THE BOOKS
The town of Crowfield was built on a swift-flowing river with a
waterfall, which gave it strong water-power. So the houses were easily
fitted with electricity. Even the old Corliss mansion was up to date
in that respect, at least. This was why Aunt Nan had been able to
carry out her liking for queer devices and unexpected mechanical
effects, as Mr. Griggs, the carpenter, explained when he came to make
more hospitable the front hall. He chuckled over the moving chair,
the secret of which was a spring concealed under one of the brass
nail-heads. Any one who sat down and leaned back was sure to press this
button, whereupon the chair would begin to move.
“It beats all how clever that old lady was!” said Mr. Griggs. “I never
saw anything like this before. She must ’a’ got some electrician down
from the city to fix this up for her. We don’t do that kind of job in
Crowfield.”
“Do you suppose there are any more such things about the house?”
inquired Mrs. Corliss anxiously.
“I’ll take a look,” said Mr. Griggs. “But I mightn’t find ’em, even so.”
And he did not find them; Aunt Nan had her secrets carefully concealed.
But for weeks the family were continually discovering strange new
surprises in their housekeeping.
That very night at supper, just after Mr. Griggs had left the house
with his kit of tools, a queer thing happened. They were sitting about
the round dining-table, the center of which, as they had noticed from
the first, seemed to be a separate inlaid circle of wood. In the middle
of this Mary had set a pretty vase of flowers--nasturtiums, mignonette,
marigolds, and yellow poppies, the last lingerers in their garden.
They were talking about their first day in Crowfield, about the visit
of Katy Summers, and the funny things that had happened to their first
caller; and they were all laughing merrily over Mary’s description of
how Katy had looked when she went riding out toward the door in the
inhospitable chair. Dr. Corliss had just reached out his hand for the
sugar. Suddenly the table center began slowly to revolve, and the sugar
bowl retreated from his hand as if by magic.
“Well, I never!” said the Doctor. “This is a new kind of butler’s
assistant!”
“It makes me feel like Alice in Wonderland!” exclaimed Mary. “It is
the Mad Hatter’s breakfast; only instead of every one’s moving on one
place, the place moves on by itself!”
They found that Mary had hit her knee by accident against a spring
concealed under the table.
“Aunt Nan lived here all alone,” said Mrs. Corliss, “and I dare say she
found this an easy way to pass things to herself when she was eating
her lonely meals.”
“Let’s keep it like this,” said Mary. “Now I shan’t be needing always
to ask John to pass the salt.”
“I don’t think it’s fair!” protested John. “Now, Mary has the seat by
the button, and she can make the table turn when she likes. I wish I
had a button, too.”
“You’d keep the table whirling all the time, John,” laughed his father.
“No, it is better as it is. We chose our seats this way, before we knew
about the lively center-piece. Let’s stick to what chance gave us. Aunt
Nan’s house seems to be a kind of good-luck game, doesn’t it?”
But in spite of the queer things that were continually happening there,
it did not take long for the Corliss family to feel quite at home
in this old house, and in Crowfield. Mary was admitted to the High
School, and found herself in the same class with Katy Summers, which
pleased them both very much. They soon became the closest chums. John
went to the Grammar School, where he found some nice boys of his own
age who lived just down the road; Ralph and James Perry, cousins in
opposite houses, and Billy Barton a little farther on.
These promptly formed the Big Four; and the neighborhood of the Big
Four was the liveliest in town. The Corliss house, with its collections
and curiosities, became their favorite meeting-place, and in these
days could hardly recognize itself with the merry streams of children
who were always running in and out, up and down the stairs. It was
fortunate that Dr. Corliss, who kept himself shut up in his study with
the book he was writing, was not of a nervous or easily distracted
temperament.
As for Mrs. Corliss--being a mother, she just smiled and loved
everybody. It was her idea that first of all a home should be a happy
place for the family and for every one who came there. The first thing
she did was to send for the familiar furniture of the city house
which they had left when Dr. Corliss was obliged to give up his
professorship in college and move into the country. Now the queer rooms
of Aunt Nan’s inhospitable old house were much less queer and much more
homelike than they had ever been, and every corner radiated a merry
hospitality.
But in the library nothing was changed. Mary would not let anything be
moved from the place in which Aunt Nan had put it. For she had grown
much attached to the old lady’s memory, since the finding of that
little watch and chain.
You may be sure that Mary and John looked about the library carefully,
to see if more of the same kind of nice joke might not be concealed
somewhere. But they found nothing. It was not until nearly a week
later, when there came a rainy Saturday, that they found time to look
at the books themselves.
