IV

Martin couldn't settle down after his solitary dinner that night.

Several times he had jumped out of his father's reading chair and stood

listening at the window. It seemed to him that some one had called his

name. But the only sounds that broke the exquisite quietude of the

night were the distant barking of a dog, the whirl of an automobile on

the road or the pompous crowing of a master of a barnyard, taken up and

answered by others near and far.

Each time the boy had stood at the open window and peered out eagerly

and wistfully, but nothing had moved across the moon-bathed lawn or

disturbed the sleeping flowers. Under the cold light of the stars the

earth appeared to be more than usually peaceful and drowsy. All was

well.

But the boy's blood tingled, and he was filled with an unexplainable

sense of excitement. Some one needed him, and he wanted urgently to be

needed. He turned from the window and ran his eyes over the long, wide,

low-ceilinged masculine room, every single thing in which spelled

Father to him; then he went back to the chair the right to sit in which

had been given to him by death, persuaded that over the unseen wires

that stretch from heart to heart a signal had been sent, certain that

he was to hold himself in readiness to do something for Joan.

He had written out the words, "We count it death to falter, not to die"

on a long strip of card in big bold letters. They faced him as he sat

and read over and over again what he regarded as his father's message.

It was a call to service, an inspiration to activity, and it had

already filled him with the determination to fall into step with the

movement of the world, to put the money of which he was now the most

reluctant owner to some use as soon as the necessary legal steps of

proving his father's Will had been taken. He had made up his mind to

leave the countryside at the end of the week and meet his father's

lawyers and take advice as to how he could hitch himself to some

vigorous and operative pursuit. He was going, please God, to build up a

workmanlike monument to the memory of his father.

Ten o'clock struck, and uninterested in his book, he would have gone to

bed but for the growing feeling that he was not his own master, that he

might be required at any moment. The feeling became so strong that

finally he got up and went into the hall. He couldn't wait any longer.

He must go out, slip into the garden of the Ludlow house and search the

windows for a sight of Joan.

He unbolted the front door, gave a little gasp and found himself face

to face with the girl who was in his thoughts.

There was a ripple of excited laughter; a bag was thrust into his hand,

and like a bird escaped from a cage, Joan darted past him into the hall.

"I've done it," she cried, "I've done it!" And she broke into a dance.

Martin shut the door, put the bulging suit-case on a chair and watched

the girl as she whirled about the hall, as graceful as a water sprite,

with eyes alight with mischief and animation. The sight of her was so

bewitching, the fact that she had come to him for help so good, that

his curiosity to know what it was that she had done fell away.

Suddenly she came to a breathless stop and caught hold of his arm.

"Bolt the door, Marty," she said, "quickly, quickly! They may send

after me when they find I've got away. I'll never go back, never,

never!"

All the spirit of romance in the boy's nature flamed. This was a great

adventure. He had become a knight errant, the rescuer of a damsel in

distress. He shot the bolts back, turned out the lights, took Joan's

hand and led her into his father's room.

"Turn these lights out too," she said. "Make it look as if everybody

had gone to bed."

He did so, with a sort of solemn sense of responsibility; and it was in

a room lighted only by a shaft of pale moonlight that fell in a pool

upon the polished floor that these two utterly inexperienced children

sat knee to knee, the one to pour out her story, the other to listen

and hold his breath.

"I was right about Gleave. He was spying. It turns out that he's been

watching us for two or three days. When I went back this afternoon, I

got a look from Mrs. Nye that told me there was a row in the air. I was

later than usual and rushed up to my room to change for dinner. The

whole house seemed awfully quiet and ominous, like the air before a

thunderstorm. I expected to be sent for at once to stand like a

criminal before Grandfather and Grandmother--but nothing happened. All

through dinner, while Gleave tottered about, they sat facing each other

at the long table, conducting,--that's the only word to describe it,--a

polite conversation. Neither of them took any notice of me or even once

looked my way. Even Gleave put things in front of me as though he

didn't see me, and when I caught the watery eyes of the old dogs, they

both seemed to make faces and go 'Yah!'"

"It was weird, and would have been frightfully funny if I hadn't known

that sooner or later I should have to stand up and take my dose. Phew,

it was a ghastly meal. I'm certain I shall dream it all over again

every time I eat something that doesn't agree with me! It was a great

relief when at last Grandmother turned at the door and looking at my

feet as though they were curiosities, said: 'Joan, you will follow us

to the drawing-room.' Her voice was cold enough to freeze the sea."

