The financial outlay was enormous, unforeseen.  Taxes went up, sidewalks crumbled back into the grass again, the four or five unfenced little wooden houses that were erected and occupied added to the general effect of forlornness.  The Estates were mortgaged, and to the old mortgage on the homestead another was added.

Len took Martie out to see the place.  Slim little trees were bending in a sharp April wind; a small woman at the back of one of the small houses was taking whipping clothes from a line.  The streets were deep in mud; Martie smiled as she read the crossposts:  “High Street,” “Maple Avenue,” and “Sunset Avenue.”  Here and there a sign “Sold” embellished a barren half-acre.

“You’ve really done wonders, Len,” she said encouragingly.  “And of course there’s nothing like land for making money!”

“Oh, there’s a barrel of money in it,” he answered dubiously, kicking a lump of dirt at his feet.  They had left the little car at a comparatively dry crossing, and were walking about.  “We’ve put in a hundred more trees this year, and I think we’ll start another house pretty soon.”  And when they got back in the car, his face flushed from vigorous cranking, he added, “I talked Pa into getting the car; it makes it look as if we were making money!”

“Of course it does,” Martie said amiably.  She thought her own thoughts.

Lydia had nothing but praise for Len; he had worked like a Trojan, she said.  And Pa had been wonderfully patient and good about the whole thing.

“Pa was telling me the other day that he could have gotten ever so much money for this place, if he had had it levelled the time the whole town was,” Lydia said, in her curious tone that was triumphantly complaining, one day.

“I wonder what it’s worth, as it stands,” mused Martie.

“Oh, Martie, I don’t know!  I don’t know anything about it; he just happened to say that!”

It was later on this same day that Martie went in to see Miss Fanny, and put her elbows on the desk, resting her troubled face in her hands.

“Miss Fanny, sometimes I despair!  Heaven knows I have had hard knocks enough, and yet I never learn,” she burst out.  “Seven years ago I used to come in here to you, and rage because I was so helpless!  Well, I’ve had experience since, bitter experience, and yet here I am, helpless and a burden still!”

Miss Fanny smiled her wide, admiring smile.  Without a word she reached to a shelf behind her, and handed Martie a familiar old volume:  “Choosing a Life Work.”  The colour rushed into Martie’s face as she took it.

“I’ll read it now!” she said simply.

“If you really want to work, Martie,” suggested the older woman, “why don’t you come in here with me?  Now that we’ve got the Carnegie endowment, we have actually appropriated a salary for an assistant.”

Martie looked at her thoughtfully, looked backward perhaps over the long years.