CHAPTER I

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MARY WARE'S PROMISED LAND

Works of

ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON

* * * * *

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Mary Ware: The Little Colonel's Chum 1.50

Mary Ware in Texas 1.50

Mary Ware's Promised Land 1.50

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L. C. PAGE & COMPANY

53 Beacon Street Boston, Mass.

[Illustration: "'I DON'T WANT TO BE JUST AN OLD MAID SISTER IN SOMEBODY

ELSE'S HOME.'" (_See page 34._)]

Mary Ware's Promised Land

By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON

Author of "The Little Colonel Series," "Big Brother," "Ole Mammy's

Torment," "Joel: A Boy of Galilee," "Asa Holmes," "Travelers Five on

Life's Highway," etc.

Illustrated by JOHN GOSS

BOSTON L. C. PAGE

& COMPANY MDCCCCXII

_Copyright_, 1912,

BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY.

(INCORPORATED)

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London

_All rights reserved_

First Impression, October, 1912

THE COLONIAL PRESS

C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.

TO

MISS FANNY CRAIG

THE "MISS ALLISON" OF THESE STORIES, WHOSE "ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART"

RUNS WIDE AND FAR THROUGH ALL THIS HAPPY VALLEY

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER PAGE

I. A SEEKER OF NEW TRAILS 1

II. BACK AT LONE-ROCK 24

III. A NEW FRIEND 51

IV. THE WITCH WITH A WAND 68

V. P STANDS FOR PINK 91

VI. TOLD IN LETTERS 111

VII. A DESERT OF WAITING 126

VIII. A GREAT SORROW 144

PART II

I. BETTY'S WEDDING 161

II. TOWARDS THE CANAAN OF HER DESIRE 183

III. THE SUPREME CALL 204

IV. "PINK" OR DIAMOND ROW 227

V. MARY AND THE "BIG OPPORTUNITY" 244

VI. PHIL WALKS IN 266

VII. HER GREAT RENUNCIATION 278

VIII. HOW IT ALL ENDED 300

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

"'I DON'T WANT TO BE JUST AN OLD MAID SISTER IN

SOMEBODY ELSE'S HOME'" (_see page 34_) _Frontispiece_

"THERE WAS ONLY TIME TO . . . HASTILY CLASP THE

LITTLE GLOVED HAND HELD OUT TO HIM" 4

"'I'LL SLEEP BETTER IF THEY ARE ON THEIR POLES

INSTEAD OF ON MY MIND'" 26

"'I WISH WE COULD SETTLE THINGS BY A FEATHER,

AS THEY USED TO IN THE OLD FAIRY TALES'" 77

"SEVERAL TIMES SHE STOPPED JACK IN PASSING TO

ASK HIM A QUESTION" 118

"'DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU EVER SAW

THIS?'" 167

"GAZING INTO THE SWEET FACE THAT SEEMED TO SMILE

HELPFULLY BACK AT HER" 240

"'IT WAS AS IF WE HAD REACHED THAT LAND THAT WE

USED TO SING ABOUT'" 310

PART I

MARY WARE'S

PROMISED LAND

PART I

CHAPTER I

A SEEKER OF NEW TRAILS

When the Ware family boarded the train in San Antonio that September

morning for their long journey back to Lone-Rock, every passenger on the

Pullman straightened up with an appearance of interest. Somehow their

arrival had the effect of a breath of fresh air blowing through the

stuffy car. Even before their entrance some curiosity had been awakened

by remarks which floated in from the rear platform, where they were

bidding farewell to some friends who had come to see them off.

"Do write and tell us what your next adventures are, Mary," exclaimed

one clear voice. "Your family ought to be named Gulliver instead of

Ware, for you are always travelling around to such queer,

out-of-the-way places. I suppose you haven't the faintest idea where

you'll be six months from now."

"No, nor where I'll be in even six weeks," came the answer, in a

laughing girlish treble. "As I told the Mallory twins when we left

Bauer, I'm like 'Gray Brother' now, snuffing at the dawn wind and asking

where shall we lair to-day. From now I follow new trails. And, girls, I

wish you could have heard Brud's mournful little voice piping after me

down the track, as the train pulled out, 'Good hunting, Miss Mayry! Good

hunting!'"

"Oh, you'll have that, no matter where you go," was the confident

answer. "And don't forget to write and tell us about it."

A chorus of good-byes and farewell injunctions followed this seeker of

new trails into the car, and the passengers glanced up to find that she

was a bright, happy-looking girl in her teens. She carried a sheaf of

roses on one arm, and some new magazines under the other. One noticed

first the alertness of the face under the stylish hat with its bronze

quills, and then the girlish simplicity of dress and manner which showed

at a glance that she was a thorough little gentlewoman. Her mother, who

followed, gave the same impression; gray-gowned, gray-gloved, bearing a

parting gift of sweet violets, all that she could carry, in both hands.

One literal minded woman who had overheard Mary's remarks about lairs

and new trails, and who had been on the watch for something wild all

across the state of Texas, looked up in disappointment. There was

nothing whatever in their appearance to suggest that they had lived in

queer places or that they were on their way to one now. The fifteen year

old boy who followed them was like any other big boy in short trousers,

and the young man who brought up the rear and was undeniably good to

look at, gave not the slightest evidence of being on a quest for

adventure. The only reason the woman could see for the name of Gulliver

being applied to the family, was that they settled themselves with the

ease and dispatch of old travellers.

While Jack was hanging up his mother's coat, and Norman storing their

suit-cases away in one section, Mary, in the seat across the aisle, was

pressing her face against the window-pane, watching for a parting

glimpse of the friends, when they should pass through the station gate.

A sudden tapping on the glass outside startled her, and the next

instant she was exclaiming excitedly to her elder brother, "Oh, quick,

Jack! Put up the window, please. It's Gay and Roberta! They're still

waiting out there!"

As the window flew up, and Mary's head was thrust out, passengers on

that side of the car saw two young girls standing on tiptoe to speak to

her. The one with beautiful auburn hair called out breathlessly, "Oh,

Mary! Bogey's coming! Pray that the train will stand one more minute!"

And the other, the one with curly lashes and mischievous mouth, chimed

in, "He's bringing an enormous box of candy! Mean thing, to come so late

that we can't have even a nibble!"

Then those looking out saw a young fellow in lieutenant's uniform sprint

through the gate, down the long station and across half a dozen tracks

to reach the place where Roberta and Gay stood like excited guide-posts,

wildly pointing out the window, and beckoning him to hurry. Red-faced

and panting, he brought up beside them with a hasty salute, just as the

wheels began turning and the long train started to puff slowly out of

the station. There was only time to thrust the box through the window

and hastily clasp the little gloved hand held out to him.

[Illustration: "THERE WAS ONLY TIME TO . . . HASTILY CLASP THE LITTLE

GLOVED HAND HELD OUT TO HIM."]

"Say good-bye to the others for me," he called, trotting along beside

the moving train. "Sorry I was late. I had a lot of things to tell you.

I'll have to write them."

"Do," called Mary, "and let me know--" But he was no longer in hearing

distance and the sentence was left unfinished.

When she drew in her head there was a deeper color in her face and such

shining pleasure in her eyes, that every fellow traveller who had seen

the little byplay, knew just what delight the lieutenant's parting

attention had given her. More than one watched furtively with a sort of

inward smiling as she opened the box and passed it around for the family

to share and admire.

One person, especially, found entertainment in watching her. He was the

elderly, spectacled gentleman in the section behind her. He was an

illustrator for a well-known publishing house, and Mary would have

counted her adventures well begun, could she have known who was sitting

behind her, and that one of his famous cover designs was on the very

magazine which lay open on her lap. Well for her peace of mind that she

did not know what he proceeded to do soon after her arrival. Producing a

pencil and drawing pad from his satchel, he made a quick sketch of her,

as she sat sideways in her seat, carrying on an animated conversation

with Jack.

The artist smiled as he sketched in the jaunty quills of the hat, perked

at just the right angle to make an effective picture. He was sure that

they gave the key-note to her character.

"They have such an effect of alertness and 'go,'" was his inward

comment. "It's sensible of her to know that this style gives her

distinction, while those big floppy affairs everybody wears nowadays

would have made just an ordinary looking girl of her."

He would have been still more positive that the hat gave the key-note of

her character, if he had seen the perseverance and ingenuity that had

gone towards its making. For she had been her own milliner. Two other

hats had been ripped to pieces to give her material for this, and the

stylish brown quills which had first attracted his attention, had been

saved from the big bronze turkey which had been sent to them from the

Barnaby ranch for their Christmas dinner.

Before he had made more than an outline, the porter came by with a paper

bag, and Mary whisked her hat off her head and into the bag, serenely

unconscious that thereby she was arresting the development of a good

picture.

Later, when Jack changed to the seat facing Mary, and with his elbow on

the window ledge and chin propped on his fist sat watching the flying

landscape, the illustrator made a sketch of him also. This time he did

not stop with a bare outline. What had seemed just a boyish face at

first glance, invited his careful study. Those mature lines about the

mouth, the firm set of the lips, the serious depths of the grave gray

eyes, certainly belonged to one who had known responsibilities and

struggles, and, in some way, he felt, conquest. He wondered what there

had been in the young fellow's life to leave such a record. The longer

he studied the face the better he liked it.

The whole family seemed unusually well worth knowing, he concluded after

a critical survey of Norman and his mother, who sat in the opposite

section, entertaining each other with such evident interest that it made

him long for some one to talk to himself. Tired by his two days' journey

and bored by the monotony of his surroundings, he yawned, stretched

himself, and rising, sauntered out to the rear platform of the

observation car. Here, some time later, Norman found him smoking and

was drawn into conversation with the stranger, who seemed to have a gift

for asking questions.

The conversation was confined principally to the different kinds of wild

animals and snakes to be found in the state of Texas, and to an amateur

"zoo" which Norman had once owned in Lone-Rock, the mining camp in

Arizona that they were now going back to. But incidentally the

interested artist learned that Jack had been assistant manager of the

mines. That accounted for the mature lines of his face. They stood for

responsibilities bravely shouldered. He had been almost killed by an

accident which would have crushed several Mexican workmen had he not

risked his own life for theirs. He had been ordered to a milder climate,

hence their recent sojourn in Texas. They had supposed he would always

be a helpless cripple, but, by an almost miraculous operation, he had

been restored, and was now going back to take his old position.

Norman himself intended to be a mining engineer, he told the stranger

when questioned. He had already begun to take a practical course under

the chief at the office. Mathematics came easy to him. The other

studies, which he thought unnecessary, but which his family insisted

upon, he recited to the minister. He, and another boy, Billy Downs.

There were only a few white boys of his age in Lone-Rock.

"What does your sister do for entertainment?" asked his questioner,

recalling the vivacious little face under the hat with the saucy bronze

quills. "Doesn't she find it rather lonely there?"

"Why, no!" answered Norman in a surprised tone. "A place just naturally

quits being lonesome when Mary gets into it, and she does so many things

that nobody can ever guess what she's going to think of doing next."

Probably it was because he had a daughter of his own, who, not

possessing Mary's rare gift, demanded constant amusement from her

family, that he turned his spectacled gaze on her with deepened interest

when he went back into the car, and many times during the rest of the

time that they journeyed together. She crossed the aisle to sit with her

mother the greater part of the afternoon, so he heard nothing of the

conversation which appeared to be of absorbing interest to them both.

But the woman who had been on the watch for something wild all the way

across the state, deliberately arranged to hear as much of it as she

could. A scrap or two that reached her above the noise of the train

made her prick up her ears. She changed her seat so that she sat back to

back with Mrs. Ware and Mary. Eavesdropping on the train was perfectly

justifiable, she told her uneasy conscience, because there was no

personal element in it. Of course she couldn't do it at home, but it was

different among strangers. All the world was a stage when one travelled,

and the people one met on a journey were the actors one naturally looked

to to help pass the time. So she sat with her eyes closed, because

riding backward always made her dizzy, and her head so close to the back

of Mary's that the bronze quills would have touched her ear had Mary

turned an inch or two farther around in her seat.

Presently she gathered that this interesting young girl was about to go

out into the wide, wide world to make her fortune, and that she had a

list of teachers' agencies and employment bureaus to which she intended

applying as soon as she reached home. From various magazines given her

to read on the way, she had cut a number of advertisements which she

wanted to answer, but her mother objected to most of them. She did not

want her to take a place among strangers as governess, companion,

social secretary, mother's helper, reader for a clipping bureau or

shopping agent.

"You are too young, Mary," she insisted. "One never knows what one is

getting into in strange families. Now, that position in a Girls' Winter

Camp in Florida does not seem so objectionable, because they give

teachers at Warwick Hall as reference. You can easily find out all about

it. But there is no real reason why you should go away this winter. Now

that Jack has his position again and we are all well and strong we can

live like lords at Lone-Rock on his salary. At least," she added,

smiling, "it must seem like lords to some of the families in the camp.

And he can save a little each month besides."

"But, mother dear," answered Mary, a distressed frown puckering her

smooth forehead. "I don't want to settle down for Jack to take care of

me. I want to live my own life--to see something of the world. You let

Joyce go without objecting."

"Yes, to make an artist of herself. But somehow that was different. She

had a definite career mapped out. Her work is the very breath of life to

her, and it would have been wrong to hold her when she has such

undoubted talent. But you see, Mary, your goal is so vague. You haven't

any great object in view. You're willing to do almost anything for the

sake of change. I verily believe you'd like to try each one of those

positions in turn, just for the novelty of the experiences, and the

opportunity of meeting all those different kinds of people."

Mary nodded emphatically. "Oh, I would! I'd love it!" Then she laughed

at her mother's puzzled expression.

"You can't understand it, can you? Your whole brood is turning out to be

the kind that pines to be 'in the swim' for itself. Still, you didn't

cluck distractedly when Joyce went to New York and Holland into the

Navy, and you followed Jack up here when he struck out for himself, and

you know Norman's chosen work is liable to take him anywhere on the face

of the globe. So I don't see why you should cluck at me when I edge off

after the others."

Mrs. Ware smiled into the merry eyes waiting for their answer. "I'm not

trying to stop you entirely," she replied. "I'm only warning you to go

slowly and to be very careful. As long as there is nothing especial you

have set your heart on accomplishing, it seems unwise to snatch at the

first chance that offers. You're very young yet, remember, only

eighteen."

Mary made no answer for several minutes. Down in her heart was the

feeling that some day her life would mean far more to the world than

Joyce's career as an artist or Holland's as a naval officer. She had

felt so ever since that first day at Warwick Hall, when she gazed up at

the great window of Edryn's tryst, where his coat of arms gleamed like

jewels in its amber setting. As she had listened to the flood of

wonderful music rolling up from below, something out of it had begun

calling her. And it had gone on calling and calling with the compelling

note of a far-off yet insistent trumpet, into a world of nameless

longings and exalted ambitions, of burning desire to do great deeds. And

finally she had begun to understand that somewhere, some day, some great

achievement awaited her. Like Edryn she had heard the King's call, and

like him she had whispered his answer softly and reverently as before an

altar:

"Oh list!

Oh heart and hand of mine, keep tryst--

Keep tryst or die!"

