Monday afternoon found Martha Porter just hanging the last snowy white towel on the clothes lin. A gentle wind was shaking the lines full of freshly washed clothes. Martha inhaled the fresh air with satisfaction as she viewed the spotless pieces swinging there before her. She had learned to like housework and had tried so hard to make up to her mother for the way she had shirked when she was younger. She went back into the house where Clara assisted her in emptying the new electric washer and the tubs full of rinse water.

"Isn't it easy to wash since we bought the new washer, Mother?" she asked.

"My, I should say it is! We used to turn that old hand washer by the hour and then the clothes were not as clean when we were through with them."

'I have been wondering if you decided last week to join the Sewing Circle, Mother, I think it would do you good to get out and meet with them."

"No, Martha, I think I would rather not have my name on their roll. I never did approve of gossiping and I heard plenty of it the day I visited their club," Clara said, then trying to change the subject, she asked, "Do you remember what a perfect little laundress Laura Mae was?"

"She sure did like to work. I hated it then, but now I wish I could show her how I love to work now," Martha said as she dried the washer very carefully and loosened the wringer clamps.

"I just can't figure out why Gene does not write Everett or why Laura Mae does not write me." The corners of Clara's lips turned down ever so slightly.

"I wish June Malcolm would hurry and sail for home. She could tell us more about it, she told me that she recommended Laura Mae to her aunt, but she did not tell us what the aunt's name was."

"You got a letter from her Saturday, didn't you?"

"Yes, just a short one, it is the first one she has written me since I lost track of her over in France. She has been over there all this time. She inferred that she had fallen in love with an officer of the French Army, for she is only coming home on a visit and then she is going back to France to live. She better come out here and see me before she goes back or I will not forgive her! I wish some nice fellow here would make her change her mind about the French man over there." Martha smiled at the thought.

"She is a nice girl, Martha, I like her. In fact, there are lots of nice people in the world. If it had not been for the kindness Maria Beckman and Everett Whitmer showed me after your father went, I am sure I should have died from worry and grief."

"They surely have been attentive. It seems to me that Mr. Whitmer has been exceptionally nice to you, Mother. You have gone riding with him in his new car and he has taken you to several picture shows." Martha smiled tenderly at her mother.

"Martha, I might as well you... he asked me to marry him." The woman blushed as she would have done thirty years before.

"And will you marry him?" Martha asked, not at all surprised for she had suspected it all the time.

"I think I shall. I have not given him a definite answer yet." Clara turned the pot roast in the kettle on the stove and tried to hide the fact that she was still blushing.

"I will be glad if you marry him, Mother. I am going to take up my school work again and you would be lonesome here alone."

"I have known Everett ever since we were little children in school. We loved each other then. Did you never have a lover, Martha?" the mother asked, looking closely at her daughter.

"Boys never held any charm for me until over in France, there was a soldier who impressed me. It used to make my heart beat faster whenever I saw him. He was wounded quite badly in his right arm so he could not write. I wrote a letter to his mother for him one day. His home is in Kingsford, I have never happened to meet him when I have been in town, but I hope I will meet him again someday. He always acted so pleased when I would go to his bedside and talk to him. I am sure I could love a man like him."

"I do hope you do meet him again," Clara said earnestly. "Your Aunt Laura May lived a single life, but she was not happy."

"Mother, I have been going to ask you is you would tell me about her. Why did she never marry?"

"Some people thought that she was just naturally an 'old maid' but she was not. She had a deep sorrow come into her life." Clara worked about the kitchen while she talked.

"Tell me about her sorrow if you know about it, please. I am anxious to hear." Martha dried the kettle that the starch had been in and hung it in its place in the pantry.

"Your aunt had a sweetheart. They were engaged to be married when the trouble started down in Cuba. After the United States declared war on Spain, he was called to go and fight for his country. He was killed in what she called the Santiago Campaign in July 1898. It broke Aunt Laura May's heart when she received the news and after that, she would not even look at another man, let alone marry one," Clara explained.

"Was that why she would always say 'Maybe, on the other side we will all be happy'? I can just hear her saying that."

"Yes, I have heard her say things like that many times. I do hope she is happy now."

By afternoon, the work in the house was all done. Everything looked so clean and fresh. Martha went to the organ and played an old familiar tune. Clara sat near in an easy chair, mending the heel of one of her stockings. "Laura Mae played so pretty, too," she thought as she caught a tear and wiped it away with her knuckle.