“Hello! Here’s a funny book to find in an old lady’s library!” cried
John. “It’s our old friend ‘Master Skylark,’ one of the nicest books I
know. But how do you suppose a children’s book came to be here, Mary?
Daddy says for years Aunt Nan never allowed any children in the house.”
“I wonder!” said Mary. “And here’s another child’s book, right here
on the desk. I noticed it the first time I came in here, but I never
opened it before. ‘Shakespeare the Boy’ is the name of it. I wonder if
it is interesting? I like Shakespeare. We read his plays in school, and
once I wrote a composition about him, you know.”
“Papa says Aunt Nan was crazy about Shakespeare,” said John.
“Why, here’s a note inside the cover of the book, addressed to me!”
said Mary wonderingly.
“Let me look!” cried John, darting to her side. “Yes, it’s in that same
handwriting, Mary. It’s a letter from Aunt Nan. Do hurry and open it!”
Mary held the envelope somewhat dubiously. It was not quite pleasant
to be receiving letters from a person no longer living in this world.
She glanced up at the portrait over the mantel as she cut the end of
the envelope with Aunt Nan’s desk shears, and it seemed to her that the
eyes under the prim gray curls gleamed at her knowingly. She almost
expected to see the long forefinger of the portrait’s right hand point
directly at her.
It was a brief letter that Aunt Nan had written; and it explained why
she had left her library of precious books to this grandniece Mary whom
she had never seen.
Mary Corliss (it began): I shan’t call you dear Mary because I
don’t know whether you are dear or not. You may be if you like the
sort of things I always liked. And in that case I shall be glad you
have them for your own, when I can no longer enjoy them. I mean
the things in this room, which I have given all to you, because
there is no one else whom I can bear to think of as handling them.
I heard your father say once that he hated poetry. That was enough
for me! I never wanted to see him again. He can have my house, but
not my precious books. Well, I read in the paper which your mother
sent me that you had won a prize at school for a composition about
William Shakespeare, the greatest poet who ever lived. You have begun
well! If you go on, as I did, you will care as I have cared about
everything he wrote. So you shall have my library and get what you
can out of it. Be kind to the books I have loved. Love them, if you
can, for their own sake.
Your Great-Aunt,
NAN CORLISS.
“What a queer letter!” said John. “So it was your composition that did
it. My! Aren’t you lucky, Mary!”
“I do like Shakespeare already,” said Mary, glancing first at Aunt
Nan’s portrait, then at the bust of the poet below it. “And I guess I
am going to like Aunt Nan.” She smiled up at the portrait, which she
now thought seemed to smile back at her. “I must go and tell Father
about it,” she said eagerly, running out of the room; and presently she
came back, dragging him by the hand.
“Well, Mary!” said Dr. Corliss. “So it was your Shakespeare essay that
won you the library! I remember how fond Aunt Nan used to be of the
Poet. She was always quoting from him. I am glad you like poetry, my
dear; though for myself I never could understand it. This is, indeed,
a real poetry library. I am glad she gave it to you instead of to me,
Mary. There are any number of editions of Shakespeare here, I have
noticed, and a lot of books about him, too. I suppose she would have
liked you to read every one.”
“I mean to,” said Mary firmly. “I want to; and I am going to begin with
this one, ‘Shakespeare the Boy.’ I feel as if that was what she meant
me to do.”
As she said this Mary began to turn over the leaves of the book in
which she had found the note from Aunt Nan. “The story sounds very
nice,” she said.
Just then something fell from between the leaves and fluttered to the
floor. Her father stooped to pick it up.
“Aunt Nan’s bookmark,” he said. “It would be nice to keep her marks
when you can, Mary. Why!” he exclaimed suddenly, staring at what he
held in his fingers. It was long and yellow, and printed on both sides.
“Mary!” he cried, “did you ever see one of these before? I have
never seen many of them myself, more’s the pity!” And he handed the
“bookmark” to his daughter.
It was a hundred-dollar bill.
“Papa!” gasped Mary, “whose is it?”
“It is yours, Mary, just as much as the watch and chain were; just as
much as the library is,” said her father. “Everything in the room was
to be yours; Aunt Nan said so in her will. This is certainly a part of
your legacy. I wonder if Aunt Nan forgot it or put it there on purpose,
as another of her little jokes?”
“I think she put it there on purpose,” said John. “My! But she was a
queer old lady!”
“I think she was a very nice old lady,” said Mary. “Now I must go and
tell Katy Summers about it.”