National Avenue · Chapter 10 (2/2)

“I’m afraid,” she said slowly, “your wife isn’t going to like me.”

“Oh, but she will,” he returned, trying to put heartiness into this assurance. “She’s bound to! Why, everybody in the world likes you, Martha.”

“No; I had the feeling as soon as I spoke to her that she never would, Dan. It was just a feeling, but I’m afraid it’ll turn out so. That doesn’t mean I won’t try my best to make her.”

“You won’t need to try. Of course just now she’s suffering so terribly, poor little thing⁠—”

“Poor Dan!” Martha said, as he stopped speaking and sighed instead. “You never could bear to see anybody suffer. The trouble is it always makes you suffer more than the person that’s doing the original suffering.”

“Oh, no. But I don’t know what on earth to do for her. Of course, in a few days, when she begins to see what it’s really like here, and I get her to understand a little more about the Addition⁠—”

He stopped, startled to hear his name called in a querulous little voice from an upstairs window.

“She’s awake,” he said in a whisper.

“Who on earth are you talking with out there?” called the querulous voice.

“Good night,” he whispered, moving away hurriedly; but, looking back, he saw that Martha remained at the separating iron fence, leaning upon it now; and he could feel, rather than see, that she was not looking at him, but that her head was again bowed in the same meekness with which she had said she hoped he prized her feeling for him.