When he left her at her own door she said with a sudden impetuous timidity, "Dr. King, please make Dr. Lavendar give me the little boy!"
"I will!" he said, and laughed at her radiant face.
It seemed to the doctor as he went down the hill, that he had had a most delightful evening. He could not recollect what they had talked about, but he knew that they had agreed on every point. "A very intelligent lady," he said to himself.
"William," said Martha, looking up from her mending as he entered the sitting-room, "did you remember to tell Davis that the kitchen sink leaks?"
"Oh!" said the doctor blankly; "well—I'll tell him in the morning." Then, smiling vaguely, he dropped down into his shabby old easy-chair, and watched Martha's darning-needle plod in and out. "Martha," he said after a while, "what shade would you call your hair if it was—well, kind of brighter?"
"What?" said Martha, looking at him over her spectacles; she put up her hard capable hand and touched her hair softly, as if she had forgotten it. "My hair used to be a real chestnut. Do you mean chestnut?"
"I guess I do. It's a pretty color."
Martha looked at him with a queer shyness in her married eyes, then tossed her head a little and thrust her darning-needle into the gray stocking with a jaunty air. "That's what you used to say," she said. After a while, noticing his tired lounge in the old chair, she said kindly, "Why did you stay so long at Dr. Lavendar's, Willy? You look tired. Do go to bed."
"Oh," William explained, "I didn't stay very long; he asked me to see
Mrs. Richie home. She had taken tea with him."
Martha's face suddenly hardened. "Oh," she said coldly. Then, after a short silence: "Mrs. Richie's hair is too untidy for my taste."