It was still all vague and shadowy. With what great duty to the universe

she was to keep tryst she did not yet know, and it was now two years

since she had heard that call. But the vision still stayed. Inwardly she

knew she was some sort of a Joan of Arc, consecrated to some high

destiny. Yet when she thought of explaining anything so intangible, she

began to smile at the thought of how ridiculous such an explanation

would sound, shouted out in broad daylight, above the roar of the train.

Such confidences can be given only in twilight and cloisters, just as

the call itself can come only to those who "wake at dawn to listen in

high places."

But feeling presently that she must give some definite reason to her

mother for wanting to start out to seek her fortunes, she leaned across

the aisle and slipped a railroad folder from Jack's coat pocket. It had

a map on one side of it, and spreading it across both her lap and her

mother's, she laid her finger on a spot within the boundary lines of

Kentucky.

"Don't you remember my little primary geography?" she asked. "The one I

began to study at Lee's ranch? I had a gilt paper star pasted right

there over Lloydsboro Valley, and a red ink line running to it from

Arizona. I remember the day I put them there, I told Hazel Lee that

there was my 'Promised Land,' and that I'd vowed a vow to go there some

day if the heavens fell. I'll never forget the horror on her little

freckled face as she answered, 'Aw, ain't you wicked! I bet you never

get there now, just for saying that!'

"But I _did_ get there!" she continued with deep satisfaction. "And now

I've made up my mind to go back there to live some of these days. You

see, mamma, my visit there was like the trial trip that Caleb and Joshua

made to 'spy out the land.' Don't you remember the picture in

Grandmother Ware's Bible of the two men coming back with such an

enormous bunch of grapes on a pole between them that they could hardly

carry it? It proved that the fruits of Canaan were better and bigger

than the fruits of any other country. That was what my visit did; proved

that I could be better and happier in Lloydsboro Valley than anywhere

else in the world."

There was a moment's silence, then she added wistfully, "Somehow, when

you're there, it seems easier to keep 'the compass needle of your soul

true to the North-star of a great ambition.' There's so much to inspire

one there. I have a feeling that if I could only go back to live, I'd--

Oh, I hardly know how to express it! But it would prove to be my 'high

place,' the place where I'll hear my call. So the great reason why I

want to start right away to earn money is that I may have enough as soon

as possible to buy a home back there. That's my dearest day-dream, and

I'm bound to make it come true if I have to wander around in the

wilderness of hard work as long as the old Israelites did in theirs.

You're to come with me. That's one of the best parts of my dream, for I

know how you've always loved the place and longed to go back. Now, don't

you think that's an object good enough and big enough to let me go for?"

Mrs. Ware seized the little hand spread out over the map of Kentucky and

gave it an impulsive squeeze.

"Yes," she answered. "If you're ever as homesick for the dear old place

as I used to be sometimes, I can understand your longing to go back

there to live."

"_Used_ to be!" echoed Mary blankly, staring at her in astonishment.

"Aren't you now? Wouldn't you be glad to go back there to spend the rest

of your days? I don't mean right now, of course, while Jack and Norman

need you so much here, but"--lowering her voice--"I'm just as sure as I

can be without having been told officially that Jack is going to marry

Betty Lewis as soon as his finances are in better shape. She's such a

perfect darling that they'd be happy ever after, and then I wouldn't

have any compunctions about taking you away from him. Now that's another

reason I don't want to stay on here, just to be an added expense to

him."

The words poured out so impetuously, the face turned toward her was so

eager, that Mrs. Ware could not dim its light by answering the first two

questions as she felt impelled. She answered the last instead, saying

that she felt as Mary did about Jack's marriage, and that it made her

inexpressibly happy to think that the girl he might some day bring home

as his bride was the daughter of her dear old friend and schoolmate,

Joyce Allen.

They lowered their voices over this confidence, so that the woman who

was sitting back to back with them shifted her position and leaned a

little nearer. Even then she could not hear what they were saying till

Mary returned to her first question.

"But, mamma, you said '_used_ to be.' Do you really mean that you don't

care for your Happy Valley as much as you used to? The place you've

talked about to us since we were babies, till we've come to think of it

as enchanted ground?"

Feeling as if she were pleading guilty to a charge of high treason, Mrs.

Ware answered slowly, "No, I can't truthfully say that I do long for it

as I used to. It's this way, little daughter," she added hastily, seeing

the disappointment that shadowed Mary's face. "I've been away such a

very, very long time, that there are only a few of my girlhood friends

left. Betty's mother has been dead many years. The Little Colonel's

mother is really the only one I could expect to find unchanged. The old

seminary is burned down, strangers are in the homes I used to visit, and

I'm afraid I'd find so many changes that it would be as sad as visiting

a cemetery. And I've lived so long in the West, that I've taken root

here now. I think of it as home. I'm just as interested as Jack is in

building up the fortunes of our new state. I think he is going to be a

power in it some day. If I should live long enough, it would not

surprise me in the least to see him Governor of it some time."

She folded one little gray-gloved hand over the other so complacently as

she calmly made this announcement, that Mary laughed and shook her head

despairingly.

"Oh, mamma! mamma! You vain woman! What fine swans all your ducklings

are going to turn out to be! Jack a Governor, Holland an Admiral,

Norman a mighty man of valor (variety still undetermined), and Joyce a

celebrity in the world of art! Must I be the only Simple Simon in the

bunch? What would you really like to have me do? Now, own up, if you

could have your choice, what is your ambition for me?"

"Well," confessed Mrs. Ware, "you're such a born home-maker, that I'd

like to see you that before all else. I believe you could make a home so

much better than your neighbors, that like the creator of the proverbial

mouse-trap, you would have the world making a beaten track to your door,

even though you lived in the woods. As the old Colonel once said, you

can be an honor to your sex and one of the most interesting women of

your generation."

Although she spoke jokingly there was such a note of belief in her voice

that Mary caught her by the arm and shook it, saying playfully,

"Peacock! If _that's_ what you hope for me, then you must certainly

speed my parting. It's only in the goodly land of Lloydsboro that I can

measure up to all you expect of me. I'll try and fill the bill, but

promise me this much. When I've finally pitched my tent in Canaan and

achieved that happy home, then you'll come and share it with me. At

least," she added as Mrs. Ware nodded assent, "what time you are not

strutting through foreign salons or the Governor's mansion, or sailing

the high seas with the Admiral."

The woman behind them heard no more, for Jack called them across the

aisle to look at something from his window, and when they returned to

their seats Mrs. Ware picked up a magazine and Mary began an absorbing

study of the map. She retraced the line of her first railroad journey,

the pilgrimage from the little village of Plainsville, Kansas, to

Phoenix, Arizona. As she thought of it, she could almost feel the lump

in her throat that had risen when she looked back for the last time on

the little brown house they were leaving forever, and waved good-bye to

the lonesome little Christmas tree they had put out on the porch for the

birds.

It was on that trip that her tireless tongue had made life-long friends

of two strangers whom she talked to: Phil Tremont, and his sister Elsie.

Her brothers had always teased her about her chatterbox ways, but

suppose she _hadn't_ talked to them that day. The endless chain of

happenings that that friendship started never would have begun, and life

would have been far different for all of them.

Then her finger traced the way to where Ware's Wigwam would have been on

the map if it had been a spot large enough to mark. There Phil had come

into their life again, almost like one of the family. Her real

acquaintance with the Princess Winsome of her dreams began there too,

when Lloyd Sherman made her memorable visit, and Mary, with the adoring

admiration of a little girl for the older one whom she takes as her

ideal in all things, began to copy her in every way possible.

The next line followed the course of the red ink trail in her old

primary geography, for that was the trail she had followed back to the

gilt paper star which stood for Lloydsboro Valley. The land which she

had learned to love through song and story had been the dearest of all

to her ever since, through the associations of that happy summer. There

were several other trips to retrace as she sat with the map spread out

before her. The long one she took to Warwick Hall, where surely no one

ever had fuller, happier school-days. She did not stop to recall them

now, thinking with satisfaction that they were all recorded in her "Good

Times Book," and that if ever "days of dole, those hoarfrost seasons of

the soul," came into her life, every cell of that memory hive would be

stored with the honey of their good cheer. So also were her Christmas

and Easter vacations recorded, when she and Betty visited Joyce in her

studio apartment in New York.

The next line which she traced was a hasty dash back across the map to

Lone-Rock. She always tried to dash the thought of it out of mind just

as quickly. The heart-breaking agony of it, when she was flying home to

find her brother a hopeless cripple, was too terrible to recall even

now, after a long time, when he was sitting beside her, strong and well.

Then her finger trailed down across the map, retracing their last

journey the year before to San Antonio and the hill country above it. In

many ways it had been a hard year, but, remembering its happy outcome,

she said to herself that it should be marked by triple lines of red.

They had gone down to the place, strangers in a strange land, they were

coming away with some of the warmest friendships of their lives binding

them fast to it. Down there Jack had had his wonderful recovery, which

was above and beyond all that their wildest hopes had pictured. And,

too, it was the last place where she would have expected to meet Phil

Tremont again. Yet he had appeared suddenly one day as if it were the

most natural thing in the world to be standing there by the huisache

tree to help her over the fence of the blue-bonnet pasture.

"By what has been, learn what will be," she repeated, and then idly

pricked that motto into the edge of the folder with a pin, as she went

on recalling various incidents. Judging by her past she had every reason

to believe that the future might be full of happy surprises; so, as she

studied the map now, it was to wonder which way the new trails would

lead her.

"Any way at all!" she thought fervently. "I don't care which direction

they take, if they'll only come around to the Happy Valley. I'm bound to

get there at any cost."

Presently she folded up the map and sat gazing dreamily out of the

window. An old song that was often on her lips came to her mind, but,

this time, she parodied it to suit her hopes:

"For if I go not by the road, and go not by the hill,

And go not by the far sea way, yet go I surely will!

Close all the roads of all the world--Love's road is open still."

CHAPTER II

BACK AT LONE-ROCK

The home-coming was keenly pleasant. Mary, who had been going over the

house helping to throw open all the doors and windows, paused in the

cheerful living-room. The September sun shone across the worn carpet and

the familiar furniture which had served them even in the days of the

little brown house.

"I didn't know that I _could_ be so glad to get back to these old tables

and chairs," she exclaimed. "It actually gives you a real thrill to be

welcomed by something that's known you since babyhood, doesn't it?"

"Yes," answered Jack. "They've been considerably mixed up with our

family history, and bear more of the scars of our battles than we do.

That little chair of Joyce's for instance. Back in the days of my kilts

and curls I used to kick dents in it every time we had a scrap, because

I couldn't fight a girl, and I had to let off steam some way."

"This is my especial friend," said Mary. She dropped into a wide rocker

that held out welcoming arms. "Holland and I used to play in this by the

hour. It's a wonder there's anything left of it. We had it for a

stage-coach so many times, and turned over in it whenever it was

attacked by the Indians. I used to curl up in it before the fire, to

read or dream or cry in it, till it knows me in all my moods and tenses.

Some of these days, when I go to live in my old Kentucky home, I shall

ask mamma to let me take it with me just for old times' sake."

Jack opened the door of the clock and began winding the weights that had

hung idle for nearly a year. When the swinging pendulum once more began

its deep-toned tick-tock, he looked back over his shoulder with a smile.

"Now I feel that I'm really at home when I hear that voice. As far back

as I can remember it's always been saying, 'All _right_! All _right_!' I

made the nurse carry it back into the kitchen where I couldn't hear it

the day the doctor told me I could never walk again. Its cheerfulness

nearly drove me wild when I knew that everything was so hopelessly all

wrong. But now listen!" he insisted exultantly. "Everything _is_ all

right now, and every day is Thanksgiving Day to me the year around."

There was a huskiness in his voice as he added, "Nobody can know what it

means to me--the blessedness of being able to go to work."

He dashed away to the office soon after to discover what had been done

in his long absence. Norman hurried through the tasks assigned to him as

soon as possible, impatient to be off to explore old haunts with Billy

Downs. Two pairs of quick, capable hands made light work of the cleaning

and unpacking that had to be done that day, and accomplished much more

that might have been left till another time had not Mary's usual zeal

for getting everything in proper place in the least possible time taken

possession of her.

"Oh, yes, I know, mamma," she called back in answer to a protest from

the next room. "These curtains _could_ wait till to-morrow, but they are

all fresh and ready to hang, and I'll sleep better if they are on their

poles instead of on my mind."

[Illustration: "'I'LL SLEEP BETTER IF THEY ARE ON THEIR POLES INSTEAD OF

ON MY MIND.'"]

As she climbed up and down the step-ladder her thoughts were not on the

curtains which she adjusted mechanically, nor on the song which she was

humming in the same way. She was composing the letter which she intended

sending to the Girls' Winter Camp in Florida, applying for the vacant

position, and she wanted to make it perfect of its kind. Mrs. Ware,

watching the zest with which she fell upon her work of beautifying the

little cottage, thought it must be because she felt the truth of the

refrain which she sang softly over and over:

"'Mid pleasures and palaces, tho' we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."

She was so glad to be back herself, that presently, when she had

occasion to go through the room again, she joined in for a few notes in

passing.

The sweet alto voice made Mary suddenly aware of what she was singing,

and she gave a guilty little start, glad that her mother could not know

that her thoughts had all been absorbed in planning to get away from the

home she was singing about so fondly.

"It does seem nicer to be back than I thought it would," she admitted to

herself. "But maybe that's because I know I don't have to stay. Even the

finest cage in the world is more attractive with its door open than

shut."

Although she did not realize the fact, much of her hurry to get the

house in order was due to a feeling that the summons to take advantage

of that open door might come very soon, and she wanted to be ready when

it came.

Late that afternoon she started to the post-office with two letters, one

to the principal of the Girls' Camp, the other to the teacher in Warwick

Hall who had been given as reference.

"Oh, I hope my application will get there in time, and I hope my

references will be satisfactory," she thought earnestly. "They ought to

be impressed, with a list which begins with Bishop Chartley and Madam,

and General Walton's wife, and includes twenty people from New York to

Fort Sam Houston in Texas."

Just then a wagon, bearing a huge load of hay, creaked slowly along the

road past her, and a half forgotten superstition of her childhood

flashed into her mind. Hazel Lee had told her once that if you make a

wish on a hay-wagon it will come true if "yes" is the first word you say

after doing so. But should you be asked a question requiring any other

answer, or should it be necessary to make a remark not beginning with

the magic yes, you'll "lose your wish."

So it was with a smile at the old foolishness that Mary watched the

loaded wagon go lumbering by. She had wished for a speedy and favorable

reply to the letter she was about to post. It had been a point of honor

with Hazel and herself whenever the other came running up, significantly

tapping mute lips with an impatient forefinger, to ask, "Do you love

candy?" or "Do you like peaches?" recognizing the necessity of some

question to which the liberated little tongue could respond with a

fervent yes. Boys were always so mean about it, asking, "Do you want me

to pull your hair?" or "Do you love Peter Finn?" a half-witted boy in

the neighborhood.

The childish rite brought up a little of the old thrill of apprehension,

that no one might ask her the proper question to make her wish come

true, and Mary smiled broadly over her own foolishness as she went on up

the street. It was the only street which Lone-Rock boasted; just a

straggling road, beginning down by the railroad station and the mine

offices, and ending farther up the mountain in a narrow wagon track. The

houses of the white families were scattered along it at uneven intervals

for the space of half a mile. Then one came to a little wooden

school-house on one side, and on the other the tiny box of a room which

served as a post-office. The school-house was used as a chapel one day

out of the week. The mining company's store was beyond that, and a

little farther along, the colony of shanties where the Mexican workmen

and their families lived.

