INSTRUCTIONS
With the hundred dollars which she had found in the book Mary started
an account in the Crowfield Savings Bank, under her own name. She was
very proud of her little blue bank-book, and she hoped that some time,
in some unexpected way, she would save enough money to go to college,
as John was to do.
But the outlook was rather hopeless. The Corliss family were far from
well off. Even in Crowfield, where expenses were low, they had a hard
time to live on the small income from what Dr. Corliss had managed to
save while he was Professor of Philosophy in the city college. Dr.
Corliss was writing a book which he hoped would some day make his
fortune. But the book would not be finished for many a day. Meanwhile,
though there was very little money coming in, it was steadily going
out; as money has a way of doing.
The best thing the family could do at present was to save as much as
possible by going without servants and dainties and fine clothes--just
as people have to do in war-time; and by doing things themselves,
instead of having things done for them. Mrs. Corliss was a clever
manager. She had learned how to cook and sew and do all kinds of things
with her deft fingers; and Mary was a good assistant and pupil, while
John did everything that a little boy could do to help. He ran errands
and built the fires, and even set the table and helped wipe the dishes
when his mother and sister were busy.
The neighbors were very friendly, and there were so many pleasant new
things in Crowfield that the family did not miss the pleasures they
used to enjoy in the city, nor the pretty clothes and luxuries which
were now out of the question. And Mary did not spend much time worrying
about college. There would be time enough for that.
After the finding of that hundred-dollar bill, Mary and John spent a
great deal of time in opening and shutting the leaves of books in the
library, hoping that they would come upon other bookmarks as valuable
as that first one. But whether Aunt Nan had left the bill there by
mistake, as Dr. Corliss imagined, or whether she had put it there
on purpose, as Mary liked to think, apparently the old lady had not
repeated herself. The only foreign things they found in the musty old
volumes were bits of pressed flowers and ferns, and now and then a
flattened bug which had been crushed in its pursuit of knowledge.
John soon grew tired of this fruitless search. But Mary came upon
so many interesting things in the books themselves that she often
forgot what she was looking for. Many of the books had queer,
old-fashioned pictures; some had names and dates of long ago written
on the fly-leaf. In many Mary found that Aunt Nan had scrawled notes
and comments--sometimes amusing and witty; sometimes very hard to
understand.
Mary loved her library. She had never before had a corner all to
herself, except her tiny bedroom. And to feel that this spacious
room, with everything in it, was all hers, in which to do just as she
pleased, was a very pleasant thing.
“Where’s Mary?” asked Katy Summers one afternoon, running into the
Corliss house without knocking, as she had earned the right to do.
“I think she is in the library,” said Mrs. Corliss, who was busy sewing
in the living-room. “That is a pretty likely place in which to look
nowadays, when she isn’t anywhere else!”
“Shall I go there to find her?” asked Katy.
“Yes, Dear; go right in,” said Mrs. Corliss. “She will be glad to see
you, I am sure.”
The door of the library was hospitably open. And Katy Summers, creeping
up on tiptoe and peeping in softly, saw Mary with her thumb between the
leaves of a book, kneeling before one of the bookshelves.
“I spy!” cried Katy. “What’s the old Bookworm up to now? Or perhaps I
ought to say, considering your position, what’s she _down_ to now?”
Mary jumped hastily to her feet. “Hello, Katy,” she said cordially. “I
was just looking up something. Say, Katy, do you know what fun it is to
look up quotations?”
“No,” said Katy, laughing. “I don’t see any fun in that. No more fun
than looking up things in a dictionary.”
“Well, it _is_ fun,” returned Mary. “I think I must be something like
Aunt Nan. She loved quotations. Just look at this row of ‘Gems from the
Poets.’ They’re full of quotations, Katy. I’m going to read them all,
some time.”
“Goodness!” cried Katy. “What an idea! I think poetry is stupid stuff,
sing-song and silly.”
“So Daddy thinks,” said Mary. “But it isn’t, really. It is full of the
most interesting stories and legends and beautiful things. This library
bores Daddy almost to death, because all the books on these two walls
are poetry. I believe that Aunt Nan had the works of every old poet who
ever wrote in the English language. And see, these are the lives of the
poets.” She pointed to the shelves in one corner.
“Huh!” grunted Katy. “Well, what of it?”
“Well, you see,” said Mary, looking up at Aunt Nan’s portrait, “the
more I stay in this library, the more I like Aunt Nan’s books, and the
more I want to please Aunt Nan herself. I like her, Katy.”
