tre; he'll develop." She comforted her sore heart as well as his. "But if there was only something we could do!" The implication seemed that the wrong thing had been done in the first place. In her heart she blamed him for it all, and he knew she did. Their oneness in sympathy was only momentary.
After a year of it, Hastings was still at the house in every free hour—morning, noon, and night. He was getting fifteen a week now.
Edith still lacked a year of college; she was not as advanced as some of the girls. She took for granted the course mapped out for her, but without enthusiasm. Meanwhile she and Hastings had some magic statistics that made twenty dollars a week the goal of their ambitions, the open sesame of a dream.
"This won't do, Little Mother," John said.
Marcia knew it would not, glad for the honest concordance, with this breach of silence and inactivity about Ward widening between them. But now her trouble was not for Edith only. Hastings was a dear boy!
A summer with a camping party where mails were irregular only dammed the flood. The way the young eyes leaped together as Edith stepped from the train choked Marcia with sympathy and regret.
Reluctantly she dropped school; and, cheerfully indifferent, Edith saw herself equipped with a regular trousseau and turned into a bud.
But Marcia, coming down late to close the house, would find the two young people, in all their festive array, deep in the study of food values and cost. The cotillon? Oh! They had forgotten to go.
"Why should I, anyway?" Edith answered later—"when I'd much rather do other things. Why can't we be married this spring? I'll be nineteen. But what real objection is there, mamma? You can't have anything against Hastings."
"He's a nice boy," Marcia admitted.
"And we know the dearest place out on the suburban electrics, mamma, with four rooms and a stable and chicken-house, and three acres, and trees and shrubs and a garden,—for only eighteen dollars a month. And Hastings knows a half-grown boy who would go with us. Our wedding-presents would furnish it, and if you and papa would only give us a cow for yours—Mamma! You needn't laugh! I'd just love it."
"You don't know anything about it, child." Marcia wiped her eyes and grew sober. "Besides, there are other things to marriage, daughter, that you must consider beforehand, that you have no right to go into unready: expenses and—obligations." She held both the girl's hands.
"I know," Edith breathed. "But expenses depend on people and circumstances, don't they? Hastings and I don't care for fancy draperies and things, like Ward; and I'd rather spend Saturday in the kitchen than any other way. There are really very few people who have as much as you and papa, and yet . . ." Only a very pink ear was visible. "It's a dreadful ordeal, of course, but it's worth it, don't you think?" She looked up bravely. "Isn't it, mother?"
The two women looked into each other's eyes.
Marcia retreated hurriedly. "But your father will never consent."
"Oh, mummer, you dear mummer! You always were our friend!"
"Your father's your friend too, dear," she reminded her, pleased, ashamed, doubtful, the girl's look reflected in hers. "It's a question with each of us what the truest friendship to you is."
"She's too young," John said, immediately. "She has never known other men. She ought to have her girlhood."
"She doesn't seem to care for the things other girls like,—candy and dances and popularity."
"Why, Marcia, are you advocating it?"
"No, no; just trying to look all around it."
"Your father's right," she told the girl. "He's very apt to be. The only way to be sure yourself and satisfy him is by trying his plans."
So Hastings gave up his evenings with her, and, not to interfere, even dropped out of the gayeties; and Edith faithfully tried to know other men, and succeeded in interesting only a few of them, and herself not at all. The feeling of an undeclared friend at court helped, but her father was very cool to Hastings now. The girl's eyes were oftener heavy from crying than from having too good a time.