The fact that Mary had met no one since leaving home and that only the

hay-wagon had passed her, emphasized the loneliness of the little hamlet

and made her glad that she need not look forward to spending a winter

there. Her quick eyes noted a few changes, however, which promised

interesting things. Five new houses had gone up in their absence. There

was a piano in one of them, Billy Downs had told Norman, and Mr.

Moredock, the man in the new yellow house, who had come for his health,

was writing a history of some kind, and had brought a whole wagon-load

of books.

The postmaster would know all about the newcomers, Mary reflected with

satisfaction. One of her pleasures of coming back was meeting her old

friend, the postmaster, and at the thought of him she walked a little

faster. Captain Doane had held the office ever since Lone-Rock had been

a mail station, and in a way was a sort of father confessor to everybody

in the place. A clean-shaven jolly old face with deep laughter wrinkles

about the blue eyes, which twinkled through steel-bowed spectacles,

bushy iron-gray hair and bristling eyebrows--that was about all one saw

through the bars of the narrow delivery window. But so much kindly

sympathy and neighborly interest and good advice and real concern were

handed out with the daily mail, that every man in the community regarded

him as his personal friend.

There were only two mail trains a day in Lone-Rock, and at this hour

Mary was sure of finding him at leisure. Seeing him through the open

window, sound asleep in his arm-chair over an open newspaper, with his

spectacles slipping down his nose, Mary was about to spring in the door

with a playful "boo." But she remembered her wish on the hay-wagon and

the necessity of waiting for him to speak first. So she only rattled the

latch. He started up, a little bewildered from his sudden awakening, but

seeing who had come, dashed off the old slouch hat, perched on the back

of his head.

"Well, bless my soul!" he cried heartily, coming forward with an

outstretched hand. "If it isn't our little Mary Ware! I heard you were

back and I've been looking all afternoon for you to drop in. Have you

come back to stay, this time?"

There was an instant of hesitation, as she considered how she could

reply to such a question honestly with a yes. Then she stammered,

"Y-yes, for a little while. That is, just for a few weeks." Then she

drew a long breath. "My! That was a narrow escape. I've been wondering

all the way up the street what would be the first thing you'd say to me,

and for a second I was afraid you'd ruined my chances."

Her laugh rang out merrily at his bewildered exclamation. "The chances

for my wish coming true," she explained. "I made one on a hay-wagon,

coming along, about this letter."

"Sit down and give an account of yourself," he insisted, and as she had

come for a visit she willingly obeyed. But she would not take his chair

at the desk as he urged, climbing instead to the only other seat which

the office afforded. It was a high stool beside the shelf where pens,

ink and money-order blanks awaited the needs of the public. Mary had

often occupied it, and from this perch had given the Captain some of the

most amusing hours of his life.

He had missed her when she went away to school, and he never handed out

the letters to her family post-marked "Warwick Hall" without a vision of

the friendly little girl swinging her feet from her seat on this high

stool, as she told him amazing tales of Ware's Wigwam and a place

somewhere off in Kentucky that she seemed to regard as a cross between

the Land of Beulah and the Garden of Eden. When she came back from

Warwick Hall she no longer dangled her feet, but sat in more grown-up

fashion, her toes propped on the round below. And she seldom stayed

long. There was too much to be done at home, with Jack needing such

constant attention. But her short accounts of boarding-school life were

like glimpses into a strange world, and he carried home all she told to

repeat to his wife; for in an out-of-the-way corner of the universe,

where little happens, the most trivial things are accounted of vital

interest.

Now he had many questions to ask about Jack's recovery. It was a matter

of household rejoicing in Lone-Rock that he had come back able to take

his old place among them. Mary satisfied his curiosity and gave a brief

outline of their doings while away, but she had questions of her own to

ask. How was Aunt Sally Doane? The Captain's wife was "Aunt Sally" by

courtesy to the entire settlement. Was her rheumatism better, and was

the old red rooster still alive? Was it true that Mr. Moredock was an

author, and how many young people had the new families brought with

them?

But all roads led to the Rome of her heart's desire, and between her

questions and the Captain's she kept jumping back, grasshopper-like, to

the subject uppermost in her mind. His cordial interest, unlike her

family's half-hearted consenting, led her into further confidences.

"Jack wants me to wait awhile and study at home until he can afford to

send me back to Warwick Hall, but I might be in my twenties before that

time, and the girls in my classes would be so much younger that they'd

look upon me as a hoary old patriarch. Of course I'd be better equipped

for what I hope to do eventually, but it would give me such a late

start, and there are a number of things that I am fitted to do right

now. Besides, it would handicap Jack to spend so much on me. It's only

natural to expect that he'll want to marry and settle down some of these

days, and he might not be able to do it as soon as he otherwise would if

he had me to support and keep at college. And, Captain Doane, I don't

want to be just an old maid sister in somebody else's home, even if it

is the home of the dearest brother in the world."

The Captain threw back his head and laughed until the steel-bowed

spectacles slid down his nose again.

"Much danger of your being an old maid sister in anybody's home, in a

place like this where pretty girls are scarcer than hens' teeth," he

declared, teasingly. "I know a likely young lad this minute who'd gladly

save you from that fate. He's been around several times lately,

inquiring when you might be expected back."

Mary was nearly consumed with curiosity to ask who the likely lad was,

but only shrugged her shoulders incredulously, knowing that that would

be the surest way of provoking him to a disclosure.

"Well, he _has_!" insisted the Captain. "It's young Upham, if you must

know."

Mary's brows drew together in a vain effort to recall him, and she shook

her head. "Upham? Upham? I never heard of him."

"Yes, yes, you have," insisted the Captain. "He drove a lumber wagon for

the company summer before last. But he's been to school in Tucson all

the time you've been away, and has just come back."

"Oh, you mean _Pink_ Upham!" exclaimed Mary, suddenly enlightened, with

an emphasis which seemed to say, "Oh, _that_ boy! He doesn't count."

The Captain interpreted the emphasis and resented it.

"Just let me tell you, little Miss Disdain, he's a lad not to be sneezed

at. He's come back the likeliest young man in all these parts."

Again Mary shrugged her shoulders and smiled unbelievingly. Her

recollection of Pink Upham was of a big red-faced fellow overgrown and

awkward, with a disgusting habit of twisting every one's remarks into

puns, and of uttering trite truths with the air of just having

discovered them. The warning whirr of a clock about to strike made her

spring down from the stool with an exclamation of surprise.

"I had no idea I was staying so long. I've an errand at the store too,

so I'll have to hurry."

"Well, I'll see that your letter gets started all right," he assured

her. "You can't expect an answer before ten days at the earliest, can

you?"

She turned back from the door and stood, considering. "I had counted it

at about that, but I didn't think--if they wait to hear from the people

I've referred them to, especially those farthest away, it might be

double that time. That would keep me waiting clear into October. And

then suppose somebody were ahead of me, and I shouldn't get the place,

there'd be all that time lost. It would be tragic to have the little

ship I'd waited for so long, drift in a wreck."

"That's why I always hold that it's best to send out more than one,"

said the Captain. "Launch a whole fleet of 'em, is my advice. What makes

life a tragedy for most people is that they put all their hopes on just

one thing. They load all they've got on one vessel and then strain their

eyes for a lifetime waiting for it to come back with all their hopes

realized. But if they'd divide their interests and affections around a

bit, and start them off in different directions, there'd never be a

danger of total wreck. If one went down, there'd be some other cargo to

look forward to."

It was a pet subject of the old man's, and Mary made haste to ward off

his usual monologue by saying, "I'll certainly take your advice, Captain

Doane. You'll see me down here to-morrow with a whole harbor full of

little ships. I'll launch all the applications that my family will

allow."

The figure of speech pleased her, and as she walked on to the store a

vision of blue sea rose before her. On it she seemed to see a fleet of

little boats with white sails swelling in the wind. On each sail was a

letter and all together they spelled "Great Expectations."

"It's funny," thought Mary, "how such a picture popped right up in front

of me. Now, if Joyce had such a fancy she'd do something with it. It

would suggest a title design or a tail piece of some kind. Oh, why

wasn't I born with a talent for writing! My head is just full of things

sometimes that would make the loveliest stories, but when I try to put

them on paper it's like trying to touch the rainbows on a bubble. The

touch makes them vanish instantly."

It was some crash towelling that she was to call for at the store.

When she opened the door, the place seemed deserted, but she picked her

way, among barrels and boxes, saddles and hams, to the dry-goods

department in the rear. Through the open back door she could see two men

in the yard, one repairing a chicken-coop, and the other standing with

his hands in his pockets, watching the job. The man with the hammer and

saw, she knew. He was the manager of the store. The other was a new

clerk, who had been installed in her absence. She glanced at him

curiously, for one reason because every newcomer counted for so much in

the social life of the place, for another because he was so imposingly

large. "Even taller than Phil Tremont," she thought, and Phil was her

standard of all that a man should measure up to in every way.

Presently, seeing that the chicken-coop would occupy their attention

indefinitely unless she made some sign, she tapped on the floor with her

heel. It was the new clerk who turned, and taking his hands out of his

pockets, strode in to wait on her. She noticed that he had to stoop as

he came through the doorway. Then she almost forgot what it was she had

come to buy, in her surprise. For it was Pink Upham who rushed up to

greet her, still red-faced and awkward and facetious, but such a

different Pink that she could understand why the Captain had spoken of

him as Pinckney, instead of by his undignified nickname. The year at

college had done him good.

While he measured off the crash she was taking his measure with quick,

critical glances. It was not his pale, straw-colored hair she objected

to, made to look even paler by the contrast of his florid complexion and

red four-in-hand with its turquoise scarf-pin. It was the way he combed

his hair that she criticized, and the gaudy tie and the combination of

colors. But his cordial greeting softened her critical glances somewhat.

He was genuinely glad to see her, and it was flattering to be welcomed

so heartily.

That night at the supper table she recounted her adventures. "I met Pink

Upham at the store to-day, Jack. How old do you suppose he is?"

"Oh, about twenty-one. Why?"

"Well, I scarcely knew him before we went away, and he called me by my

first name as pat as you may please, and I didn't like it. And when he

rolled up the towelling he crooked his little finger in such an

affected, genteel, Miss Prim sort of way that it made his big fat hands

look ridiculous. I don't know exactly what it was about him that

irritated me so, but I couldn't bear him. And yet it seemed that he was

so near being nice, that he could be awfully likable if he wasn't so

self-conscious and queer."

"He's all right," answered Jack. "Pink is a good-hearted fellow, with

the best intentions in the world, but he's green. You see, he hasn't any

sisters to call him down and make fun of his mannerisms and set him

straight on his color schemes and such things. Now, a girl in his

position could get her bearings by going the rounds of the Home

Magazines and Ladies' Companions, reading all the Aunt Jenny Corners

and columns of advice to anxious correspondents. But there are not so

many fountains of information and inspiration for a young man."

"Now, there's your mission in life, Mary," spoke up Norman. "You are

strong on giving advice and setting people straight. If you could only

get some magazine to take you on for a column of that kind, you might

accomplish a world of good. You could send marked copies to Pink, and it

might be the making of him."

Norman expected his teasing remarks to meet with an amusing outburst,

and was surprised when she pretended to take his suggestion seriously.

Her eyes shone with the interest it awakened.

"Say! I'd like that," she answered emphatically. "I really would. I'd

call it Uncle Jerry's Corner, and I'd certainly enjoy making up the

letters myself so that I could have good spicy replies for my

correspondents."

Norman, just in the act of drinking, almost choked on the laugh which

seized him. "Excuse me," he spluttered, putting the glass down hastily,

"but Mary in the rôle of Uncle Jerry is too funny. Why, Sis, you

couldn't be a proper Uncle Jerry without chin whiskers. The editors

wouldn't give such a column to anybody without them. A _girl_ could

never fill a position like that."

"Indeed she could," Mary protested. "I knew a girl at school who earned

her entire spending money for a year, one vacation, by writing an Aunt

Ruth's Column for the weekly paper in her home town. She was only

eighteen, and the most harum-scarum creature you ever saw. She had been

engaged four times, and once to two boys at the same time. And she used

to lay down the law in her advice column like a Puritan forefather. Just

_scored_ the girls who flirted and accepted valuable presents from men,

and who met clandestinely at friends' houses.

"Her letters were so good that several parents wrote to the paper

congratulating them on that department. And all the time she was doing

the very things which she preached against. She and Charlotte Tatwell

were chums, and in all sorts of scrapes together. Charlotte's father

used to mourn over her wild ways and try to keep her from running so

much with Milly. He thought that Milly had such a bad influence over

her. He hadn't the faintest idea that she wrote the Aunt Ruth advice,

and twice, when it seemed particularly well aimed at Charlotte's faults,

he made her sit down and listen while he read it aloud to the family.

Charlotte thought it was such a good joke on her father that she never

enlightened him till he'd repeated the performance several times. He

wouldn't believe it at first, didn't think it possible that Milly could

have written it, till Charlotte proved that she really had.

"If she could do that, I don't see why I couldn't write better advice to

boys than a doddering old man who has only his recollections to draw on.

I could criticize the faults that I see before me. Boys need to be shown

themselves as they appear to the girls, and I'm not sure but I'll act on

Norman's suggestion, and take it up as a side-line."

When supper was cleared away Mary brought out her writing material and

wrote several applications for the positions which she knew she was

qualified to fill. She could teach in the primary or grammar grades, or

take beginner's classes in Domestic Science. She knew that she could

adapt herself to almost any kind of person as companion, and her

experience with the Mallory twins made her confident that she could do

wonders with small children, no matter how refractory. She soon had a

whole fleet of applications ready to launch in the morning. Then,

inspired by the conversation at the supper-table, she tried her hand at

a few answers to imaginary correspondents, in which were set forth

certain criticisms and suggestions which she burned to make to Pink in

person, and several others which were peculiarly well fitted to Norman.

Next morning, when Norman came back from the store with the basket of

groceries which it was his daily task to bring, he began calling for

Mary at the front gate, and kept it up all the way to the kitchen door.

When she appeared, towel in hand, asking what was the matter, he set the

basket on the step.

Then with mock solemnity he reached into his pocket and pulled out a

lavender envelope; lavender crossed faintly with gray lines to give a

checked effect. It was addressed in purple ink to Miss Mary Ware, and in

the lower left-hand corner was written, with many ornate flourishes, "K.

O. B." It smelled so strongly of rose geranium perfume that Mary sniffed

disapprovingly as she took it.

"Pink asked me to bring it," said Norman with a grin. "He's to send a

boy up for an answer at three o'clock. What do you suppose 'K. O. B.'

stands for?"

Mary puzzled over it, shaking her head, then broke the large purple

seal.

"Oh, it must mean 'kindness of bearer,' for he begins the note that

way. 'By kindness of bearer I am venturing to send this little missive

to know if it will be convenient for you to give me the pleasure of your

company this evening. A messenger will call for your answer at three P.

M. Trusting that it will accord with my desires, I am yours in

friendship's bonds, P. Pinckney Upham.'"

