"Lissun," Len suggested pleadingly. "Tell Pa I brought you girls home from Hawkes's--go on! Lissun, Lyd, I'll do as much for you some time--" "Oh, Len, how can I?" Lydia objected. "Well, I went in, honest, early in the evening," the boy asserted eagerly. "But I can't stand those boobs and roughnecks, so I went down town for a while. Then I came back and waited until you girls came out of the gate. I'll cross my heart and hope to die if I didn't!" "If Pa asks me--" Lydia said inexorably. For a few moments they all walked together in the dark. Then Len said suddenly: "Say, Mart, I saw Rod Parker to-night. He was down town, and he asked me how my pretty sister was!" "Did he?" Martie spoke carelessly, but her heart leaped. "He talked a lot about you," went on Len, "he's going to call you up in the morning about something." "Oh--?" Martie mused. "I shouldn't wonder if it was about a dance we were talking about," she said thoughtfully. She was quite acute enough to see perfectly that Len was trying to enlist her silence in his cause should their father make a general inquiry, and philosophical enough to turn his mood to her own advantage. "Lissun, Len," said she, "if I try to have a party you'll get the boys you know to come, won't you? There are always too many girls, and I want it to go off nicely. You will, won't you?" "Sure I will," Len promised heartily. He and his sister perfectly understood each other. They all went quietly upstairs; Len to dreamless sleep, Sally to thrilled memories of Joe--Joe--Joe, and Martie to shifting happy thoughts of the evening and its little triumphs, thoughts that always came back to Len's talk with Rodney. Rodney had asked Len for his pretty sister. Lydia lay wide awake for a long time. There was no doubt of it now; she and her mother had told each other several times during the last month or two that there was still doubt. But she was not mistaken to-night in thinking that Len's breath was strong from something alcoholic, that Len's eager, loose-lipped speech, his unusual manner--She went over and over the words she would use in telling her mother all about it in the morning. The two women would carry heavy hearts on Len's account for the whole cold, silent day. But they would not tell Pa--no, there was nothing sufficiently serious as yet to tell Pa! CHAPTER V