Martie, the Unconquered

by Kathleen Thompson Norris

"Oh, well! Anyway, I wrote and suggested that he try to get it published instead, and my dear—it's to be published next month. Isn't that glorious?"

"That is all worn under the arms," Lydia murmured over an old waist that had been for months in her sewing basket, "I believe I will cut off the buttons and give it to the poor!"

"The old idiot!" Martie mused over her letter.

"Does his wife encourage this writing, Martie?"

"Adele? She isn't with him now at all. She's left him, in fact. I believe she wants a divorce."

"Oh?" Lydia commented, in a peculiar tone.

"He wrote me that some weeks ago," Martie explained, suddenly flushing. "She was a queer, unhappy sort of woman. She and this doctor of hers had some sort of affair, and the outcome was that she simply went to friends, and wrote John a hysterical girly-girly sort of letter—"

"John?"

"Mr. Dryden, that is."

"He must be crushed and heartbroken," Lydia said emphatically.