After a minute she said, "Well, Johnnie, dear, I would like to see you—all happy—and settled down, but I don't know—that Martha's the woman for you; and I tell you frankly I think you ought to stop this loafing about."
"I'll ask Mr. Kenworthy for a steady job for a month, if you want me to."
"That's not good enough for you, Johnnie; you can't work in a garage. But it's better than nothing."
He stuck to the garage for three weeks, and then he threw it up and departed abruptly on the spring day that Emily noticed the first tall white iris blooming. She was rather out of patience with him. But Bob—an amazing lot of sympathy Bob had for everything masculine—he just grinned.
"He's in love, the poor devil!" he said, and winked a sort of familiar grimace across the table at Emily. It annoyed her. All he had ever said of Martha was: "Well, if she's in love, she'll have to get over it; that's all." It gave her almost satisfaction to get a letter from Martha.
"Johnnie's turned up again. I'm leaving the city for a holiday. I'll write you about it next week."
Not another word from that child for two weeks. No sign of Johnnie; he might at least have had the decency to write whether or not he had taken to the sea. And Martha, Emily planned as the days passed, was going to get a thorough dressing down when she came back. Two weeks without writing was a little too much of a good thing. Two weeks and five days now, still no word had come. Emily was in the garden. She was, in fact, exactly at the side of the house which Martha had suggested adorning with a garage. She had been digging about her "bleeding heart" and looking down towards the river, because she had seen orioles for the first time that morning and planning what she would say to Martha when she got a chance. She turned around suddenly to see what car had stopped in front of the house. It was a brand-new little blue runabout, and expensive-looking.
And then Johnnie Benton jumped out of it, and turned about to give a hand to some one—and Martha Kenworthy jumped out! All dressed up in a new suit of rose color, with a lovely bit of soft fur and a new and nifty hat. And new shoes and a new bag—glorious and smart entirely. And she had caught sight of her mother, and came half running up to her. Johnnie, too, dressed to kill—and beaming—was hurrying to her. They were looking at each other.
"You two are married!" Emily cried to them; and her heart sank in a great pity for Johnnie.
"Mammie, mammie!" Martha was crying, hugging her. They had pulled her into the hall with cries and kisses.