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In the old days she and Sally had thought it would be fun to be in New York, to know real actors and actresses, to go about to restaurants in taxicabs. But what if the money that paid for the taxicabs were needed for Ted's winter shirts and Margar's new crib?
After a while she looked apathetically at the clock; time for Margar's toast and boiled egg. She must finish in here; the baby would be waking. Somehow she got through the cold, silent afternoon. She felt as if she were bleeding internally; as if the crimson stain from her shaken heart might ooze through her faded gingham. She must get the children into the fresh air before the snow fell.
Out of doors a silence reigned. A steady, cold wind, tasting already of snow, was blowing. The streets were almost deserted. Martie pushed the carriage briskly, and the sharp air brought colour to her cheeks, and a sort of desperate philosophy to her thoughts. Waiting for the prescription for Margar's croup, with the baby in her lap, Martie saw herself in a long mirror.
"Even if I went away from Aunt Sally and the children, Ted, and we had to live in a little flat again?" she stammered. "Even THEN!" he said, with a shaken attempt at a manly voice. "I remember the pears in the carts, and the box you dropped the train tickets into," he said encouragingly, "and I remember Margar's bottles that you used to let me wash!
And she seemed to see a line of little Teddies, playing with Grandma Curley's spools, glancing fearfully at the "Cold Lairs," walking sturdily beside Margar's shabby coach, chattering to a quiet, black-clad mother on the overland train. She had her gallant, gay little Teddy still. "I don't know why I talk so recklessly, Sally," she said sensibly. "It's only that I am so worried and troubled.
The snoring sleeper little dreamed that some of her things were packed, some of the children's things packed, that Margar's best coat had been sent to the laundry, with the Western trip in view; that a furniture man had been interviewed as to the disposal of the chairs and tables.
Yet it cost her dear, for the possibility of another child's coming was the one thought that frightened and dismayed her. Strongly contrasted to Wallace's open-handedness when he was with his friends was the strict economy Martie was obliged to practise in her housekeeping. She went to market herself, as the spring came on, heaping her little purchases at Margar's feet in the coach.
"She's just going to have her bottle, Wallie" Martie would fret. "Well, here! Let me give it to her." Sitting up in bed, his nightgown falling open at the throat, Margar's father would hold out big arms for the child. "No, you can't. She'll never go to sleep at that rate; and if she misses her nap, that upsets her whole day!" "Lord, but you are in a grouch, Mart. For Heaven's sake, cheer up!"
The blooming young mother, the rosy, lovely children, could not but make a heartening picture. Margar's little gaitered legs, her bright face under the shabby, fur-rimmed cap; Teddy's sturdy straight little shoulders and his dark blue, intelligent eyes; these were Martie's riches. Were not comfort and surety well lost for them at twenty-seven?
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