Norman exploded with a loud "whoopee!" of laughter and Mary sniffed

again at the strong odor of rose geranium and handed the note to her

mother, who had come to the door to see the cause of Norman's mirth.

"The silly boy," exclaimed Mary. "I told him yesterday, when he said

that he hoped to call, that we'd all be glad to see him any evening he

wanted to drop in. The idea of such formality in a mining camp. And such

paper! And such flourishes of purple ink, to say nothing of the strong

perfume! Mamma, I don't want him coming to see me."

Mrs. Ware handed the note back with a smile at Mary's disgusted

expression. "Don't judge the poor boy too severely. He evidently tried

his best to do the proper thing, and probably thinks he has achieved

it."

"Yes, Uncle Jerry," added Norman. "Here's your chance. Here's your tide

in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune!

Just cultivate Pink's acquaintance and you'll get enough out of him

every week to fill your columns."

Mary ignored his teasing, turning again to her mother to say: "I don't

want to answer his note. What did he write for, anyway? Why didn't he

just come, as I told him he could?"

"That's the way Sara Downs' beau does," explained Norman. "He always

makes an engagement so that she'll be sure to have the best room lighted

up and Billy out of the way. He's too bashful to talk to the whole

family. They usually go out to the kitchen when he comes, because their

house is so small."

"Well, this family won't," declared Mary. "He's no 'beau,' anyway.

You'll all have to help entertain him."

She had not answered the note when Jack came home at noon, and she

passed it to him without comment. He smiled a little over her evident

disgust, and repeated in substance what Mrs. Ware had said, that she

must not judge him too severely for his lack of social polish.

"He's a diamond in the rough, Mary," he assured her gravely, but with a

twinkle in his eyes. "He may be one of the leading citizens of the

state twenty years from now, and even if he isn't, he's one of the few

young fellows of the settlement, and a decent one at that, and you can't

afford to snub him because he is green."

"Green Pink is a new kind of color," teased Norman. "Say, Mary, are you

going to put a 'K. O. B.' on your answer?"

Mary ignored his question. It irritated her to be teased about Pink as

much as it used to annoy her to be teased about the half-witted Peter

Finn.

When, in answer to her note, P. Pinckney Upham called that evening, he

did not find her sitting up alone in state to receive him. He was

ushered in to the cheerful living-room, where the entire family was

gathered around the lamp, putting a new dissected puzzle together.

Before he knew how it came about his bashfulness had vanished and he was

a part of that circle. When the puzzle was completed Mary brought out a

chafing-dish and a bowl of nuts, which she commanded him to "pick out"

while Jack cracked them. She was going to try a new kind of candy.

Later, when he disclosed the fact that he could play a little on the

guitar, Norman brought out his mother's, bidding him "tune up and plunk

away."

Now if there was one thing Pink was fond of it was sweets, and if there

was one thing he was proud of it was his tenor voice, and presently he

began to feel that he was having the time of his life. They were all

singing with him, and stopping at intervals to pass the candy and tell

funny stories. He was a good mimic and had a keen sense of humor, and he

was elated with the consciousness that he had an appreciative audience.

In spite of her certainty that the evening would be a bore, Mary found

herself really enjoying it, until she realized that Pink was having such

a good time that he didn't want to leave. Later she concluded that he

wanted to go but didn't know how to tear himself away gracefully.

"Well, I guess I'd better be going," he said when the clock struck ten.

It struck eleven when he said it the second time, and it was quarter

past when he finally pulled himself out of his chair and looked around

for his hat. They all rose, and Jack brought it. With that in hand, he

still lingered, talking at random in a way that showed his evident

inability to take his leave.

Finally Mrs. Ware put out her hand, saying, "We've enjoyed having you

with us so much, this evening, Pinckney. You must come often."

Jack echoed the invitation with a handshake, and Mary added gaily, "And

after this, whatever you do, don't write first to announce your coming.

We're used to the boys just dropping in informally. We like it so much

better that way."

Pink stopped to reply to that, hesitated with his hand on the knob, and

leaning against the door, made some remark about the weather. It was

evident that he was fixed to stay until the clock struck again.

Mary reached up to the match-safe hanging near the door and handed him a

match. "I wish you'd scratch this as you go out, and see how the

thermometer stands. It's hanging on the post just at the right hand of

the porch steps. Call back what it registers, please. Thirty-six? Oh,

thank you! I'm sure there'll be frost before morning. Good night."

She closed the door and came back into the room, pretending to swoon

against Jack, who shook her, exclaiming laughingly, "I think that was a

frost, right now."

Just then, Norman, who had disappeared an hour earlier, cautiously

opened the door of his bedroom a crack. He was clad in his pajamas.

Seeing that the coast was clear he thrust out a dishevelled head and

recited dramatically:

"'Parting is such sweet sorrow

I fain would say goodnight until it be to-morrow.'"

Mary blinked at him sleepily, saying with a yawn, "Let this be a lesson

to you, son. You can take this from your Uncle Jerry, that there is no

social grace more to be desired than the ability to make a nimble and

graceful exit when the proper time comes."

As she turned out her light, later, she said to herself, "I'm glad I

don't have to look forward to a whole lifetime in Lone-Rock. One such

evening is pleasant enough, but a whole winter of them would be

dreadful." Then she went to sleep and dreamed that her little fleet of

boats had all come home from sea, each one so heavily laden with

treasure that she did not know which cargo to draw in first.

CHAPTER III

A NEW FRIEND

Although some of the applications which Mary sent out did not have as

far to travel as the first one, she did not count on hearing from any of

them within two weeks. However, it was to no fortnight of patient

waiting that she settled down. She threw herself into such an orgy of

preparations for leaving home, that the days flew around like the wheels

of a squirrel cage.

She could not afford any new clothes, but everything in her wardrobe was

rejuvenated as far as possible, and a number of things entirely

remodelled. One by one they were folded away in her trunk until

everything was so shipshape that she could have finished packing at an

hour's notice. Then she insisted on giving some freshening touches to

her mother's winter outfit, and on beginning a set of shirts for Norman,

saying that she wanted to finish all the work she possibly could before

leaving home.

Mrs. Ware used to wonder sometimes at her boundless energy. She would

whirl through the housework, help prepare the meals, do a morning's

ironing, run the sewing machine all afternoon, and then often, after

supper, challenge Norman to some such thing as a bonfire race, to see

which could rake up the greatest pile of autumn leaves in the yard, by

moonlight.

These days of waiting were filled with a queer sense of expectancy, as

the air is sometimes charged with electric currents before a storm. No

matter what she did or what she thought about, it was always with the

sense of something exciting about to happen. The feeling exhilarated

her, deepened the glow in her face, the happy eagerness in her eyes,

until every one around her felt the contagion of her high hopefulness.

"I don't know what it is you're always looking so pleased over," the old

postmaster said to her one day, "but every time after you've been in

here, I catch myself smiling away as broadly as if I'd heard some good

news myself."

"Maybe," answered Mary, "it's because I feel all the time as if I'm just

_going_ to hear some. It's so interesting wondering what turn things

will take. It's like waiting for the curtain to go up on a new play

that you've never heard of before. My curtain may go up in any part of

the United States. It all depends on which letter it is that brings me a

position."

"I should think you'd be a leetle mite anxious," said the Captain, who

was in somewhat of a pessimistic mood that day. "They can't all be

equally good. You remember what the old hymn says:

"'Should I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease

Whilst others fought to win the prize, and sailed through

bloody seas.'"

"Oh, I'm not expecting any flowery beds of ease," retorted Mary. "I

don't mind hard work and all sorts of disagreeable things if they'll

only prove to be stepping-stones to carry me through my Red Sea. I don't

even ask to go over dry-shod as the Children of the Exodus did. All I

want is a chance to wade."

"That's right! That's right!" exclaimed the Captain admiringly. "That's

the proper spirit to show. It's a pity, though, that you can't do your

wading somewhere around Lone-Rock. We'll miss you dreadfully. And I'm

not the only one who thinks so, either. From all I hear there's somebody

up the street who would almost rob the mails if doing so would keep you

from getting a letter calling you away."

From the twinkle of the eyes which peered at her through the steel-bowed

glasses, Mary knew that he was referring to Pink Upham, but before she

could reply the mail carrier dashed up on horseback from the railroad

station, with the big leather pouch swung across the horse in front of

him. It was the signal for every one along the street, who had seen him,

to come sauntering into the office to wait for the distribution of the

mail. Mary climbed up on the high stool again. She had started out from

home, intending to take a tramp far up the mountain road, but stopping

in the office to post a letter had stayed on talking longer than she

intended.

Pink Upham was one of the first to come in. He had been at the house

several times since his first call, and while some of his mannerisms

annoyed Mary even more than they had at first, she liked him better as

their acquaintance progressed. She could not help being pleased at the

attention he gave her slightest remarks. No girl can be wholly oblivious

to the compliment of having every word remembered, every preference

noted. Once, when they were looking at some soap advertisements, in a

most careless off-hand way she had expressed her dislike for strong

perfumes. Since then the odor of rose geranium was no longer noticeable

in his wake. Once she announced her admiration of a certain kind of

scarlet berry which grew a long distance up the mountain. The next day

there was a bunch of them left at her door. Pink had taken a tramp

before breakfast to get them for her.

There was a family discussion one night about celluloid. Nobody could

answer one of Mary's questions in connection with it about camphor gum,

and she forgot it almost as soon as it was asked, although she had

assumed an air of intense curiosity at the time. But Pink remembered. He

thought about it, in fact, as one of his chief duties in life to find

its answer, until he had time to consult Mr. Moredock's encyclopædia.

At his last visit to the Wares he had seen a kodak picture of Mary,

taken at the Wigwam years before. She was mounted on the Indian pony

Washington. She wore short dresses then. Her wide-brimmed Mexican

sombrero was on the back of her head, and she was laughing so heartily

that one could not look at the picture without feeling the contagion of

her enjoyment. There was nothing she liked better than horseback riding,

she remarked as she laid the picture aside, but she had not tried it

since she was a child. That was one thing she was looking forward to in

her promised land, she told him, to owning a beautiful thoroughbred

saddle-horse, like Lloyd Sherman's.

Then Pink was shown "The Little Colonel's Corner," for the collection of

Lloydsboro Valley pictures were grouped in panels on one wall of the

Lone-Rock home as they had been at the Wigwam. First there was Lloyd in

her little Napoleon hat, riding on Tarbaby down the long locust avenue,

and then Lloyd on the horse that later took the place of the black pony.

Then Lloyd in her Princess Winsome costume, with the dove and the

spinning-wheel, and again in white, beside the gilded harp, and again as

the Queen of Hearts and as the Maid of Honor at Eugenia's wedding.

In showing these pictures to Pink and telling him how well Lloyd rode

and how graceful she was in the saddle, Mary forgot her casual remark

about her own enjoyment of riding, but Pink remembered. He had thought

about it at intervals ever since. Now catching sight of her on the high

stool, he hurried into the post-office to tell her that he could secure

two horses any morning that she would go out with him before breakfast.

His uncle owned the team of buckskins which drew the delivery wagon,

and was willing for him to use them any morning before eight o'clock.

They were not stylish-looking beasts, he admitted, like Kentucky

thoroughbreds, but they were sure-footed and used to mountain trails.

As Mary thanked him with characteristic enthusiasm, she was conscious of

a double thrill of pleasure. One came from the fact that he had planned

such enjoyment for her, the other that he had remembered her casual

remark and attached so much importance to it. She'd let him know later

just when she could go, she told him. She'd have to see her mother

first, and she'd have to get up some kind of a riding skirt.

Then the Captain threw up the delivery window, and half a dozen people

who had been waiting crowded forward to get their mail. Mary waited on

the stool while Pink took his turn at the window and came back with her

mail. His own, and that for the store, he drew out from one of the large

locked boxes below the pigeon-holes. While he was unlocking it Mary

looked over the letters he had laid in her lap. There was one from

Joyce, one to her mother from Phil Tremont, and one bearing the address

in an upper corner of one of the agencies to which she had written. She

opened it eagerly, and Pink, watching her from the corner of his eye as

he sorted a handful of circulars, saw a shade of disappointment cross

her face. Every one else had left the office. She looked up to see the

old Captain smiling at her.

"First ship in from sea," he remarked knowingly. "Well, what's the

cargo?"

"No treasure aboard this one. It's just a printed form to say that they

have no vacancies at present, but have put me on the waiting list, and

will inform me if anything comes up later."

"Well, there're others to hear from," the Captain answered. "That's the

good of putting your hopes on more than one thing. In the meantime,

though, don't get discouraged."

"Oh, I'll not," was the cheerful answer. "You see, I have two mottoes to

live up to. One was on the crest that used to be sported in the

ancestral coat of arms once upon a time, away back in mamma's family. It

was a winged spur with the words '_Ready, aye ready_.'

"The other is the one we adopted ourselves from the Vicar of Wakefield:

'_Let us be inflexible, and fortune will at last change in our favor._'

So there I am, ready to go at a moment's notice, but also bound to keep

inflexible and wait for a turn if fortune wills it so. I don't know

what the Ware family would do sometimes without that saying of the old

Vicar's. His philosophy has helped us out of more than one hole."

The Captain, rather vague in his knowledge as to the old Vicar, nodded

sagely. "Pretty good philosophy to tie to," he remarked. Pink, to whom

the Vicar was merely a name, one of many in a long list of English

novels he had once memorized for a literature recitation, made no

response. He felt profoundly ignorant. But remembering Mr. Moredock's

hospitable remark that the latchstring of his library was always out for

his friends, he resolved to borrow the book that very night after

closing hours, and discover what there was in it that had "helped the

Ware family out of more than one hole."

As he and Mary left the office together the Captain called after her,

"By the way, I noticed a foreign stamp on one of your letters. Mexican,

wasn't it? If you're not making a collection yourself, I'd like to speak

for it. My little grandson's just started one, and I've promised him all

I can get."

Mary paused on the doorstep. "The letter is mamma's, but I'm sure she

would not mind if I were to cut the stamp out of the envelope."

In an instant Pink's knife was out of his pocket, and he was cutting

deftly around the stamp, while Mary held the envelope flat against the

door. He did it slowly, in order not to cut through into the letter, and

he could not fail to notice the big dashing hand in which it was

addressed to Mrs. Emily Ware. It looked so familiar that it puzzled him

to recall where he had seen it before.

"I can bring you a lot more like this, if you want them," said Mary, as

she gave the stamp to the postmaster. "Jack and I each get letters from

this friend down in Mexico, and he writes to mamma nearly every week."

The Captain thanked her emphatically, and she and Pink started off

again, she towards home and he towards the store. A dozen times before

closing hours Pink recalled the scene at the post-office, Mary holding

the letter up against the door for him to cut out the stamp. What firm,

capable-looking little hands she had, with their daintily kept nails,

and how pink her cheeks were, and how fluffy and brown the hair blowing

out from under the stylish little hat with the bronze quills.

Each time he recalled the letter he puzzled over the familiar appearance

of the address, until suddenly, as he was filling a jug at the spigot of

a molasses barrel, he remembered. He had seen the same handwriting

under a photograph on the mantel at Mrs. Ware's: "Philip Tremont,

Necaxa, Mexico." And on the back was pencilled, "For Aunt Emily, from

her 'other boy.'" Mary had called upon Pink to admire the picture which

had arrived that same day, and had referred to Phil several times since

as "The Best Man."