"Then she went out, her stick rapping the floor, Grandfather after her

with his shoulders bent and a piece of bread on the back of his dinner

jacket. The two dogs followed, and I made up the tail of that queer

procession. I hate that stiff, cheerless drawing room anyhow, with all

its shiny cases of china and a collection of all the uncomfortable

chairs ever designed since Adam. I wanted to laugh and cry, and when I

saw myself in the glass, I couldn't believe that I wasn't a little

shivering girl with a ribbon in my hair and white socks."

Some one whistled outside. The girl seized the boy's arm in a sudden

panic of fright.

"It's all right," he said. "It's only the gardener going to his

cottage."

Joan laughed, and her grip relaxed. "I'm jumpy," she said. "My nerves

are all over the place. Do you wonder?"

"No, tell me the rest."

Joan's voice took on a little deeper note like that of a child who has

come to the really creepy bit of his story. "Marty," she went on, "I

wish you could have heard the way in which Grandmother let herself go!

She held me by the scruff of my neck and hit me right and left with the

sort of sarcasm that made me crinkle. According to her, I was on the

downward path. I had done something quite hopeless and unforgivable.

She didn't know how she could bring herself to report the affair--think

of calling it an affair, Marty!--to my poor mother. Mother, who'd never

say a word to me, whatever I did! She might have out-of-date views, she

said, of how young girls should behave, but they were the right views,

and so long as I was under her roof and in her care, she would see that

I conformed to them. She went on making a mountain out of our little

molehill, till even Grandfather broke in with a word; and then she

snapped at him, got into her second wind and went off again. I didn't

listen half the time. I just stood and watched her as you'd watch one

of those weird old women in one of Dickens' books come to life. What I

remember of it all is that I am deceitful and fast, ungrateful,

irresponsible, with no sense of decency, and when at last she

pronounced sentence, what do you think it was? Confinement to the house

for a week and if after that, I ever meet you again, to be packed off

to a finishing-school in Massachusetts. She rapped her stick on the

floor by way of a full stop, and waved her hand toward the door. I

never said a word, not a single one. What was the use? I gave her a

little bow and went. Just as I was going to rush upstairs and think

over what I could do, Grandfather came out and told me to go to his

room to read something to him. And there, for the first time, he let me

see what a fine old fellow he really is. He agreed with Grandmother

that I ought not to have met you on the sly. It was dangerous, he said,

though perfectly natural. He was afraid I found it very trying to live

among a lot of old grouches with their best feet in the grave, but he

begged me to put up with it because he would miss me so. He liked

having me about, not only to read to him but to look at. I reminded him

of Grandmother when she was young, and life was worth living.

"I cried then. I couldn't help it--more for his sake than mine. He

spoke with such a funny sort of sadness. 'Be patient, my dear,' he

said. 'Treat us both with a little kindness. You're top dog. You have

all your life before you. Make allowances for two old people entering

second childhood. You'll be old some day, you know.' And he said this

with such a twisted sort of smile that I felt awfully sorry for him,

and he saw it and opened out and told me how appalling it was to become

feeble when the heart is as young as ever. I had no idea he felt like

that."

"When I left him I tried hard to be as patient as he asked me to be and

wait till Mother comes back and make the allowances he spoke about and

give up seeing you and all that. But when I got up to my room with the

echo of Grandmother's rasping voice in my ears, the thought of being

shut up in the house for a week and treated like a lunatic was too much

for me. What had I done that every other healthy girl doesn't do every

day without a question? How COULD I go on living there, watched and

suspected? How could I put up any longer with the tyranny of an old

lady who made me feel artificial and foolish and humiliated--a kind of

doll stuffed with saw dust?

"Marty, I couldn't do it. I simply couldn't. Something went snap, and I

just flung a few things into a suit-case, dropped it out the window,

climbed down the creeper and made a dash for freedom. Nothing on earth

will ever take me back to that house again, nothing, nothing!"

All this had been said with a mixture of humor and emotion that carried

the boy before it. He saw and heard everything as she described it. His

own relations with his father, which had been so free and friendly,

made Joan's with those two old people seem fantastic and impossible.

All his sympathy went out to her. To help her to get away appealed to

him as being as humane as releasing a squirrel from a trap. No thought

of the fact that she was a girl who had rushed impulsively into a most

awkward position struck him. Into his healthy mind no sex question

thrust itself. She was his friend, and as such, her claim upon him was

overwhelming and unarguable.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked. "Have you thought of anything?"