When Martha finished playing the piece, she stopped and looked up at the shelf of books above the organ. Her eyes fell upon her Father's Bible there. She stood up and drew it gently from its place. "Father used to have me read to him from this," she said. "Then I used to read from the Bible to some of the wounded soldiers over in France, Mother. I can see them yet, with pain and anguish in their faces." As she spoke, the leaves opened in the center of the book and she saw a large white envelope.

"What is this, Mother?" she asked, holding it between her fingers.

"Why, I do not know, Martha, I have never seen it before." Clara laid down the stocking and came toward the girl. With a look of surprise and curiosity mingled in her face, she took the envelope and opened it. She drew out the marriage license and the letters. In excitement, the two looked at all of them, reading everything! Clara sank limply in her chair. "I know what your father was trying to tell me the day he went."

"What did he say, Mother?" Martha spoke in sympathetic eagerness.

"He said that Philip had proof of her marriage. 'Phil did it They're in the Bible,' he muttered brokenly to me, but I thought that he meant passages of Scripture because he always read so much. I have never opened his Bible because I have a smaller one of my own that I take with me to church. Martha, he begged me with his dying breath to ask Laura Mae to forgive him and to forgive Philip. 'Get her back' he said, but I had no idea where she was. He tried to tell me her address as he could remember it. That is why Philip wanted him to come before he dies. It is all so plain now," she sobbed.

"Then, that is why the mail failed to come through. I would not have thought it of Philip," Martha said, she had always liked the boy with the big brown eyes and the dark wavy hair.

"He was insanely jealous of Gene but he is gone now, let us not hold it against him," the gentlewoman said. In her hand was Laura Mae's address written plainly on the envelope, 8103 Colonial Heights, and the little card with the picture of a stork on it. Clara read the little card again. A baby girl. Laura Mae had passed through that ordeal safely. It was as id a heavy weight lifted from Clara's heart and the lack of its pleasure caused the tears to spring out of her eyes. She could be happy now and tell Everett "Yes," with a light heart. Martha came and sat on the arm of Clara's chair and held her mother's head close to her bosom, and her own tears dropped one by one down in the soft mass of gray-streaked hair.

At length, a knock came on the parlor door. Martha went to open it. Everett Whitmer greeted her with a happy smile, as the girl asked him to come inside.

"I just came from the Post Office," he explained. "I brought your mail to you. Here is a letter for you, Clara." He handed the letter to the woman, who arose, smiling at him through her tears, as she offered him a chair. He noticed the tears and her swollen eyes, but he made no inquiry. He knew Clara had plenty of heartaches. How he wished he could help to heal the wounds of her heart and have her for his own.

"It's Laura Mae's handwriting," she choked as she tore open the envelope, with trembling fingers. "Martha, read it aloud to us will you, please?" she asked, handing the letter to her daughter; her own hands were too unsteady.

Martha read the missive, in which Laura Mae poured out the feelings from the bottom of her heart. She described her life at the home of June Malcolm's aunt on Colonial Heights, knowing, through Philip, that her mother had not received her other letter. She told how Gene had misunderstood the account of Aunt Laura May's death and described the anxious suffering she had gone through by the reports the Kingsford National Bank made of Gene's failure to return to Oakdale. She did not forget to give a clear description of her baby girl, who had the looks of both Gene and herself. "We have sent a message to Gene to come home from France, so I will wait here until I receive word from him," she wrote. "Has Father forgiven me enough to want to see me and my baby?" there were no dry eyes in the room when Martha finished reading the account of how things had been all jumbled up for all of them.

"Thank God, they are safe," Everett managed to say as he wiped his eyes.

"She does not know about her father's death," Clara sobbed.

"We will write to her, it will be easier to let her know in a letter before she comes home," Martha suggested. They all laughed and cried to together, they were so happy.

Everett decided to hurry home and break the news to Maria Beckman. Gene's unexplained absence had caused her to have many more gray hairs and wrinkles. She looked all of ten years older than she had when the letters were coming regularly from him. How happy she would be to know that both Gene and Laura Mae were safe and well. The fact that there was a little girl in the family would be a great surprise to her for Everett had never told her what Clara had told him about Laura Mae's condition before she went away.