Pink almost let the molasses jug overflow, while thinking about it and

wondering why she had given him such a nickname. He resolved to ask her

why if he could ever screw his courage up to such a point.

Mary, hurrying home with the letters from Joyce and Phil, eager to hear

what was in them, never gave Pink another thought till after supper,

when she remembered his invitation and began a search for Joyce's old

riding-skirt. It was not in any of the trunks or closets in the house,

but remembering several boxes which had been stored in the loft above

the woodshed, she made Jack climb up the ladder with her to open them,

while she held the lantern. At the bottom of the last box they found

what she was searching for, not only the khaki skirt, but the little

Norfolk jacket which completed the outfit. Thanks to Joyce's orderly

habits they had been packed away clean and whole, and needed only the

magic touch of a hot iron to make them presentable.

There was something else in the box which Mary pounced upon and carried

down the ladder. It was a bag containing odds and ends of zephyrs and

yarns, left from various afghans and pieces of fancy work. Opened under

the sitting-room lamp it disclosed, among other things, several skeins

of wool as red as the flash of a cardinal's wing. "Enough to make a

whole Tam-O'-Shanter!" exclaimed Mary jubilantly, "and a fluffy pompon

on top! I can have it ready by day after to-morrow. I've been wondering

what I could wear on my head. I simply can't keep a hat on when I ride

fast! Here, Norman, be a dear duck of a brother and hold this skein

while I wind, won't you?"

Norman made a wry face and held out his arms with pretended

unwillingness, but she slipped the skein over his hands, saying, "Item

for Uncle Jerry's Column. 'A young gentleman should always spring nimbly

to the service of a lady, and offer his assistance with alacrity.'"

"Say," he interrupted in the tone of one having a real grievance.

"You've got to quit making a catspaw of me when you want to teach Pink

Upham manners. You know well enough that I always pick up your

handkerchief and stand until mamma is seated, and things like that, so

you needn't hint about 'em to me when he's here. You're just trying to

slap at Pink over my shoulders."

"Oh, you don't mind a little thing like that," laughed Mary. "It's for

the good of your country, my boy. I'm just trying to polish up one of

the pillars of the new state that you and mamma and Jack are so

interested in. Besides, Pink is so quick to take a hint that it's really

interesting to see how much a few suggestions can accomplish."

"Humph! You're singing a different tune from what you did at first. You

thought he was so tiresome and his laugh so awful and that he had such

dreadful taste--"

"I still think so," answered Mary, "but I don't notice his wild laugh so

much now that I am used to it, and he has many traits which make him

very companionable. Besides, I am sorry for him. He'd have been very

different if he'd had _your_ opportunities, for instance."

"Mary is right," agreed Mrs. Ware, smiling at Norman's grimace. "I think

it would be a good thing to ask him to stop when you come back from your

ride and have breakfast with us."

Norman groaned, then said with a vigorous nod of the head, since his

hands were too busy with the skein for gestures, "Well, have him if you

want to, but I'll give you fair warning, Mary Ware, if you go to getting

off any of your Uncle Jerry remarks on me for his benefit, I'll let the

cat right out of the bag."

Mary replied with a grimace so much like his own, that it brought on a

contest in which the yarn winding was laid aside for a time, while they

stood before a mirror, each trying to outdo the other in making

grotesque faces.

Two mornings after that, in Joyce's khaki riding-suit and the new red

Tam-O'-Shanter, Mary swung into the saddle while Pink held both horses,

and they were off for an early gallop in the frosty October dawn. The

crisp, tingling air of the mountains brought such color into Mary's

face, and such buoyancy into her spirits that Pink watched her as he

would have watched some rare kind of a bird, skimming along beside him.

He had never known such a girl. There was not a particle of coquetry in

her attitude towards him. She didn't glance up with pretty appealing

side-glances as Sara Downs did, or say little personal things which

naturally called for compliments in reply. She was like a boy in her

straightforward plain dealing with him, her joking banter, her keen

interest in the mountain life and her knowledge of wood lore. One never

knew which way her quick-winged thoughts might dart. As they rode on he

began to feel as if he was thoroughly awake for the first time in his

life.

Up to this time he had been fairly well satisfied with himself. A small

inheritance safely invested and his one year at college had given him

the prestige of a person of both wealth and education in the little town

where he had lived until recently. Yet there was Jack, who had not even

finished a High School course, and Mary, who had had less than a year at

Warwick Hall, on such amazing terms of intimacy with a world outside of

his ken, that he felt illiterate and untutored beside them. Even Norman

seemed to have a wider horizon than himself, and he wondered what made

the difference.

He divined the reason afterward when they came back from their ride and

sat at breakfast in the sunny dining-room. It was Mrs. Ware who had

lifted their life out of the ordinary by the force of her rare

personality. Through all their poverty and trouble and hard times she

had kept fast hold on her early standards of refinement and culture, and

made them a part of her family's daily living.

Pink felt the difference, even in the breakfast. It was no better than

the one he would have had at home, but at home there would have been no

interesting conversation, no glowing bit of color in the centre of the

table like this bowl of autumn leaves and berries. At home there would

have been no attempt at any pleasing effect in the dainty serving of

courses. There ham was ham and eggs were eggs, and it made no difference

how they were slapped on to the table, so long as they were well cooked.

There, meal-time was merely a time to satisfy one's appetite as quickly

as possible and hurry away from the table as soon as the food was

devoured. Here, the day seemed to take its key-note from the illuminated

text of a calendar hanging beside the fireplace. It was a part of _The

Salutation of the Dawn_ from the Sanskrit:

"For yesterday is but a dream,

And to-morrow is only a vision;

But to-day well-lived, makes

Every yesterday a dream of happiness

And every to-morrow a vision of hope.

_Look well, therefore, to this day!_

_Such is the Salutation of the Dawn._"

The Ware breakfast-table seemed to be the place where they all gathered

to get a good start for the day. It was Mrs. Ware who gave it, and gave

it unconsciously, not so much by what she said, as what she was. One

felt her hopefulness, her serenity of soul, as one feels the cheer of a

warm hearthstone.

Pink could not recall one word she had said to stimulate his ambition,

but when he rode away on one horse, leading the other, he was trying to

adjust himself to a new set of standards. He felt that there was

something to live for besides taking in dimes over the counter of a

country store. One thing happened at breakfast which made him glow with

pleasure whenever he thought of it. It was the quick look of approval

which Mary flashed him when he answered one of her sallies by a

quotation about green spectacles.

"Oh, you know the old Vicar too!" she exclaimed, as if claiming mutual

acquaintance with a real friend. "Don't you love him?"

Pink was glad that some interruption spared him the necessity of an

enthusiastic assent. He had not been specially thrilled by the book, so

far as he had read, but he attacked it manfully again that night,

feeling that there must be more in it than he had wit to discover, else

the Wares would not have adopted it as "guide, philosopher and friend."

CHAPTER IV

THE WITCH WITH A WAND

Snow lay deep over Lone-Rock, muffling every sound. It was so still in

the cozy room where Jack sat reading by the lamp, that several times he

found himself listening to the intense silence, as if it had been a

noise. No one moved in the house. He and Mary were alone together, and

she on the other side of the table was apparently as interested in a

pile of letters which she was re-reading as he was in his story. But

presently, when he finished it and tossed the magazine aside, he saw

that his usually jolly little sister was sitting in a disconsolate bunch

by the fire, her face buried in her hands.

She had pushed the letters from her lap, and the open pages lay

scattered around her on the floor. There were five of them, from

different employment agencies. Jack had read them all before supper,

just as he had been reading similar ones at intervals for the last two

months and a half. The answers had always been disappointing, but until

to-day they had come singly and far apart. Undismayed, she had met them

all in the spirit of their family motto, insisting that fortune would be

compelled to change in her favor soon. She'd be so persistent it

couldn't help itself.

Five disappointments, however, all coming by the same post, were more

than she could meet calmly. Besides, these were the five positions which

seemed the most promising. The thought that they were the last on her

list, and that there was no clue now left for her to follow, was the

thought that weighed her down with the heaviest discouragement she had

ever felt in all her life. She had made a brave effort not to show it

when Jack came home to supper earlier in the evening. The two ate alone

for the first time that she could remember, Mrs. Ware and Norman having

been invited to take supper with the Downs family. It was a joint

birthday anniversary, Billy Downs and his mother happening to claim the

same day of the month, though many years apart.

Mary talked cheerfully of the reports Billy had brought of the two cakes

that were to adorn the table, one with fifteen candles for him and the

boys, and one with forty-eight icing roses for his mother and her

friends. She had put on a brave, even a jolly front, until this last

re-reading of her letters. Now she had given away to such a sense of

helplessness and defeat that it showed in every line of the little

figure huddled up in front of the fire.

Jack noticed it as he tossed aside his magazine and sat watching her a

moment. Then he exclaimed sympathetically, "Cheer up, Mary. Never mind

the old letters. You'll have better luck next time."

There was no answer. A profound silence followed, so deep that he could

hear the ticking of a clock across the hall, coming faintly through

closed doors.

"Cheer up, Sis!" he exclaimed again, knowing that if he could only start

her to talking she would soon drag herself out of her slough of despond.

"Don't all the calendars and cards nowadays tell you to _smile_, no

matter what happens? Don't you know that

"'The man worth while is the man who can smile

When everything goes dead wrong?'"

His question drew the retort he hoped for, and she exclaimed savagely,

"I _hate_ those silly old cheerfulness calendars! And deliver me from

people who follow their advice! It's just as foolish to go through life

smiling at every kind of circumstances that fate hands out as it would

be to wear furs in all kinds of weather, even the dog-days. What's the

use of pretending that the sun is shining when everybody can see that

the rain's simply drenching you and that you're as bedraggled as a wet

hen?"

"Well, the sun _is_ shining," persisted Jack. "Always, somewhere. Our

little rain clouds don't stop it. All they can do is to hide it from us

awhile."

"You tell that to old Noah," grumbled Mary, her face still hidden in her

hands. "Much good the sun behind his rain clouds did him! If he hadn't

had an ark he'd have been washed off the face of the earth like the

other flood sufferers. Seems to me it's sort of foolish to smile when

you've been swept clean down and out. Five turn-downs in one day--"

Her voice broke, and she gave the scattered letters an impatient push

with her foot. Her tone of unusual bitterness stopped Jack's playful

attempt to console her. He sat looking into the fire a little space,

considering what to say. When he spoke again it was in a firm, quiet

tone, almost fatherly in its kindness.

"There's no reason, Mary, for you to be so utterly miserable over your

disappointments. There is no actual need for you to go out into the

world to make your own living and fight your own way. It was different

when I was a helpless cripple. Then I had to sit by and watch you and

Joyce and mother struggle to keep us all afloat. But I'm able to furnish

a very comfortable little ark for you now, and I'd be glad to have you

stay in it always. I didn't interfere when you first announced your

intention of starting out to seek your fortune, because I knew you'd

never be satisfied to settle down in this quiet mining camp until you'd

tried something different. But now the question of your staying here

seems to have been settled for you, there's no use letting the

disappointment down you so completely. What's your big brother for if

not to take care of you?"

"Oh, Jack! You're an old darling!" she cried, with tears in her eyes.

"It's dear of you to put it that way, and I do appreciate it even if I

don't seem to. But--there's something inside of me that just won't let

me settle down to be taken care of by my family. I have my own place to

make in the world. I have my own life to live!"

She saw his amused, indulgent smile and cried out indignantly, "Well,

you'd scorn a _boy_ who'd be satisfied with that kind of life. Just

because I'm a girl is no reason that I should be dependent on you the

rest of my days. You wouldn't want Norman to."

"No," admitted Jack, "but that is different. I should think you could

understand how a fellow feels about his little sister when he's the head

of the family. He regards her as one of his first responsibilities, to

look out for her and take care of her."

Mary straightened up in her chair and looked at him with a perplexed

expression, saying in a slow, puzzled way, "Jack, it makes me almost

cross-eyed trying to see your way and my way at the same time. Your way

is so dear and sweet and generous that I feel like a dog to say a word

against it, and yet--_please_ don't get mad--it _is_ an old-fashioned

way. Nowadays girls don't want to be kept at home on a shelf like a

piece of fragile china. When they're well and strong and capable of

taking care of themselves they want a chance to strike out and realize

their ambitions just as a boy would. Joyce did it, and look what she's

doing for herself and how happy she is."

"Yes," he admitted. "Her work is her very life, and her success in it

means just as much to her as mine here at the mines does to me. But I

can't see what particular ambition you'd be realizing in filling any of

the positions you've applied for. You couldn't do more than drudge along

and make a bare living at first. There'd be very little time and energy

left for ambitions."

"Well, I'd be satisfying one of them at any rate," she persisted. "I'd

be at least 'paddling my own canoe' and making a place for myself where

I'd be really needed. Oh, yes, I know what you're going to say," she

added hurriedly, as he tried to interrupt her. "Just what mamma said,

that you do need me here to keep things stirred up and lively. That

might be all right if we were going to live along this way always. If

you'd settle down to be a nice comfortable old bachelor, I could try to

be an ideal old-fashioned spinster sister. But you'll be getting married

some day, and then I won't be needed at all, and it'll be too late for

me to strike out then and be a modern, up-to-date bachelor maid like

Miss Henrietta Robbins. I know that Captain Doane says that old maid

aunts are the salt of the earth," she added, a twinkle in her eyes

taking the place of the tear which she hastily dashed away with the back

of her hand, "but I don't want to be one in somebody else's home. If I

have to be one at all I want to be the Miss Henrietta kind. But," she

admitted honestly, "I'd rather marry some day, after I'd done all the

other things I've planned to, and no Prince Charming will ever find his

way to Lone-Rock. You know that perfectly well."

Jack threw back his head to laugh at the dolorous tone of her

confession, and then grew suddenly sober, staring into the fire, as if

her remarks had started a very serious train of thoughts. The

snow-muffled silence was so deep that again the ticking of the distant

clock sounded through closed doors.

"Sometimes," he began presently, "when I see the way you chafe at the

loneliness here, and hate the monotony and long so desperately to get

away, I wonder if any girl would be happy here. If I would have a right

even to ask one to share such a life with me."

Mary gave him a keen, penetrating glance, her pulses throbbing at this

beginning of a confidence. She hesitated to say anything, for fear her

reply might stop him, but when he seemed waiting for her answer she said

with a worldly-wise air, "That depends on the girl. If it were Kitty

Walton or Gay or Roberta, they'd be simply bored to death up here.

They're so used to constant entertainment. But if it were somebody like

Betty, it would be different. Lone-Rock isn't any lonesomer than the

Cuckoo's Nest was, and she loved that place. And this would be a good

quiet spot where she could go on with her writing, so she wouldn't have

to give up her ambition."

Then, feeling that perhaps she was expatiating too much in the direction

of Betty, she added hastily, "But there's one thing I hadn't thought of.

Of course that would make it all right for any kind of a girl, even for

a Gay or a Roberta. _You'd_ be her Prince Charming, so of course you'd

'live happily ever after.'"