"Of course I have. In the morning, early, before they find out that

I've bolted, you must drive me to New York and take me to Alice

Palgrave. She'll put me up, and I can telegraph to Mother for money to

buy clothes with. Does it occur to you, Marty, that you're the cause of

all this? If I hadn't turned and found you that afternoon, I should

still be eating my soul away and having my young life crushed. As it

is, you've forced my hand. So you're going to take me to the magic

city, and if you want to see how a country cousin makes up for lost

time and sets things humming, watch me!"

So they talked and talked, sitting in that room which was made the very

sanctum of romance by young blood and moonlight. Eleven o'clock slipped

by, and twelve and one; and while the earth slept, watched by a million

glistening eyes, and nature moved imperceptibly one step nearer to

maturity, this boy and girl made plans for the discovery of a world out

of which so many similar explorers have crept with wounds and

bitterness.

They were wonderful and memorable hours, not ever to be lived again.

They were the hours that all youth enjoys and delights in once--when,

like gold-diggers arrived in sight of El Dorado, they halt and peer at

the chimera that lies at their feet--

"I'm going to make my mark," Martin said. "I'm going to make something

that will last. My father's name was Martin Gray, and I'll make it MEAN

some thing out there for his sake."

"And I," said Joan, springing to her feet and throwing up her chin,

"will go joy-riding in the huge round-about. I've seen what it is to be

old and useless, and so I shall make the most of every day and hour

while I'm young. I can live only once, and so I shall make life spin

whatever way I want it to go. If I can get anybody to pay my whack,

good. If not, I'll pay it myself--whatever it costs. My motto's going

to be a good time as long as I can get it, and who cares for the price?"

The boy followed her to the window, and the moonlight fell upon them

both. "Yes," he said, "you'll get a bill, all right. How did you know

that?"

"I haven't lived with all those old people so long for nothing," she

answered. "But you won't catch me grumbling if I get half as much as

I'm going out for. Listen to my creed, Martin, and take notes, if you

want to keep up with me."

"Go ahead," he said, watching the sparkle in her eyes.

She squared her shoulders and folded her arms in a half-defiant way. "I

shall open the door of every known Blue Room--hurrying out again if

there are ugly things inside, staying to enjoy them if they're good to

look at. I shall taste a little of every known bottle, feel everything

there is to feel except the thing that hurts, laugh with any one whose

laugh is catching, do everything there is to do, go into every booth in

the big Bazaar; and when I'm tired out and there's nothing left, I

shall slip out of the endless procession with a thousand things stored

away in my memory. Isn't that the way to live?"

From the superior height of twenty-four, Martin looked down on Joan

indulgently. He didn't take her frank and unblushing individualism

seriously. She was just a kid, he told himself. She was a girl who had

been caged up and held in. It was natural for her to say all those wild

things. She would alter her point of view as soon as the first surprise

of being free had worn off--and then he would speak; then he would ask

her to throw in her lot with his and walk in step with him along the

street of adventure.

"I sha'n't see the sun rise on this great day," she said, letting a

yawn have full play. "I'm sleepy, Marty. I must lie down this very

instant, even if the floor's the only place you can offer me. Quick!

What else is there?" Before he could answer, she had caught sight of a

low, long, enticing divan, and onto this, with a gurgle of pleasure,

she made a dive, placed two cushions for her head, put one little hand

under her face, snuggled into an attitude of perfect comfort and

deliberately went to sleep. It was masterly.

Martin, not believing that she could turn off so suddenly at a complete

tangent, spoke to her once or twice but got no other answer than a

long, contented sigh. He stood for a little while trying to make out

her outline in the dim corner of the room. Then he tiptoed out to the

hall, possessed himself of a warm motor-rug, returned with it and laid

it gently and tenderly over the unconscious girl.

He didn't intend to let sleep rob him of the first sight of a day that

was to mean so much to him, and he went over to the open window, caught

the scent of lilac and listened, with all his imagination and sense of

beauty stirred, to the deep breathing of the night.... Yes, he had cut

through the bars which had kept this girl from taking her place among

the crowd. He was responsible for the fact that she was about to play

her part in the comedy of life. He was glad to be responsible. He had

passionately desired a cause to which to attach himself; and was there,

in all the world, a better than Joan?

