Chapter Two

"You go right over to the hall," Emily had said to Martha as they arrived home after five,"and I'll do your shoulder straps for you." She had gone upstairs, and presently hurried, in a comfortable mature way, to Martha's room. She opened the door, and almost blinked, for the uncompromising afternoon sun made even yet a startling welter of the purples and greens and creamy yellows before her. And then she said:"Oh! You here, Eve?" For in that whirl of gaudiness an auburn-haired, hawk-nosed, thin-faced girl sat in flesh-colored B.V.D.'s, on a black stool, with a dishpan half full of pitted cherries on the floor beside her, and in her lap a green bowl half full of moist seeds.

"I got tired of hanging around over there. I wasn't doing anything. They're just fooling around for somebody to come and make them get to work." It was no concession to Emily's sense of propriety that made her hitch a fallen shoulder strap into decorum. Eve could have pitted cherries in Martha's sitting room stark naked with serenity. She had gone into shrieks of laughter the other day when Emily had described the careful way in which she in her girlhood, in her own room, with no man in the house, had put her arms into her wrapper in her bed, and had the essential garment all ready to pull about her as soon as she had put her first foot on the floor.

Emily said to her now,"You needn't have done those cherries, Eve."

"Oh, well, I thought I'd better be doing something to make myself popular. Everybody else is working—or pretending to." Eve grinned ingratiatingly."Somebody called up, too, just now. That friend of Martha's. That Wilton, I think his name is."

"Oh! Is HE here?"

"Yes. Came out for to-night. Don't you like him?"

"Yes. I like him. He's a nice boy. Clever, too."

"That's what Martha said." Eve seemed always incredulous about masculine brilliancy.

"Well, he's always got scholarships. He's earned his way, really, through college."

"Hum!" commented Eve. College honors were nothing to her.

"His father is the best barber in town, too," Emily continued.

Eve turned and looked at her quickly.

"The best what?"

"Barber. You know that shop all plate glass and shining enamel that makes all the rest of the street look dirty? That's his shop. That's where we go for shampoos."

Eve had been looking at Emily curiously, and the little grin had grown into a spreading smile.

"You're the limit, Mrs. Kenworthy!" she said, admiringly. Th