Again Jack laughed heartily, lying back in the big Morris chair. Then

reaching out for the paper cutter on the table, he began toying with it

as he often did when he talked. But this time, instead of saying

anything, he sat looking into the fire, slowly drawing the ivory blade

in and out through his closed fingers.

The fore-log burned through, suddenly broke apart between the andirons,

and falling into a bed of glowing coals beneath, sent a puff of ashes

out on to the hearth. Mary leaned forward to reach for the turkey-wing

hanging beside the tongs. There had always been a turkey-wing beside her

Grandmother Ware's fireplace. That is why Mary insisted on using one

now instead of a modern hearth-broom. It suggested so pleasantly the

housewifely thrift and cleanliness of an earlier generation which she

loved to copy. She had prepared this wing herself, stretching and drying

it under a heavy weight, and binding the quill ends into a handle with a

piece of brown ribbon.

[Illustration: "'I WISH WE COULD SETTLE THINGS BY A FEATHER, AS THEY

USED TO IN THE OLD FAIRY TALES.'"]

Now as she flirted it briskly across the hearth, a tiny fluff of down

detached itself from one of the stiff quills, and floated to the rug.

When she picked it up it clung to her fingers, and only after repeated

attempts did she succeed in dislodging it, and in blowing it into the

fire.

"I wish we could settle things by a feather, as they used to in the old

fairy tales," she said wistfully, looking after the bit of down. "Just

say:

"'Feather, feather, when I blow

Point the way that I should go.'

Then there would be no endless worry and waiting and indecision. It

would be up to the feather to settle the matter."

"Why not wish for your 'witch with a wand,' as you used to do?" asked

Jack. "There used to be a time when scarcely a day passed that you did

not make that wish."

Mary's answer was a sudden exclamation and a clasping of her hands

together as she turned towards him, her face radiant.

"Jack, you've given me an idea! Don't you remember that's what we took

to calling Cousin Kate after she gave Joyce that trip abroad, and did so

many lovely things for all of us--our witch with a wand! I've a notion

to write to her and I ask her if she can't help me get a position of

some kind. Didn't she endow a library in the little village where she

was born? Seems to me I remember hearing something about it a long time

ago. Maybe I could get a position in it."

Jack shook his head decidedly. "No, Mary, I don't like your idea at all.

She did endow a library, and she's interested in so many things of the

kind that she could doubtless pull strings in all directions. But mother

wouldn't like to have you ask any favors of her, I'm sure. I wouldn't do

it myself, and I shouldn't think you'd want to, after all she's done for

us."

"But I'd not be asking her for money or _things_," declared Mary. "I'd

only ask her to use her influence, and I don't see why she wouldn't be

as willing to do it for her own 'blood and kin' as she would for working

girls and Rest Cottage people and fresh-air babies. I'm going to try it

anyhow. I'll take all the blame myself. I'll tell her that mamma

doesn't know I'm writing, and that you told me not to."

"But she's been out of touch with us for so long," persisted Jack,

frowning. "She promised once, that if Joyce reached a certain point in

her work she'd give her a term or two in Paris, and Joyce reached it a

year ago. Cousin Kate knows it, for she was at the studio and saw for

herself what Joyce was doing, but she was so interested in two blind

children that she had taken under her wing, that she couldn't talk of

anything else. She had gone down to New York to consult some specialist

about them, and she was considering adopting them. She told Joyce that

she wouldn't hesitate, only she had made such inroads on her capital to

keep up her social settlement work, that there was danger of her ending

her own days in some kind of an asylum or old ladies' home. She nearly

lost her own sight several years ago. That is why she takes such an

especial interest in those two children."

Mary considered his news in silence a moment, then remarked stubbornly,

"She might like to have me come on and help take care of the blind

children. At any rate it will cost only a postage stamp to find out,

and I can afford that much of an investment. I'll write now, before

mamma gets back."

Knowing that the composition of such a letter would be a long and

painstaking affair, Mary did not risk beginning it on her precious

monogram stationery. She brought out some scraps of paper instead, and

with the arm of her chair for a desk, scribbled down with a pencil a

rough draft of all she wanted to say to this Cousin Kate, who had been

the good fairy of her childhood. Many erasures and changes were

necessary, and it was nearly an hour later when she read it all over,

highly pleased with her own production. She wondered how it would affect

Jack, and glanced over at him, so sure of its excellence that she was

tempted to read it aloud. But Jack, having read himself drowsy, had gone

to sleep in his chair, and she knew that even if she should waken him by

clashing the tongs or upsetting the rocker, he would not be in a mood to

appreciate her epistle as it deserved.

So she sat jabbing the paper with her pencil till it had a wide border

of dots and dashes, while she pictured to herself the probable effect of

the letter on her Cousin Kate. Hope sprang up again as buoyant as if it

had not been crushed to earth a score of times in the last few months,

and she thought exultingly, "Now _this_ will surely bring a

satisfactory reply!"

A far-away jingle of sleigh-bells sounded presently, coming nearer and

nearer down the snowy road, then stopped in front of the house. Mr.

Downs was bringing the birthday banqueters home in his sleigh, according

to promise.

Mary sprang up to open the door. At the first faint sound of the bells

she had folded the sheet of paper into a tiny square, and tucked it into

her belt. She had a feeling that Jack was wrong about her writing to

Cousin Kate, and that her mother would not disapprove as strongly as he

seemed to think she would, if the matter could be put properly before

her. But she intended to take no risks. There would be time enough to

confess what she had done when the answer came, promising her the

coveted position.

Mrs. Ware and Norman came in glowing from their sleigh-ride.

"You certainly must have had a good time," exclaimed Mary, noticing the

unusual animation of her mother's face. "You ought to go to a birthday

dinner every night if it can shake you up and make you look as young and

bright-eyed as you do now."

"Oh, it isn't that," laughed Mrs. Ware, as Jack took her heavy coat from

her and Mary her furs. "We did have a beautiful time, but it is _this_

which has gone to my head."

She took a letter from the muff which Mary had just laid on a chair, and

as soon as she could slip off her gloves, began to unfold it without

waiting to lay aside her hat.

"It's a letter from Joyce which that naughty Norman has been carrying

around all day. He didn't remember to give it to me until he was putting

on his overcoat to start home, and discovered it in one of the pockets.

I just _had_ to open it while the other guests were making their adieus,

and I've read enough to set me all in a whirl. Joyce's long dreamed of

happiness has come at last! She's to go to Paris in a few weeks, but

first--_she's coming home to spend Christmas with us!_"

Mrs. Ware paused to enjoy the effect of her announcement. She was in

such a quiver of delight herself that Mary's happy cry of astonishment

and Jack's excited exclamation did not do justice to the occasion. Only

long-legged Norman's demonstration seemed adequate. Standing on his head

he turned one somersault after another across the room, till he landed

perilously near Mary, who gave him a sharp tweak of the ear as he came

up in a sitting posture beside her.

"Oh, you wretch!" she exclaimed. "To keep such news in your pocket all

day! I'm going to tell Captain Doane never to give you any letters

again, if you can't deliver them more promptly than that!"

"Sh!" she added, as Norman began a string of excuses for his

forgetfulness. "Mamma is going to read it aloud."

"BELOVED FAMILY," the letter began. "Ere you

have recovered from the shock of the

announcement I am about to make, we shall be

dismantling the studio, packing our trunks and

making preparations to shift our little

establishment from New York to Paris. At least,

Miss Henrietta and I expect to go to Paris and

carry on the same kind of studio-apartment

housekeeping that we have done here. Mrs. Boyd

and Lucy have gone to Florida, but they may

join us next summer.

"But first, before I put the ocean between us,

I'm going home for a glimpse of you all. It is

a long journey for such a short visit, but I

can't go so far without seeing you all once

more, just at Christmas time too, when we've

been separated so many Christmases. It is

Cousin Kate who has made all this possible. She

did not adopt those little blind children after

all. She was taken with a spell of typhoid

fever while she was trying to make up her mind,

and has never been well enough since to

consider burdening herself in such a way. She

sailed yesterday with her maid for the south of

France, by the doctor's orders. Later, if she

is better, she is going back to Tours, where

she and I had such a happy year. Old Madame

Gréville is no longer living in the villa near

the Gate of the Giant Scissors, but Cousin Kate

hopes to find lodgings near there. She has just

spent a week with us while she was making

preparations for her journey, and the visit

revived all her old interest in my work. She

was pleased to find that I am doing practical

money-making things like designing book-covers,

etc., but she wants me to widen my field, she

says.

"She insists on giving me this year abroad, and

says it is pure selfishness on her part,

because she may want to attach herself to our

Paris establishment later on. She is so alone

in the world. I am sure that I can make it up

to her some day, all that she is doing for me

now, in the way that will make her very happy.

So I am accepting as cordially as she is

giving. When I told her how long I have been

away from you all, and that I thought I'd take

part of my savings for a flying visit home, she

thought I ought to do so by all means, and said

that she wanted to add to the happiness of the

family, especially mamma's, by sending a

handsome Christmas present back with me.

"For several days it seemed as if she would not

be able to get exactly what she wanted, but it

was finally arranged, just at the last moment,

after much trouble on her part. It's perfectly

grand, but I've sworn not to even hint at what

it is. So expect me Christmas Eve with The

Surprise. I'll not write again in the meantime,

as I am so very, very busy. Till then good-bye.

"Yours lovingly and joyfully,

"JOYCE."

As Mrs. Ware looked up from her reading, everybody spoke at once. "It's

almost too good to be true," was Jack's quick exclamation. "What do you

suppose the surprise will be?" Norman's eager question. While Mary,

clasping her elbow with her hands, as if hugging herself in sheer

ecstasy, cried, "Oh, I just _love_ to be knocked flat and have my breath

taken away with unexpected news like that! It makes you tingle all over

and at the same time have a queer die-away feeling too, like when you

swoop down in a swing!"

Mrs. Ware took down the almanac hanging in the chimney corner, and began

to turn the pages, looking for the one marked December.

"Oh, you needn't count the days till Christmas," said Mary. "I've been

marking them off my calendar every morning and can tell you to a dot.

Not that I had expected to take much interest in celebrating this year,

but just from force of habit, I suppose. But now we'll have to 'put the

big pot in the little one,' as they say back in Kentucky, in honor of

our being all together once more."

"All but Holland," corrected Mrs. Ware sadly, with the wistful look

which always came into her eyes whenever his name was mentioned. "That's

the worst of giving up a boy to the Navy. One has to give him up so

completely."

There was such a note of longing in her voice that Jack hastened to say,

"But the worst of it is nearly over now, little mother. He'll be home on

his first furlough next summer."

"Yes, but the years will have made a man of him," answered Mrs. Ware.

"He'll not be the same boy that left us, and he'll be here such a short

time that we'll hardly have time to make his acquaintance."

"Oh, but think of when he gets to be a high and mighty Admiral,"

exclaimed Mary, comfortingly. "You'll be so proud of him you'll forget

all about the separation. Between him and the Governor I don't know what

will happen to your pride. It will be so inflated."

Mary had laughingly called Jack the Governor ever since Mrs. Ware's

complacent remark that day on the train, that it would not surprise her

to have such an honor come to her oldest son some day.

"And Joyce, don't forget _her_," put in Norman, feeling in his pocket

for a handful of nuts which he had carried away from the birthday feast.

"The way she's started out she'll have a place in your hall of fame,

too. And me--don't forget _this_ Abou Ben Adhem. Probably my name'll

lead all the rest. Where do _you_ expect to come in, Mary? What will

_you_ do?"

As he spoke he placed a row of pecans under the rocker of his chair, and

bore down on them until the shells cracked. When he had picked out a

handful of kernels, he popped them into his mouth all at once.

"We'll write your name as the Great American Cormorant," laughed Mary,

ignoring his question about herself. "You remember that verse, don't

you?

"'C, my dear, is the Cormorant.

When he don't eat more it's because he can't.'

"Mamma, didn't he eat anything at all at the Downs'? He's been stuffing

ever since he came back--cake and candy, and now those nuts. It's

positively disgraceful to carry food away in your pockets the way you

do, Norman Ware."

"I always do when I go to Billy's house," answered Norman, undisturbed

by her criticism, and crashing his rocker down on a row of almonds. "And

Billy always does the same here. We're not company. We're home folks at

both places."

The shells which he threw toward the fire missed their aim and fell on

the hearth. Mary pointed significantly toward the turkey-wing, and he as

significantly shrugged his shoulders, in token that he would not sweep

up the mess he had made. They kept up a playful pantomime some time,

while Jack and his mother went on discussing Joyce's home-coming, before

he finally obeyed her peremptory gesture. He thought she was in one of

her jolliest moods, induced by the glorious news of the letter. But all

the time she was silently repeating his question, "Where do _you_ expect

to come in, Mary? What will _you_ do?"

Here she was, baffled again. The time she had spent in writing that

letter, now tucked away under her belt, was wasted. It was out of the

question to appeal to Cousin Kate now, just when she had done so much

for another member of the family, and especially when she had sailed

away to so vague a place as the south of France, by the doctor's orders.

Even if Mary had her address, she felt it would be wrong to bother her

with a request which would require any "pulling of strings." For that

could not be done without letter writing, and in her state of health

even that might be some tax on her strength, which she had no right to

ask. Hope, that had soared so buoyantly an hour before, once more sank

despairingly to earth. What was she to do? Which way could she turn

next?

When bedtime came a little later, Mrs. Ware went in to Norman's room to

take some extra cover. Mary lingered to pin some newspapers around her

potted plants and move them away from the windows. Jack, standing in

front of the fireplace, winding the clock on the mantel, saw her slip a

folded paper from under her belt, and toss it into the fire with such a

tragic gesture, that he knew without telling that it was the letter on

which she had worked so industriously. She saw that he understood and

she was grateful that he said nothing.

While they were undressing, Mrs. Ware talked so happily of Joyce's

return, that Mary's own glow of anticipation came back. She was not

jealous of her sister's good fortune. She had never been that. She was

wholly, generously glad for every good thing that had ever come into

Joyce's life, and she was so thrilled with the thought of her coming

home that she was sure she should lie awake all night thinking about it.

But when she snuggled down under the warm covers, it was Norman's

question which kept her awake. "Where do _you_ expect to come in, Mary?

What are _you_ going to do?"

CHAPTER V

P STANDS FOR PINK

What happened in the Christmas holidays which followed is best told in

the letter which Mary wrote to Phil Tremont on the last day of the old

year.

"DEAR BEST MAN:" it began. "Mamma has asked me

to write to you this time in her place, as she

has succumbed to an attack of 'reunionitis.'

She doesn't call it that, but we know well

enough that it is nothing but the excitement

and unexpectedness of having a whole family

reunion which has frazzled her out so

completely. She wrote you that Joyce was coming

home, but none of us knew that Holland would be

with her. _He_ was the surprise--Cousin Kate's

Christmas gift to the family. His furlough is

not due till next summer, but she said by that

time Joyce would be in Paris, and the chances

are that if we didn't get together now we might

never again be able to; at least for years and

years.

"Cousin Kate is such a solitary soul herself,

no relatives nearer than cousins, that she has

an immense amount of sentiment for family

gatherings, and that is why she gave us such a

happy one. She had to go to Washington to

arrange it. She has a friend at court in the

shape of a senator who was once an intimate

school chum of the President's. (We think he

was one of her many bygone suitors. Isn't that

romantic?) Among them they managed to untie

enough red tape to let Holland out.

