She took Martie to the tiny house by the river; the plates and spoons and pillow-slips looked strange to Martie, and for every one of them Sally had an amused history.  Martie felt, with a little twinge of pain, that she would have liked a handsomer home for Sally, would have liked a more imposing husband than the tired, dirty, boyish-looking Joe, would have liked the first Monroe baby to come to a prettier layette than these plain little slips and flannels; but Sally saw everything rose-coloured.  They had almost no money, she told Martie, with a happy laugh.  Already Sally, who had been brought up in entire ignorance of the value of money, was watching the pennies.  Never had there been economy like this in Pa’s house!

Sally kept house on a microscopic scale that amused and a little impressed Martie.  Every apple, every onion, was used to the last scrap.  Every cold muffin was reheated, or bit of cold toast was utilized.  When Carrie David brought the young householders a roasted chicken, it was an event.  The fowl was sliced and stewed and minced and made into soup before it went into the family annals to shine forevermore as “the delicious chicken Cousin Carrie brought us before the baby was born.”  Sally’s cakes were made with one egg, her custards reinforced with cornstarch, her cream was only “top milk.”  Even her house was only half a house:  the four rooms were matched by four other rooms, with only a central wall between.  But Sally had a square yard, and a garden, and Martie came to love every inch of the little place, so rich in happiness and love.

The days went on and on, and there was no word of Wallace.  Martie’s heart was like lead in her breast.  She talked with Sally, set tables, washed dishes, she laughed and planned, and all the while misgivings pressed close about her.  Sometimes, kneeling in church in the soft warm afternoons of early spring, she told herself that if this one cup were taken from her lips, if she were only proved to be indeed an honourable wife, she would bear with resignation whatever life might bring.  She would welcome poverty, welcome humiliations, welcome the suffering and the burden of the baby’s coming—­but dear Lord, dear Lord, she could not face the shame that menaced her now!

Sally saw the change in her, the new silence and gravity, and wondered.

“Martie, dearest, something’s worrying you?”

“Nothing much, dear.  Wallace—­Wallace doesn’t write to me as often as I should like!”

“You didn’t quarrel with him, Mart?”

“Oh, no—­he’s the best husband in the world.  We never quarrel.”

“But it’s not like you to fret so,” Sally grieved.  Presently she ventured a daring question:  “Has it ever occurred to you, Mart, that perhaps—–­”

Martie laughed shakily.

“The way you and Grace wish babies on to people—­it’s the limit!”

Sally laughed, too, and if she was unconvinced, at least she said no more.  She encouraged Martie to take long walks, to help with the housework, and finally, to attempt composition.  Sitting at the clean little kitchen table, in the warm evenings, Martie wrote an article upon the subject of independence for women.