Spring had come again, and all things were young, and the call to mate

rang in his ears and set his heart beating and his thoughts racing

ahead. He loved her, this girl that he had come upon standing out in

all her freshness against a blue sky. He would serve her as the great

lovers had served, and please God, she would some day return his love.

They would build up a home and bring up a family and go together up the

inevitable hill.

And as he stood sentinel, in a waking dream, waiting for the finger of

dawn to rub the night away, sleep tapped him on the shoulder, and he

turned and went to the divan and sat down with his back to it, touched

one of Joan's placid hands with his lips and drifted into further

dreams with a smile around his mouth.

V

It was ten o'clock in the morning when Martin brought his car to a stop

and looked up at the heavy Gothic decorations of a pompous house in

East Fifty-fifth Street. "Is this it?"

"Yes," said Joan, getting out of the leather-lined coat that he had

wrapped her in. "It really is a house, isn't it; and luckily, all the

gargoyles are on the outside." She held out her hand and gave Martin

the sort of smile for which any genuine man would sell his soul.

"Marty," she added, "you've been far more than a brother to me. You've

been a cousin. I shall never be able to thank you. And I adored the

drive with our noses turned to the city. I shan't be able to be seen on

the streets until I've got some frocks, so please come and see me every

day. As soon as Alice has got over her shock at the sight of me, I'm

going to compose an historical letter to Grandmother."

"Let her down lightly," said Martin, climbing out with the suit-case.

"You've won."

"Yes, that's true; but I shouldn't be a woman if I didn't get in the

last word."

"You're not a woman," said Martin. "You're a kid, and you're in New

York, and you're light-headed; so look out."

Joan laughed at his sudden gravity and ran up the wide steps and put

her finger on the bell. "I've written down your telephone number," she

said, "and memorized your address. I'll call you up at three o'clock

this afternoon, and if you've nothing else to do, you may take me for a

walk in the Park."

"I sha'n't have anything else to do."

The door was opened. The footman was obviously English, with the art of

footmanism in his blood.

"Is Mrs. Gilbert Palgrave at home?" asked Joan as if the question were

entirely superfluous.

"No, miss."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure, miss. Mrs. Palgrave left for Boston yesterday on account

of hillness in the family, miss."

There was an awkward and appalled silence. Little did the man suspect

the kind of blow that his statement contained.

Joan darted an agonized look at Martin.

"But Mr. Palgrave is at 'ome, miss."

And that galvanized the boy into action. He had met Gilbert Palgrave

out hunting. He had seen the impertinent, cocksure way in which he ran

his eyes over women. He clutched the handle of the case and said:

"That's all right, thanks. Miss Ludlow will write to Mrs. Palgrave."

Then he turned and went down the steps to the car.

Trying to look unconcerned, Joan followed.

"Get in, quick," said Martin. "We'll talk as we go."

"But why? If I don't stay here, where am I to stay?"

"I don't know. Please get in."

Joan stood firm. The color had come back to her face, and a look of

something like anger had taken the place of fright. "I didn't tell you

to march off like that. Gilbert's here."

"That's why we're going," Said Martin.

"I don't understand." Her eyes were blazing.

"I know you don't. You can't stay in that house. It isn't done."

"I can do it, and I must do it. Do you suppose I'm going back with my

tail between my legs?"

"If we argue here, we shall collect a crowd." He got into the car and

held out his hand.

Joan ignored it but followed him in. She was angry, puzzled,

disappointed, nonplussed. Alice had no right to be away on such an

occasion. Everything had looked so easy and smooth-sailing. Even Martin

had changed into a different man, and was ordering her about. If he

thought he could drive her back to that prison again, he was

considerably wrong. She would never go back, never.

The car was running slowly. "Have you any other friends in town?" asked

Martin, who seemed to be trying to hide an odd kind of excitement.

"No," said Joan. "Alice is my only friend here. Drive to some place

where I can call up Gilbert Palgrave and explain the whole thing. What

does it matter about my being alone? If I don't mind, who should?

Please do as I say. There's no other place for me to go to, and wild

horses sha'n't drag me back."

"You sha'n't go back," said Martin. He turned the car up Madison Avenue

and drove without another word to East Sixty-seventh Street and stopped

in front of a small house that was sandwiched between a mansion and a

twelve-story apartment-house. "This is mine," he said simply. "Will you

come in?"

A smile of huge relief came into Joan's eyes. "Why worry?" she said.

"How foolish of us not to have thought of this before!"