"You can imagine our astonishment when he

walked in. We almost swooned with joy, and I

thought for a moment that mamma really was

going to, the surprise was so great. You saw

him just before you went to Mexico, so you know

how big he has grown, and how impressively

dignified he can be on occasion. And polite--

My! What a polish the Navy can give! He was so

polite that I was awestruck at first, and it

was two whole days before I felt familiar

enough to dare to refer to the time that he

dragged me down the hay-mow by my hair because

I wouldn't come any other way.

"It has been a wonderful week; yet, isn't it

queer, as I look back on it, there is nothing

at all in it really worth putting into a

letter. It is just that after the first

strangeness wore off, we seemed to slip back

into the dear old good times of the Wigwam

days. You know better than any one else in the

world what they were, for you shared them with

us so often. You know how we have always

enjoyed each other and what entertainment we

found in our own conversation and jokes and

disputes, so you'll understand exactly what

that week was to us, when I say that it was a

slice out of the old days.

"It was better in some ways, however. The

future is not such a distressingly unknown

quantity as it was then. We don't have to say,

'Let X (a very slim X at that) equal Jack's

chances, and minus Y equal Joyce's.' If we

could only determine the value of the chances

of Mary, we'd soon know the 'length of the

whole fish.' 'Member how you moiled and toiled

over that old fish problem in Ray's Algebra, to

help me to understand it?

"Well, I am the puzzling element in the Ware

family's equation. It's our problem to find the

extent of my resources. I was dreadfully

discouraged before Christmas, when every

application I sent out was turned down. It

seemed to me that if I had one more

disappointment I couldn't possibly bear it. But

Joyce has almost persuaded me to give up the

quest for awhile, at least until spring. I am a

year younger than she was when she went away

from home, and she thinks that I owe it to

mamma to stay with her till I am out of my

teens. Mamma hasn't been very well lately.

Sometimes I think I could have a very pleasant

winter here after all, if I'd just make up my

mind to settle down and forget my ambitions.

There are mild social possibilities in two of

the new families who moved here last fall, and

Pink Upham does everything he can think of to

make it pleasant. We are going skating

to-night, and have a big bonfire on the bank.

To-morrow, being New Year's Day, consequently a

holiday for him, we are to have a long

sleigh-ride over to Hemlock Ridge. The ladies

of some lodge in the settlement over there are

to serve a turkey dinner in the school-house.

"I have begun this letter backwards. What I set

out to do, first and foremost, was to thank you

for the lovely book which you sent with your

Yuletide greeting. I read over half of it aloud

last night after our Christmas guests departed,

and was glad that we had such an interesting

story. It kept us from getting doleful.

"By the way, the heroine is called Bonnie,

after the song, _Bonnie Eloise_. And Joyce said

that Eugenia told her that there is an

American girl visiting the doctor's family near

your construction camp, whom you refer to in

your letters as Bonnie Eloise. Eugenia says

that she plays the guitar and sings duets with

you, and is altogether charming. Is Eloise her

real name, or do you call her that because she

is bonny like the girl in the book? And does

she sing as well as Lloyd Sherman? Do tell us

about her the next time you write! Your sayings

and doings would interest us even if we were

looping the loop socially in gay Gotham and

dwelt continually 'in the midst of alarms.' But

in the Selkirkian stillness of these solitudes

our interest in our friends deepens into

something amazing.

"Mamma says to tell you that we all spoke of

you and quoted you many times this week, and

wished daily that you were with us. She sends

her love and will write as soon as she is able.

With all good wishes for your New Year from

each of us, Yours, downcast but still inflexible,

"MARY."

Phil answered this letter the day it was received, replying to her

question about Eloise in a joking postscript, as if wishing to convey

the impression that his interest in her was less than Mary's.

"I forgot to say that Eloise is a name I have

bestowed upon the young lady who is visiting

the Whites, in exchange for the compliment of

her having given my name to her dog. He is a

lank, sneaking greyhound which never leaves her

side, and was called merely Señor, when she

brought him to Mexico. Now she has added

Tremonti to his title. She herself is baptized

Eliza. She is a pretty, kittenish little thing,

deathly afraid of cock-roaches and

caterpillars, devoted to frills and fetching

furbelows, and fond of taking picturesque poses

in the moonlight with the slinky greyhound. No,

her voice is not to be compared to the Little

Colonel's, but it is sweet and sympathetic,

very effective in ballads and simple things. We

sing together whenever I happen to drop in at

the doctor's, which is several times a week,

and I am indebted to her for many pleasant

hours, which are doubly appreciated in this

desert waste of a place.

"Now will you answer a few questions for me?

Who is this Pink Upham who is 'doing everything

to make the winter pleasant' for you? What is

his age, his business and his ultimate aim in

life? Is he the only available escort to all

the social functions of Lone-Rock? You never

mention any other. Don't forget what I told you

when I said good-bye in Bauer, and _don't

forget what you promised me then_."

Mary was in the kitchen when that letter was brought in to her. She had

just slipped a pan of gingersnaps into the oven, and was rolling out the

remainder of the dough to fill another pan. Not even stopping to wipe

her floury hands, she walked over to the window, tore open the envelope

and began to read. When she came to the end of the postscript she stood

gazing out of the window at the back fence, half buried in the drifted

snow. What she saw was not the old fence, however. She was gazing back

into a sunny April morning in the hills of Texas. She was standing by a

kitchen window there, also, but that one was open, and looked out upon a

meadow of blue-bonnets, as blue as the sea. And outside, looking in at

her, with his arms crossed on the window-sill, was Phil. There was no

need for him to write in that postscript, "Don't forget what I told you

when I said good-bye in Bauer." She had recalled it so many times in the

nine months that had passed since then, that she could repeat every

word.

It still seemed just as remarkable now as it had then that he should

have asked her to promise to let him know if anybody ever came along

trying to persuade her "to join him on a new trail," or that he should

have said that he wanted "a hand in choosing the right man," and above

all that he should have added solemnly, "I have never yet seen anybody

whom I considered good enough for little Mary Ware."

If Mary could have known what picture rose up before Phil's eyes as he

wrote that postscript, she would have been unspeakably happy. She had so

many mortifying remembrances of times when he had caught her looking her

very worst, when he had come upon her just emerging from some accident

that had left her drenched or smoked or bedraggled, mud-spattered,

ink-stained or dust-covered. Holland's recent reminiscences had deepened

her impression that she must have been in a wrecked condition half her

time, for he had kept the family laughing all one evening, recalling

various plights he had rescued her from.

It would have been most soul-satisfying to her could she have known that

Phil thought of her oftenest as he had last seen her, standing at the

gate in a white and pink dress, fresh as a spring blossom, her sweet

sincere eyes looking gravely into his as he insisted on a promise, but

her dear little mouth smiling mischievously as she vowed, "I'll keep my

word. Honest, I will!"

As she recalled that promise now, her face dimpled again as it had then

over the absurdity of such a thing. "The idea of Phil's thinking that

Pink Upham is anybody to be considered seriously!" she exclaimed, as she

recalled his uncouth laugh, his barbaric taste in dress, his provincial

little habits and mannerisms, which in the parlance of the Warwick Hall

girls, would have stamped him "dead common" according to their

standards. She was still looking dreamily out into the snowy yard when

Mrs. Ware came to the door to inquire with an anxious sniff,

"Mary, isn't something burning?"

Suddenly recalled to herself, Mary sprang to open the oven door,

wailing, "My cookies, oh, my cookies! Burnt to a crisp! And the

gingerbread man I promised to little Don Moredock, black as a cinder!

I'll have to make him another one, but there won't be time to stick in

all the beautiful clove buttons that I had this one's suit trimmed with.

His coat was like Old Grimes', 'all buttoned down before.' It was Phil's

letter that caused the wreck," she explained to her mother, as she

emptied the burnt cakes into the fire. "There it is on the table."

Phil's letters were family property. Mrs. Ware carried it off to read,

and Mary, taking another pan, proceeded to shape another gingerbread

man. As she did so, her thoughts went from it to little Don Moredock for

whom it was intended, and then to Pink Upham, who had been the devoted

slave of the little fellow with the broken leg ever since the accident

occurred. As she recalled Pink's patience and gentleness with the child,

she wondered just what sort of an impression he would make on Phil. The

more she pondered the more certain she was that Phil would see him

through Jack's eyes and little Don's, rather than through hers. And

somehow, thinking that, she began to get a different view of him

herself.

It was nearly sundown before she found time to run over to the

Moredocks' with the gingerbread man, and tell Don the story which it was

intended to illustrate. He had never heard it before, and insisted upon

her repeating it over and over. He kept her much later than she had

intended to stay, and a young moon was shining on the snow when she

started home again. Pink Upham, stopping on his way home to supper to

leave a feather whirligig he had made for Don, met her going out of the

gate as he went in.

Two minutes later he had caught up with her, and was walking along

beside her. There was to be a Valentine party at Sara Downs on the

fourteenth, he told her. A fancy dress affair. He wanted her to go with

him, as his valentine. Now if it had not been for Phil's letter, Mary's

eyes might not have been opened quite so soon to the fact that Pink

regarded her as the right girl, no matter what she thought of him. But

all at once she realized that he was looking down at her as no one had

ever looked before. There was something in his glance like the dumb

wistfulness that makes a hunting dog's eyes so pathetic, and she felt a

little shiver run over her. She didn't want him to care like _that_! It

was perfectly thrilling to feel that she had aroused a deep regard in

any one's heart, but, oh, _why_ did it have to be some one who fell so

short of her standard of what a true prince must measure up to?

Embarrassed and troubled, she hurried away from him as soon as they

reached the gate. The lamps were lighted and supper was ready when she

went into the house. She began talking the moment she sat down at the

table, but somehow she could not put Pink out of her mind. She kept

seeing him as he had stood there at the gate in the snow with the young

moon lighting it up. She knew that he had stood and watched her pass up

the path and into the house, for she had stolen a hasty glance over her

shoulder as she opened the door, and the tall, dark figure was still

there.

She talked vivaciously of many things: of little Don's pleasure in her

gift, of her fall on the ice on the way over, of Sara Downs' Valentine

party, of Phil's letter. When the last subject was mentioned Mrs. Ware

remarked, "That snap-shot of 'Eloise' shows her to be a very pretty

girl, I think."

"Snap-shot of Eloise!" echoed Mary blankly. "I didn't see it. Where is

it?"

"In the envelope. I didn't see it either, until I started to shove the

folded sheet back into it. Something inside prevented its going more

than half way, and I found it was the little unmounted picture curled up

inside. It's on the mantel. Norman, get it for your sister, please."

Mary held the picture under the lamp for a careful scrutiny. So that was

Eloise. A slim, graceful girl posing in a hammock, with one hand resting

on the guitar in her lap, the other on the head of Señor Tremonti. Her face

was in shadow, but she looked dangerously attractive to Mary, who spoke

her opinion openly.

"She's an appealing little thing, the clinging-vine sort. If Phil saw

her only in the daylight and called her plain Eliza, and could remember

that she's a little 'fraid cat whose chief interest in life is frills

and fetching furbelows, he wouldn't be in any danger. But you see, he

hasn't any of his kind of girls down there--I mean like the Little

Colonel and Betty and Gay, and the moonlight and musical evenings will

give her a sort of glamor that'll make her seem different, just as

calling her Eloise makes her seem more romantic than when he says

Eliza."

"Don't you worry," laughed Jack. "Phil is old enough to look out for

himself, and to know what he wants. You can trust him to pick out the

kind of wife that suits him, better than you could do it for him."

"But I don't want him to be satisfied with that kind after all the

lovely girls he's known," grumbled Mary, putting the picture aside and

going on with her supper. Her motherly concern was even greater over

this situation than it had been when she thought of him as "doomed to

carry a secret sorrow to his grave." She pinned the picture of Eloise

to the frame of her mirror when she went to her room that night, and

studied it while she slowly brushed her hair.

Once she paused with brush in air as a comforting thought suddenly

occurred to her. "Why, I'm in the same position that Phil is. Pink

doesn't measure up to my highest ideal of a man any more than Eliza

measures up to Lloyd, but he's my chief source of amusement here, just

as she is Phil's there. Maybe she lets him see that she's fond of his

company and all that, and he hates to hurt her feelings as I hate to

hurt Pink's. I'll intimate as much in my letter when I answer his

questions, if I can think of the right way to do it."

It was because she could not find the right words to express these

sentiments that she delayed answering from day to day, then other things

crowded it out of her mind. The Valentine party required that much time

and thought be spent on the costumes, and she helped Jack with his. He

went as a comic Valentine. Pink begged her to dress as the Queen of

Hearts, and she was almost persuaded to do so, thinking that would be

the easiest of costumes to prepare, till she guessed from something he

let fall that he intended to personate the King himself. Then nothing

would have induced her to do it. She knew it would give occasion for

the coupling of their names together in the familiar and teasing way

they have in little country towns.

So she dressed as an old-fashioned lace-paper valentine. The dress was

made of a much-mended lace curtain. The front of the bodice had two

square lapels wired at the edges, so that they could be folded together

like the front of a real valentine, or opened back like shutters to show

on her breast a panel of pale blue satin, on which was outlined two

white doves perched above a great red heart. Mrs. Ware painted it, and

although it may sound queer in the description, it was in reality a very

pretty costume, and the touch of color made it so becoming that Mary's

cheeks glowed with pleasure many times during the evening at the

comments she overheard on all sides.

Pink's eyes followed her admiringly everywhere she went, but he had

little to say to her, except once, as he finished singing a song which

Sara Downs had begged for, he leaned over and whispered significantly,

"That's _your_ song."

It was Kathleen Mavourneen, and she wondered why he called it hers. On

the way home he was so strangely silent that Mary wondered what was the

matter. She rattled along, talking with even more vivacity than usual,

to cover his silence, and walked fast to keep within speaking distance

of several others who were going down their road. They all walked Indian

file, the path beaten through the snow was so narrow. Jack had started

much earlier, as he was taking old Captain Doane's niece home. The

cottage was in sight when the others turned off into another road, and

Pink and Mary were left crunching through the snow alone.

Then Pink suddenly found his voice. Clearing his throat he began

diffidently, "Mary, I want to ask you something. I want to ask a favor

of you."

His tone was so ominous that Mary's heart gave a thump like a startled

rabbit's.

"I wish you wouldn't call me 'Pink' like everybody else does. I wish

you'd call me a name that no one would use but you. Just when we're by

ourselves, you know. I wouldn't want you to any other time. I'd love for

you to have your own special name for me just as I have for you."

"What's that?" asked Mary, crunching steadily on ahead, determined to

laugh him out of his serious tone if possible. "What name do you have

for me? 'Polly-put-the-kettle-on? 'That's my usual nickname. It used to

be 'Mother-bunch' and 'Gordo' when I was little and fat."

"I didn't mean a nickname," answered Pink a little stiffly. He was in no

humor for joking, and he rather resented her light reply. Her rapid pace

had quickened almost into a dog-trot. With a few long strides he put

himself even with her, walking along in the deep snow beside the narrow

path. Evidently he felt the witchery of the still winter night, with the

moonlight silvering the snowy world around them, even if Mary did not.

