedly. "I'm awf'ly sorry. I had no idea what time it was!"
"Well, I certainly will have Pa speak to you, if you can't get into the house before dark!" Mrs. Monroe said in mild protest. "Lyd stopped her sewing to set the table."
"Len home?" Martie, now slicing bread, asked resentfully.
"No. But a boy is different," Mrs. Monroe answered as she had answered hundreds of times before. "Not that I approve of Len's actions, either," she added. "But a man can take care of himself, of course! Len's always late for meals," she went on. "Seems like he can't get it through his head that it makes a difference if you sit down when things are ready or when they're all dried up. But Pa's late anyway to-night, so it doesn't matter much!"
Martie carried the bread on its ugly, heavy china plate in to the table, entering from the pantry just as her father came in from the hall.
"Hello, Pa!" said the girl, placing the bread on the wrinkled cloth with housewifely precision.
Malcolm Monroe gave his youngest daughter glance of lowering suspicion. But there was no cause for definite question, and Martie, straightening the salt-cellars lovingly, knew it.
"Where's your sister?" her father asked discontentedly.
"Upstairs, straightening her hair for dinner, I THINK." Martie was sweetly responsive. "But I can find out, Pa."
"No matter. Here, take these things." Martie carried away the overcoat and hat, and hung them on the hat rack in the hall.
"Joe Hawkes wants to know if you wish to pay him for driving you up, Pa," Sally said, coming in from the steps. Dutifully, meekly, she stood looking at her father. Lydia, coming in from the kitchen, gave him a respectful yet daughterly kiss. Singly and collectively there was no fault to be found with the Monroe girls to-night, even by the most exacting parent.
"Your sister said you were upstairs, Sally," Malcolm said, narrowing his eyes.
"So I was, Pa, but I came down to light the hall gas, and while I was there Joe came to the door," Sally answered innocently.
"H'm! Well, you tell him