“I don’t!” said Katy, eyeing the portrait sideways. “You never had her
for a neighbor, you see.”
“She never did anything to you, did she?” asked Mary.
“No-o,” drawled Katy reluctantly. “She never did anything either good
or bad to me. But--she was awfully queer!”
“Of course she was,” agreed Mary. “But that isn’t the worst thing in
the world, to be queer. And she was awfully kind to me.-- Say, Katy,
don’t you like Shakespeare?”
“Not very well,” confessed Katy.
“Well, I do,” Mary asserted. “I haven’t read much of him, but I’m going
to. Every time I look at that head of Shakespeare on the mantelpiece, I
remember that it was my composition about Shakespeare that was at the
bottom of almost everything nice that has happened in Crowfield. Why,
if it hadn’t been for him, perhaps we shouldn’t have come to live here
at all, and then I shouldn’t ever have known _you_, Katy Summers!”
“Gracious!” exclaimed Katy. “Wouldn’t that have been awful? Yes,
I believe I do like him a little, since he did _that_. I wrote a
composition about him once, too. It didn’t bring anything good in my
direction. But then, it wasn’t a very good composition. I only got a
_C_ with it.”
“Well,” said Mary, “I feel as if I owe him something, and Aunt Nan
something. And sooner or later I’m going to read everything he ever
wrote.”
“Goodness!” said Katy. “Then you’ll never have time to read anything
else, I guess. Look!”-- She pointed around the walls. “Why, there are
hundreds of Shakespeares. Hundreds and hundreds!”
“They are mostly different editions of the same thing,” said Mary
wisely. “I shan’t have to read every edition. There aren’t so very
many books by him, really. Not more than thirty, I think. I’ve been
looking at this little red set that’s so easy to handle and has such
nice notes. I like the queer spelling. I’m going to read ‘Midsummer
Night’s Dream’ first. I think that’s what Aunt Nan meant.”
“What do you mean by ‘_what Aunt Nan meant_’?” asked Katy curiously.
“Has she written you another letter?” Mary had told her about the will.
“No, not exactly,” confessed Mary. “But see what I found just now when
I finished reading ‘Shakespeare the Boy,’--the book that was lying on
her desk with that first note she wrote me.” And she opened the volume
which she held in her hand at the last page. Below the word “Finis”
were penned in a delicate, old-fashioned writing these words:--
Mem. Read in this order, _with notes_.
1. Midsummer Night’s Dream.
2. Julius Cæsar.
3. Twelfth Night.
4. Tempest.
5. As You Like It.
6. Merchant of Venice.
7. Hamlet, etc.
“Pooh!” cried Katy. “I don’t believe she meant that for you, at all!
She was just talking to herself. Let’s see if there was anything
written at the end of ‘Master Skylark.’ Didn’t you say that was lying
on her desk, too?”
They ran to get this other child’s book, which, queerly enough, had
also been left lying on the desk, as if Aunt Nan had just been reading
both. And there, too, at the end was written exactly the same list,
with the same instructions.
“That settles it!” exclaimed Mary. “She did mean me to see that list,
so she left it in both those children’s books, which she thought I
would be sure to read first. I am going to read Shakespeare’s plays in
just the order she wished. I’m going to read my very own books in my
very own library. I’m going to begin this very afternoon!” Mary was
quite excited.
“Oh, no! Please not this afternoon!” begged Katy. “I want you to come
with me while I do an errand at the express office in Ashley. It is a
three-mile walk. I don’t want to go alone. Please, Mary!”
“Oh, bother!” Mary was about to say; for she wanted to begin her
reading. But she thought better of it. Katy had been so kind to her.
And, after all, it was a beautiful afternoon, and the walk would be
very pleasant down a new road which she had never traveled. She laid
down the book reluctantly.
“Well,” she said. “I can read my books any time, I suppose. Isn’t it
nice to think of that? Yes--I’ll go with you, Katy. It will be fun.
Just wait till I get my hat, and tell Mother.”
“You’re a dear!” burst out Katy, hugging her.
“If I go with you this time, Katy, you’ll have to read Shakespeare with
me another time,” bargained Mary with good-natured guile.
“All right,” said Katy. “Sometime, when it is not so nice and crisp and
walky out of doors, as it is to-day.”
And off the two girls started, with comradely arms about one another’s
shoulders.