But there was no smile on Martin's face. His eyes were amazingly bright

and his mouth set firmly. His chin looked squarer than ever. Once more

he carried out the suit-case, put a latchkey into the lock and threw

back the door. Joan went in and stood looking about the cheery hall

with its old oak, and sporting prints, white wood and red carpet. "Oh,

but this is perfectly charming, Marty," she cried out. "Why did we

bother our heads about Alice when there is this haven of refuge?"

Martin marched up to her and stood eye to eye. "Because I'm alone," he

said, "and you're a girl. That's why."

Joan made a face. "I see. The conventions again. Isn't there any sort

of woman here?"

"Yes, the cook."

She laughed. There was a comic side to this tragedy, after all, it

seemed. "Well, perhaps she'll give us some scrambled eggs and coffee. I

could eat a horse."

Martin opened the door of the sitting room. Like the one in which she

had slept so soundly the previous night, it was stamped with the

character and personality of the other Martin Gray. Books, warm and

friendly, lined the walls. Mounted on wood, fish of different sizes and

breeds hung above the cases, and over the fireplace there was a

full-length oil painting of a man in a red coat and riding breeches.

His kind eyes greeted Joan.

For several minutes she stood beneath it, smiling back. Then she turned

and put her hand involuntarily on the boy's shoulder. "Oh, Marty!" she

said. "I AM sorry."

The boy gave one quick upward glance, and cleared his throat. "I told

you that this house is mine. It isn't. It's yours. It's the only way,

if you're to remain in the city. Is it good enough? Do you want to stay

as much as all that?"

The puzzled look came back. For a moment Joan was silent, worrying out

the meaning of Martin's abrupt and rather cryptic words. There seemed

to be a tremendous amount of fuss because she happened to be a girl.

Martin spoke again before she had emerged from the thicket of inward

questions. She was only eighteen, after all.

"I mean, you can marry me if you like." he said, "and then no one can

take you back." He was amazed at his courage and hideously afraid that

she would laugh at him. He had never dared to say how much he loved her.

She did laugh, but with a ring of so much pleasure and relief that the

blood flew to his head. "Why, Marty, what a brain! What organization!

Of course I'll marry you. Why ever didn't we think of that last night?"

But before he could pull himself together a man-servant entered with an

air of extreme surprise. "I didn't know you'd come home, sir," he said,

"until I saw the suit-case." He saw Joan, and his eyes rounded.

"I was just going to ring," said Martin. "We want some breakfast. Will

you see to it, please?" Alone again, Martin held out his hand to Joan,

in an odd, boyish way. And she took it, boyishly too. "Thank you,

Marty, dear," she said. "You've found the magic carpet. My troubles are

over; and oh, what a pretty little bomb I shall have for Grandmamma!

And now let's explore my house. If it's all like this, I shall simply

love it!" And away she darted into the hall.

"And now," said Joan, "being duly married,--and you certainly do make

things move when you start, Marty,--to send a telegram to Grandmother!

Lead me to the nearest place."

Certain that every person in that crowded street saw in them a newly

married couple, Martin tried to hide his joy under a mask of extreme

callousness and universal indifference. With the challenging antagonism

of an English husband,--whose national habit it is invariably to stalk

ahead of his women-kind while they scramble along at his heels,--he led

the way well in advance of his unblushing bride. But his eyes were

black with emotion. He saw rainbows all over the sky, and rings of

bright light round the square heads of all the buildings which competed

in an endeavor to touch the clouds; and there was a song in his heart.

They sat down side by side in a Western Union office, dallied for a

moment or two with the tied pencils the points of which are always

blunt, and to the incessant longs and shorts of a dozen telegraph

instruments they put their epoch-making news on the neat blanks. Martin

did not intend to be left out of it. His best pal was off the map, and

so he chose a second-best friend and wrote triumphantly: "Have been

married to-day. Staying in New York for honeymoon. How are you?" He was

sorry that he couldn't remember the addresses of a hundred other men.

He felt in the mood to pelt the earth with such telegrams as that.

"Listen," said Joan, her eyes dancing with mischief. "I think this is a

pretty good effort: 'Blessings and congratulations on her marriage

to-day may be sent to Mrs. Martin Gray, at 26 East Sixty-seventh

Street, New York.--Joan.' How's that?"

It was the first time the boy had seen that name, and he blinked and

smiled and got very red. "Terse and literary," he said, dying to put

his arms round her and kiss her before all mankind. "They'll have

something to talk about at dinner to-night. A nice whack in the eye for

Gleave."

