"I'm not—because I haven't the price!" grinned Leonard. His mother and Lydia laughed.
"I don't suppose Martie proposes going alone with young Parker?" Malcolm asked in well-assumed amazement.
"Why, Pa—I don't see why NOT" Mrs. Monroe protested weakly.
Her husband was magnificent in his surprise. He looked about in a sort of royal astonishment.
"Don't you, my dear?" he asked politely. "Then permit me to say that I DO."
Martie sat dumb with despair.
"Certainly Martha may go, if Leonard and one of her sisters go; not otherwise," said Malcolm. He retired to his library, and Martie had to ease her boiling heart by piling the dinner dishes viciously, and question no more.
However, she consoled herself, there was something rather dignified in this arrangement, after all; Len was presentable, and she was always the happier for being with Sally. She washed her only gloves, pressed her suit, and spent every alternate minute during the next day anxiously inspecting her chin where an ugly pimple threatened to form. The family was again at dinner when Len broached a change of plan.
"Can I go up to Wilson's to-night, Pa?" he asked. Martie flashed him a glance.
"I suppose so, for a little while," Malcolm said tolerantly. The girls looked at each other.