Martie, the Unconquered. Kathleen Thompson Norris
she was not interested. She had heard all this before, many times. Dr. Ben's extraordinary views upon the value of the family were familiar to every one in Monroe. But her attention was suddenly aroused by the mention of her own name.
"Now, supposing that you and Joe take it into your heads to get married some day," the doctor was saying, "how about children?"
Sally's ready colour flooded her face. She made no attempt to answer him.
"Would ye have them?" the old man asked impatiently.
"Why—why, Dr. Ben, I don't know!" Sally said in great confusion. "I—I suppose people DO."
"You suppose people do?" he asked scornfully. "Don't ye KNOW they do?"
"Well, I don't suppose any girl thinks very much of such things until she's married," Sally said firmly. "Mama doesn't like us to discuss—"
"Doesn't your mother ever talk to you about such things?" the old man demanded.
"Certainly not!" Sally answered with spirit.
"What DOES she talk to you about?" he asked amazedly. "It's your business in life, after all. She's not taught ye any other. What does she expect ye to do—learn it all after it's too late to change?"
"All what?" Sally said, a little frightened, even a little sick. He stopped his march, and looked at her with something like pity.
"All the needs of your soul and body," he said kindly, "and your children's souls and bodies. Well! that's neither here nor there. But the fact is this, Sally: I've no children of my own to raise. And as ye very well know, I've got my own theories about putting motherhood on a different basis, a business basis. I want you to let me pay you—as the State ought to pay you—three hundred a year for every child you bear. I want to demonstrate to my own satisfaction, before I try to convince any Government, that if the child-bearing woman were put on a plane of economic value, her barren, parasite sister would speedily learn—"
Sally had turned pale. Now she rose in girlish dignity.
"I hope you'll forgive me, Dr. Ben, for saying that I won't listen to ONE word more. I know you've been thinking about these things so long that you forget how OUTRAGEOUS they sound! Motherhood is a sacred privilege, and to reduce it to—"
"So is wifehood, Sally!" the old man interposed soothingly.
"Well," she flashed back, "nobody's PAID for wifehood!"
"Oh, yes, my dear. You can sue a man for not supporting you. It's done every day!"
"Then—then a man ought to pay the three hundred a year!" countered Sally.
"Well, I'm with you there. But the world has got to see that before you can force him." The doctor sighed. "So you won't let me stand grandfather to your children, Sally?"
"Oh, if you WERE their grandfather!" she answered. "Then you could do as you liked!"
"There you are, the parasite!" he said, smiling whimsically. "You're your mother's daughter, Sally. Give you the least blood-claim on a man's money, and you'll push it as far as you can. But offer to pay you for doing the work God meant you to do and you're cut to the soul. Well—"
He was still holding forth eloquently on the subject of children and nations when Martie came back, and Sally, with a scarlet face, was evidently lost in thoughts of her own.
As the girls walked home, Sally did not repeat to Martie her conversation with the old doctor, nor for many weeks afterward. But Martie did not notice her sister's indignant silence, for they met Rodney Parker coming out of the Bank, and he walked with them to the bridge, and asked Martie to go with him to see the Poulson Star Stock Company in a Return Engagement Extraordinary on the following night.
Martie was conscious of passing a milestone in her emotional life on the evening of this day, when she said to herself that she loved Rodney Parker. She admitted it with a sort of splendid shame, as she went about her usual household occupations, passing from the hot pleasantness of the kitchen to the cool, stale odours of the dining room; running upstairs to light the bathroom-and hall-gas for her father and brother, and sometimes stepping for a moment into the darkness of the yard to be alone with her enchanted thoughts.
All the young Monroes regarded their father's temperamental shortcomings with stoicism, so that it was in no sense resentfully that she faced the inevitable preliminaries that night.
"Pa," said she cheerfully over the dessert, "you don't mind if I go to the show with Rodney to-morrow, do you?"
"This is the first I've heard of any show," Malcolm said stiffly, glancing at his wife. Mrs. Monroe patiently told him what she knew of it. "Why, no, I suppose there is no reason you shouldn't go," he presently said discontentedly.
"Oh, thank you, Pa!" Martie said, with a soaring heart. He looked at her dispassionately.
"Your sisters and your brother are going, I suppose?" Malcolm asked, glancing about the circle. Martie told herself she might have known he was not done with the subject so easily.
"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.
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