He managed to achieve a supremely blase air while the words were being

counted, but it crumbled instantly when the telegraphist shot a quick

look at Joan and gave Martin a grin of cordial congratulation.

As soon as he saw a taxi, Martin hailed it and told the chauffeur to

drive to the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. "We'll

walk from there," he said to Joan, "--if you'd like to, that is."

"I would like to. I want to peer into the shop windows and look at hats

and dresses. I've got absolutely nothing to wear. Marty, tell me, are

we well off?"

Martin laughed. She reminded him of a youngster going for a picnic and

pooling pocket money. "Yes," he said, "--quite."

She sat back with her hands crossed in her lap. "I'm so glad. It

simplifies everything to have plenty to spend." But for her exquisite

slightness and freshness, no one would have imagined that she was an

only just-fledged bird, flying for the first time. Her equability and

poise were those of a completely sophisticated woman. Nothing seemed to

surprise her. Whatever happened was all part and parcel of the great

adventure. Yesterday she was an overwatched girl, looking yearningly at

a city that appeared to be unattainable. To-day she was a married woman

who, a moment ago, had been standing before a minister, binding herself

for good or ill to a man who was delightfully a boy and of whom she

knew next to nothing. What did it matter--what did anything matter--so

long as she achieved her long-dreamed-of ambition to live and see life?

"Then I can go ahead," she added, "and dress as becomes the wife of a

man of one of our best families. I've never been able to dress before.

Trust me to make an excellent beginning." There was a twinkle of humor

in her eyes as she said these things, and excitement too. "Tell me

this, Marty: is it as easy to get unmarried as it is to get married?"

"You're not thinking about that already, surely!"

"Oh, no. But information is always useful, isn't it?"

Just for a moment the boy's heart went down into his boots. She didn't

love him yet; he knew that He intended to earn her love as an honest

man earns his living. What hurt was the note of flippancy in her voice

in talking of an event that was to him so momentous and wonderful. It

seemed to mean no more to her to have entered into a lifelong tie than

the buying of a mere hat--not so much, not nearly so much, as to have

found a way of not going back to those two old people in the country.

She was young, awfully young, he told himself again. Presently her feet

would touch the earth, and she would understand.

As they walked up Fifth Avenue and with little gurgles of enthusiasm

Joan halted at every other shop to look at hats that appealed to Martin

as absurdly, willfully freakish, and evening dresses which seemed

deliberately to have been handed over to a cat to be torn to ribbons,

it came back to him that one just such soft spring evening, the year

before, he had walked home from the Grand Central Station and been

seized suddenly with an almost painful longing to be asked by some

precious person who belonged wholly to him to share her delight in all

the things which then stood for nothing in his life. Then and there he

fulfilled an ambition long cherished and hidden away; he touched Joan

on the arm and opened the elaborate door of a famous jeweler. He was

known to the shop from the fact that he and his father had always dealt

there for wedding and Christmas presents. He was welcomed by a man in

the clothes of a concert singer and with the bedside manner of a family

doctor.

He was desperately self-conscious, and his collar felt two sizes too

small, but he managed to get into his voice a tone that was

sufficiently matter-of-fact to blunt the edge of the man's rather

roguish smile. "Let me see your latest gold-mesh bags," he said as

ordinary, everyday people ask to see collar studs.

"Marty!" whispered Joan. "What are you going to do?"

"Oh, that's all right," said Martin. "You can't get along without a

bag, you see."

Half a dozen yellow, insinuating things were laid out on the shining

glass, and with a wonderful smile that was worth all the gold the earth

contained to Martin, Joan made a choice--but not hastily, and not

before she had inspected every other gold bag in the shop. Even at

eighteen she was woman enough to want to be quite certain that she

possessed herself of the very best thing of its kind and would never

have, in future, to feel jealous of one that might lie alluringly in

the window.

"This one," she said finally. "I'm quite sure."

Martin didn't ask the price. It was for his bride. He picked it up and

hung it over her wrist, said "The old address," nodded to the man,--who

was just about to call attention to a tray of diamond brooches,--and

led the way out, feeling at least six feet two.

And as Joan regained the street, she passed another milestone in her

life. To be the proprietor of precisely just such a gold bag had been

one of her steady dreams.

"Marty," she said, "what a darling you are!"

The boy's eyes filled with tears.