Martie The Unconquered | Page 9

disconsolately what might be arranged to amuse
him. Fortnightly dances--that was the thing; they ought to have Friday
Fortnightlies.
The very word fired the girl. She heard the whine of violins, the click
of fans, the light shuffle of satin-clad feet. Her eyes saw dazzling lights,
shifting colours, in the dull September twilight.
"You could have one at your house," Rodney suggested.
"Of course we could! Our rooms are immense," Martie agreed eagerly.
"To begin--say the last Friday in October!" the boy said. "You look up
the date, and we'll get together on the lists!"
Get together on the lists! Martie's heart closed over the phrase with a
sort of spasm of pleasure. She and Rodney conferring-- arranging! The
bliss--the dignity of it! She would have considered anything, promised
anything.
Grace was gone now, and generous little Sally still ahead of them in the
shadows. Martie said a 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