Martie The Unconquered | Page 7

girls a little afraid of her. "It's Martie here
I'm interested in. I'm going to scold her, too. Are you reading that book
I gave you, Martie?"
Martie, as Grace and Sally turned away, raised smiling eyes. But at
Miss Fanny's keen, kindly look she was smitten with a sudden curious
inclination toward tears. She was keenly sensitive, and she felt an
undeserved rebuke.
"Don't like it?" asked the librarian, disposing of an interruption with
that casual ease that always fascinated Martie. To see Miss Fanny seize
four books from the hands that brought them into her range of vision,
flip open the four covers with terrific speed, manipulate various paper
slips and rubber stamps with energy and certainty, vigorously copy
certain mysterious letters and numbers, toss the discarded books into a
large basket at her elbow and then, for the first time, as she handed the
selected books to the applicant, glance up with her smile and whispered
"Good afternoon," was a real study in efficiency.
"I don't understand it," Martie smiled.
"Did you read it?" persisted the older woman.
"Well--not much." Martie had, in fact, hardly opened the book, an

excellent collection of some twenty essays for girls under the general
title "Choosing a Life Work."
"Listen. Why don't you study the Cutter system, and familiarize
yourself a little with this work, and come in here with me?" asked Miss
Fanny, in her firm, pushing voice.
"When?" Martie asked, considering.
"Well--I can't say when. I'm no oracle, my dear. But some day the
grave and reverend seigneurs on my Board may give me an assistant, I
suppose."
"Oh--I know--" Martie was vague again. "What would I get?"
Miss Fanny's harsh cheeks and jaw stiffened, her eyes half closed, as
she bit her lip in thought.
"Fifteen, perhaps," she submitted.
Martie dallied with the pleasing thought of having fifteen dollars of her
own each month.
"But can't Miss Fanny make you feel as if you were back in school?"
she asked, when the girls were again in Main Street. "I'd just as lieves
be in the lib'ary as anywheres," she added.
"I drather be in the box factory," Grace said. "More money."
"More work, too!" Martie suggested. "Come on, let's go to Bonestell's!"
Other persons of all ages were in the drug store, seated on stools at the
high marble counter, or at the little square cherry tables in the dim
room at the rear. Drugs were a lesser consideration than brushes,
stationery, cameras, candy, cigars, post cards, gum, mirrors, celluloid
bureau sets, flower seeds, and rubber toys and rattles, but large glass
flagons of coloured waters duly held the corners of the show windows
on the street, and dusty and fly-specked cards advertising patent
medicines overlapped each other.

The three girls nodded to various acquaintances, and, as they slid on to
seats at the counter, greeted the soda clerk familiarly. This was Reddy
Johnson, a lean, red-headed youth in a rather dirty white jacket
buttoned up to the chin. Reddy was assisted by a blear-eyed little
Swedish girl of about sixteen, who rushed about blindly with her little
blonde head hanging. He himself did not leave the counter, which he
constantly mopped with a damp, mud-coloured rag. He plunged the
streaked and sticky glasses into hot water, set them on a dripping
grating to dry, turned on this faucet of sizzling soda, that of rich slow
syrup, beat up the contents of glasses with his long-handled spoon,
slipped them into tarnished nickelled frames, and slid them deftly
before the waiting boys and girls. Hot sauce over this ice cream, nuts
on that, lady fingers and whipped cream with the tall slender cups of
chocolate for the Baxter girls, crackers with the tomato bouillon old
Lady Snow was noisily sipping; Reddy never made a mistake.
Presently he, with a swift motion, set a little plate of sweet crackers
before the girls. These were not ordinarily served with five-cent orders,
and the three instantly divided them, concealing the little cakes in their
hands, and handing the tell-tale plate back to the clerk. A wise
precaution it proved, for a moment later "old Bones," as the proprietor
of the establishment was nicknamed, sauntered through the store. In a
gale of giggles the girls went out, stealthily eating the crackers as they
went. This adventure was enough to put them in high spirits; Martie
indeed was so easily fired to excitement that the crossing of wits with
Dr. Ben, the personal word with Miss Fanny, and now Reddy's
gallantry, had brightened her colour and carried her elation to the point
of effervescence. Sparkling, chattering, flushed under her shabby
summer hat, Martie sauntered between her friends straight to her
golden hour.
Face to face they came with a tall, loosely built, well-dressed young
man, with