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hesitated outside the study door, then tapped lightly and opened it. Professor Fitzgerald scowled. He half-expected young Hogan to reappear on some pretext or other, just by way of catching him off-balance. Hogan, he supposed, had his father’s skepticism of the motives behind all charity—even when he had himself applied for it.
    “May I come in, papa?”
    “Oh, it’s you, is it? Of course, you may come in. When was it otherwise?” He stood up to greet her, but waited for her to come around his desk and kiss him. He sat down again and motioned her into the chair recently vacated. “Sit down, my dear.”
    Martha was aware of the warmth where Marcus Hogan had been sitting. “Annie said you had a serious engagement.”
    Professor Fitzgerald made a non-committal noise. “Not all that serious. What brings you home of such a sudden?”
    Martha shrugged. “Restless, that’s all. You’ve had a haircut.”
    Her father smiled and smoothed the hair about his temples and at the back of his head. It was almost pure white. “Yes, but a bit too short this time, I’m afraid.” He was always inordinately pleased when she noticed a fresh haircut, and never entirely satisfied with the haircut itself.
    “Is he a student of yours, papa—the person who was here?”
    “No.”
    “Is he very nice?”
    “I never saw him before today in my life. I shouldn’t want to say.”
    Martha smiled in the sudden, deep way she had, as though something irresistibly amusing had occurred to her. “What did he sell you, papa?”
    Fitzgerald leaned back in his chair and laughed. No one in the world could relax him except this child, this girl, this maiden. “A bill of goods, I shouldn’t wonder. But I mustn’t be too hard on him. The hardest thing for any man to sell is himself. He’s a young M. D. trying to get started. He wants a recommendation from me to Dr. Winthrop.”
    “But you don’t even know him.”
    “I do know his father,” Fitzgerald murmured.
    “I think I could give him a recommendation,” Martha said airily so that her father knew she was not being altogether serious.
    “On what grounds, pray?” There was the lushness of Irish rhythm in his voice whenever he made a joke or teased her.
    “Personality.”
    “Oh-ho.” Her father nodded his head. “Personality—that will take him a long ways with Dr. Winthrop. He’ll be here to dinner tomorrow, by the way.” Martha lifted her head. “Dr. Winthrop,” Fitzgerald added quickly.
    But the color had leaped again to Martha’s face. It irritated her father. There was something very nearly indecent about growing up. He had thought his daughter had blessedly escaped the “boy crazy” phase. Now it would seem she was merely retarded in reaching it. “You’ll be home, won’t you?”
    “Of course,” Martha said, but this was one more thing which seemed to have gone awry. Ordinarily she would have contrived to return early to school, discovering it to be Dr. Winthrop’s Sunday, for she did not enjoy his visits; nor did she like to ride out to the North Shore with him afterwards in the back seat of the limousine. It was reasonable that he propose to drop her at St. Cecilia’s, passing there on his way home, but he was always trying to find out what went on inside of her, as though he were someone to whom she should tell her inmost thoughts. “Now that we’re alone,” he would say, or, “Now that I’ve got you to myself …” And he was forever trying to cheer her up while most of the times she felt perfectly cheerful already.
    “I’m glad,” her father said. “I think it hurts him sometimes, the way you manage not to be here for his visits. The amenities are the least of our obligations. I know you don’t like him, and that hurts me, too, you know.”
    “I’ve never said I didn’t like him, papa.”
    “There are a number of things your mother never says to me, also, but she makes them amply plain all the same.” He regretted saying that. It was not