|I FOUND Mary, with Robbie, in the garden. She got up from her rustic
chair under a big magnolia tree, and came hurrying to meet me, more to
keep me from her charge, I thought, than to shorten my walk.
She need not have distressed herself. I felt keenly enough Robbie's
daytime fear of me, but that I should inspire horrible dreams of
red-haired women bending over his bed at night, filled me with a real
terror of the child. I would not, for anything, have come near to him.
I stopped and waited for Mary.
She looked as fresh and sturdy as some hardy blooming plant, nothing
“peaky” about her that I could see: short and trim with round, loyal
eyes, round, ruddy face, a pugnacious nose, and a bull-dog's jaw--not
pretty, certainly, but as trusty and delightful to look at as health,
and honesty, and cleanliness could make her. I rejoiced in her that
morning, and I have rejoiced in her ever since, even during that worst
time when her trust in me wavered a little, a very little.
“Mary,” I said, “can you give me five minutes or so? I have a good deal
to say to you.”
She glanced back at Robbie. He was busy, playing with some sticks on the
gravel path.
“Yes, miss. Certainly.” And I had her quiet, complete attention.
“You aren't frightened out of your senses, then, this morning?” I asked.
She did not smile back at me, but she shook her head. “No, Miss Gale,”
she said sturdily, “though I did see thet thing come out of the nursery
plain enough. But it might have been Mrs. Brane's Angora cat. Times like
that when one is a bit upset, why, things can look twice as big as they
really are, and, as for Robbie's nightmare, why, as I make it out, it
means just nothing but that some time, when he was a mere infant maybe,
some red-haired woman give him a great scare. He's a terrible nervous
little fellow, anyways, and terrible secret in his ways. At first, I
could n't take to him, somehow, he was so queer. But now--why,”--and
here she did smile with an honest radiance,--“it would take more'n a
ghost to scare me away from takin' care of him. And a scared ghost, at
that.”
“Did you know that Delia and Annie and Jane are all leaving us to-day?”
Mary put up her hands and opened her blue eyes. “My Lor'! The poor,
silly fools! Excuse me, Miss Gale, but I never did see such a place for
cowards. Them housekeepers and their nerves!”
“Housekeepers, Mary?”
“Yes'm. We've had three this summer. They was as lonely and jumpy women
as ever I saw. The first, she could n't sleep for hearin' footsteps
above her head, and the second, she felt somebody pass her in the
hallway, and the third, she would n't say what the matter was, but she
was the most frightened of all. You promise to be a young lady with more
grit. I'm glad of it, for I do think a delicate lady like Mrs. Brane
had ought to have some peace and quiet in her house. Now, miss, I'll do
anything to help you till you can find some one to take those women's
places. I can cook pretty good, and I can do the laundry, too, and not
neglect my Robbie, neither.”
I dismissed the thought of the three housekeepers.
“Oh, Mary, thank you! You are just splendid! Mrs. Brane says she is
going to get a man and wife.”
“Now, that's good. That's what we need--a man,” said Mary. She was
emphatically an old-fashioned woman, that is, a woman completely capable
of any sort of heroism, but who never feels safe unless there is a man
in the house. “Those black men, I think, are worse'n ghosts about a
place. Not that they come in often, but one of the housekeepers was
askin' that George be allowed to sleep inside. I was against it myself.
Now, you depend upon me, miss.”
I was almost absurdly grateful, partly because her pluck steadied my
nerves, which the morning's occurrences had flurried a little, and
partly because I was glad that she did not share Robbie's peculiar
prejudice. I went back to the house thoroughly braced, and watched the
three old women depart without a pang.
Nevertheless, that description of the other housekeepers did linger
uncomfortably in my memory.