For in spite of the brisk, business-like pace she set, he said

presently:

"I've been making up my mind all evening to tell you this on my way

home. You've never seemed like an ordinary girl to me. You're so much

nicer in every way, that long ago I gave you a name that I always call

you to myself. And I wanted to ask you if you wouldn't do the same for

me. Of course I couldn't expect you to give me the same sort of a name

that I have for you, but I'd be content if you'd just call me by my

first name, _Philip_."

"_Philip!_" repeated Mary blankly, turning short in the narrow path to

stare at him. "Why, I didn't know that that was _your_ name. It's a name

that has always seemed to belong especially to just one person in the

world. I never dreamed that it was _your_ name. Somehow I had the

impression that that first P in it stood for Peter."

"I don't know why," answered Pink in a hurt tone. "I was named for my

grandfather, Philip Pinckney, so I don't see why I haven't as good a

right to it as any one."

"Oh, of course you have," cried Mary. "I was just surprised, that's all.

It's only that I've always regarded it as the especial property of one

of my very best friends, I suppose."

"Well, I rather hoped that you counted _me_ as one of your very best

friends," was the gloomy response. To Mary's unspeakable relief Jack

came swinging up behind them just then with some jolly remark that saved

her the necessity of an answer, and the good nights were spoken without

any further reference to personal matters.

It was so late that she undressed as quickly and quietly as she could,

in order not to awaken her mother in the next room. As she did so she

kept thinking, "I wonder what it is he always calls me to himself? I'd

give a fortune to know. But I suppose I never will find out, for I'm

sure that I hurt his feelings saying what I did about Phil's name. Why,

I could no more call him Philip than I could call him _mother_! Those

names belong so entirely to the people I've always given them to."

It was not until she had been tucked warmly in bed for some time, with

her eyes closed, that she thought of something which made her sit bolt

upright, regardless of the icy wind blowing in through her open windows.

"_Philip and Mary on a shilling!_ Merciful heavens!" she exclaimed in a

whisper. "It can't be that that old shilling that I drew out of

Eugenia's bridecake really has any power to influence my destiny!"

There was something vaguely alarming in the knowledge that Pink claimed

the name of Philip. Long ago Mary had taken the story of _The Three

Weavers_ to heart, and vowed that no one could be her prince who did not

fit her ideals "as the falcon's feathers fit the falcon." Now she

exclaimed almost savagely to herself:

"Why, Pink Upham no more measures up to my ideals than,

than--_anything!_ It's ridiculous to believe that an old shilling could

influence my destiny that way. It can't! It _sha'n't_! I simply won't

let it!"

Then, as she lay back on her pillow again and pulled the blankets over

her shivering shoulders, she thought drearily, "But, oh, dear, this is

going to interfere with my only good times! Whenever he is nice to me

I'll think of that dreadful old shilling in spite of myself. I wish I

could go away from Lone-Rock this very week!"

CHAPTER VI

TOLD IN LETTERS

On the way to the post-office next morning, Mary determined that if she

should meet Pink there, as she sometimes did, not even the flicker of an

eyelash should show that she remembered last night's conversation. But

when she saw the back of a familiar fur overcoat through the post-office

window, she felt the color rush into her face.

When she went in, not only was she conscious from his greeting that _he_

remembered, but the look in his eyes said as plainly as words that the

name which he kept for her alone had risen almost to his lips. It made

her uncomfortable, but she was burning with curiosity to know what that

name could be.

There were several people in the line ahead of her, and Pink emptied his

locked box before her turn came at the window. She knew that he was

waiting outside the door for her, so, when she passed him, she was

purposely absorbed in opening the only letter which had fallen to her

share. It was a tough-fibred envelope, hard to tear, and her heavily

gloved hands made clumsy work of it. Finally she thrust a forefinger

under the flap and wrenched it apart. A ragged scrap of yellowed paper

fluttered out on to the step. Pink stooped and handed it to her.

"Why, how queer! That's all there is in the envelope," she exclaimed,

shaking it, then holding out the jagged bit of paper so that Pink could

examine it with her. It was only a scrap torn from a sheet of music, or

some old song-book. They read the bars together:

[Illustration: Music: Oh! why art thou silent thou voice of my heart?]

If Mary had not been so busy puzzling over why it had been sent, she

would have seen a dull red creep into Pink's face, as he recognized it

as a line from _Kathleen Mavourneen_, the song which he told Mary the

night before he always regarded as hers.

Suddenly she laughed. "Of course! I see it now! It's just Phil's cute

way of reminding me that I owe him a letter. Once, when Jack had not

written for months, Phil called his attention to the silence by sending

a postal with just a big question mark on it. But this is a much

brighter way."

"Yes, I see a few things too," said Pink stiffly. "I'd forgotten that

that fellow down in Mexico is named Philip. So _he's_ the only person in

the world you consider the name belongs to--and he calls you--_that!_"

His ringer pointed to the last five words under the bar of music.

"He's the only one I've ever known by that name," began Mary, surprised

by the unaccountable change in his manner, and unaware that it was a

swift flash of jealousy which caused it. To her amazement he turned

abruptly and walked away without even a curt "good morning."

She glanced after him in surprise, wondering at his abrupt leave-taking.

He was unmistakably offended about something. Sara Downs had told her

more than once that he was the most foolishly sensitive person she had

ever known, continually getting his feelings hurt over nothing, but this

was the first time Mary had ever had an exhibition of his sensitiveness.

Conscious that she had done nothing at which a reasonable person could

take offence, she looked after him with a desire to shake him for such

childishness. Then with a shrug of her shoulders she turned and started

homeward.

"That was such a bright, original way for Phil to remind me," she

thought, glancing again at the scrap of music. "And it is so absolutely

silly of Pink to say in such a tragic tone, 'And he called you _that_!'

There is nothing more personal in Phil's saying 'thou voice of my heart'

than there would be in his calling me 'Old Dog Tray' or a scrap of any

other song. He's always roaring questions at people in the shape of bits

of music. But, of course, Pink doesn't know that," she added a moment

afterward, wanting to be perfectly honest in her judgment of him. "But

even if he doesn't, it's none of his business what anybody calls me."

The episode, trifling as it was, made a difference in the answer that

she sent to Phil. Instead of trying to reply to his questions seriously,

as she had intended to do, she was so disdainful of Pink's behavior that

she concluded to ignore all mention of him. As she passed the Moredock

house, a phonograph, playing away inside for the amusement of little Don,

brayed out a rag-time refrain: "I want what I want, _when I want it_!"

Suddenly the inspiration seized her to answer Phil's reminder of her

silence in his own way. She would make a medley of fragments of songs.

How to begin it puzzled her, for the only song she could think of,

containing his name, was "Philip, my King," and she dismissed that

immediately, as impossible. All the way home she whistled under her

breath bits of old melodies, one suggesting another, until she had a

long list, and she made haste to write them down, for fear she might

forget. From the back of an old dog-eared guitar instructor, which she

found in the book-case, she copied many titles of ballads, and among

them came across the line, "Friend of my soul, the goblet sip." It was

one which she knew Phil was familiar with, for she remembered having

heard him sing it at the Wigwam. So she promptly chose the first four

words as the ones with which to commence. The first part of the letter

ran somewhat after this fashion:

"LONE-ROCK (NOT) BY THE SEA.

"'FRIEND OF MY SOUL':--'The day is cold and

dark and dreary.' 'In the gloaming,' 'The

swallows homeward fly.' 'The daily question

is,' 'What's this dull town to me?' 'Tell me

not in mournful numbers' that 'I'd better bide

a wee.' 'Oh, 'tis not true!' 'I hear the angel

voices calling' 'Where the sun shines bright on

my old Kentucky home,' and 'I want what I want

_when I want it_.'"

It took an entire evening to evolve a letter which suited her, and

although it was utter foolishness, she managed to give the news and to

convey through the cleverly combined titles the fact that she was still

struggling to get away from Lone-Rock, that there was no "swain amang

the train" to keep her from "going back to Dixie" "in the sweet bye and

bye." She also found a way to make complimentary mention of Bonnie

Eloise.

That was the last evening, however, which she devoted to trivial things

for many weeks. For Jack came home next noon greatly troubled over

conditions at the office. The bookkeeper was down with pneumonia. There

was no one who could step into his place but Jack, and he already had

his hands full with his own responsibilities and duties.

"It is the correspondence which worries me most," he said. "We haven't

had enough of that kind of work, so far, to justify us hiring a

stenographer, but some days the mail is so heavy that it keeps me

pounding on the typewriter an hour or more. Now, Mary, if you had only

added shorthand to your many accomplishments, there'd be a fine chance

for you to help hold the fort till Bailey gets well."

"I can help do it, anyhow," she declared promptly. "I know how business

letters ought to sound--'Yours of recent date' and 'enclosed herewith

please find' and all that sort of thing. I can scratch off in pencil a

sort of outline of what you want said, and then take my time copying it

on the machine."

Past experience had taught the family that whenever Mary attempted

anything with the eagerness with which she proposed this plan, she

always carried it through triumphantly, and Jack's face showed his

relief as he promptly accepted her offer.

"No use for you to come down this afternoon," he said. "I'll be too busy

looking after other things to give any time to letters."

"But I can be making the acquaintance of the machine," answered Mary.

"Madam Chartley's stenographer learned to run hers simply by studying

the book of instructions. And if it won't bother you to hear me clicking

away I'll put in the whole afternoon practising."

[Illustration: "SEVERAL TIMES SHE STOPPED JACK IN PASSING TO ASK HIM A

QUESTION."]

So when Jack went back to the office, Mary went with him, happy and

excited over this unexpected entrance into the world of Business.

"Who knows but what this may be a stepping-stone into a successful

career?" she exclaimed. "Why didn't I think of applying to you for a

position in the very beginning? It would have saved a world of worry and

disappointment, and a small fortune in postage stamps."

He had time for only a short explanation of the machine before he was

called away, but the book of instructions was clear and concise. She

studied the illustrations and diagrams for awhile with her whole

attention concentrated on them. Accustomed to picking up new crochet

stitches and following intricate patterns from printed directions, it

was an easy matter for her to master the intricacies of the new machine.

Several times she stopped Jack in passing to ask him a question about

some movement or adjustment, but in the main she experimented until she

could answer her own questions.

In a little while she could shift the ribbon or flip a sheet of paper in

and out with the ease of an expert. Then she began studying the

keyboard, to learn the position of the letters, and after that it was

only a question of practice to gain speed. Fingers that had learned

nimbleness and accuracy of touch in other fields, did not lag long here.

Hour after hour she sat at the machine, practising finger exercises as

patiently as if the keys were the ivories of a grand piano.

The next letter which she sent to Phil, some days later, was such a

contrast to the musical medley that it did not seem possible that they

had been written by the same person.

"LONE-ROCK, ARIZONA, April 2d.

"MR. PHILIP TREMONT,

"Necaxa, Mexico.

"DEAR SIR: Your favor of the 24th ult. duly

received and contents noted. I am much

gratified with your reference to my last

epistle, and your hearty encore, but I can give

no more musical monologues at present. I am

engaged as Corresponding Secretary in the

office of the Lone-Rock Mining Company.

Corresponding Secretary may be too grand a name

to give my humble position, but it comes nearer

to describing it than any that I can think of.

"First I came in just to help Jack out, while

his chief was away and the bookkeeper ill. I

helped him with the correspondence and all

sorts of odds and ends, and between times

practised typewriting, till now I can take

dictation on the machine when he speaks at a

moderately slow pace.

"Yesterday he received a telegram calling him

East to a special directors' meeting, to report

on something unexpected that has recently

developed out here. So I'm to stay on at the

office while he is gone, _on a salary_! A very

modest one it is to be sure, but it is bliss to

feel that at last I have found a paying

position, no matter how small it is. Isn't it

queer? Lone-Rock is the last place on the

planet where a girl like me would expect to

find anything of the sort to do. Mr. Headley,

the chief, is back, of course, or Jack couldn't

leave, and I'm watching my opportunity to make

myself so useful around the office that they'll

all wonder how they ever 'kept house' so long

without me.

"Mr. Bailey's pneumonia has been blessed to me

if not to him, for it has broken the spell, or

hoo-doo, or whatever it was that thwarted all

my efforts. Fortune's 'turn' is slowly

approaching. Let it come when it will I can now

meet it like the wingèd spur of my ancestors,

with the cry 'Ready! Aye, ready!'

"Trusting that this explanation is

satisfactory, and that we may be favored by a

reply at your earliest convenience, I have the

honor to remain,

"Yours very truly,

"M. WARE.

"(P.S. I must ask you to observe the very tasty

manner in which this is typed.)"

The next letter from Mary to Phil was hastily scribbled in pencil.

"DEAR PHIL:--Jack came home yesterday with a

bit of news for the Ware family, which set it

into a wild commotion, to say the least. Nobody

but the family is to know it for awhile, but I

am going to tell you because you're sort of

'next of kin.' Jack said I might, but you

mustn't send your congratulations until you are

officially notified.

"When Jack went East to that directors' meeting

he stopped over Sunday in Lloydsboro Valley,

and Betty was home from Warwick Hall on her

Easter vacation, and he saw her again, and

well--_they're engaged!_ Isn't it perfectly

lovely? I've known for a long time that they

have been corresponding. They began it over

_me_ while I was at Warwick Hall. It will

probably be a long time before they are

married. Betty will finish teaching this term

at Warwick Hall and then go back to Locust for

awhile. Jack is to be promoted to Mr. Headley's

place next fall, and I _think_ the grand event

will take place the following spring, a year

from now.

"You know Betty, and what a perfectly darling

saint she is, so I needn't tell you how the

entire family rejoices over Jack's good

fortune, although we _do_ think too, that she

is equally fortunate to have Jack and--_us_.

Don't you?"

It was May before another letter found its way from Lone-Rock to the

little station up in the mountains of Mexico, to which Phil sent a daily

messenger on mule-back for his mail. Mary wrote it in the office while

waiting for Jack to come in again and go on with his dictation. It had

been interrupted in the middle by some outside matter which called him

away from his desk for nearly an hour.

"No," she began, "I must confess that it isn't lack of time which has

kept me so long from answering your last letter, but merely lack of

news. Mr. Bailey is back at his post now as good as new after his spell

of pneumonia. I had a busy month while he was out, but now there isn't

enough for me to do to justify their keeping me more than an hour or so

each morning.

"I am glad to have that much of a position however, for it adds a trifle

every week to my bank account, and breaks into the monotony of the days

more than you can imagine. I come down just after the morning train gets

in and stay long enough to attend to the day's correspondence. Usually

it takes about an hour.

"I haven't written for some time because there was nothing to tell. Of

course the mountains are beautiful in this perfect May weather, but you

wouldn't want to read pages of description. There has been nothing going

on socially since the Valentine party. Pink Upham used to stir up things

quite often, but he seems to be very much absorbed in his business

lately, and I rarely see him. Occasionally I go for a tramp up the

mountains with Norman and Billy, and we went fishing twice last week,

and cooked our lunch on the creek bank.

"But if we are not doing things ourselves we are enjoying the activities

of our friends. Have I ever told you that Lieutenant Boglin is now in

the Philippines? He sent me a bunch of photographs from there last week

that make me wild to see the place. And Roberta is abroad with her

family and is having adventures galore in London.

"Gay is having all sorts of good times at the post, and even old Mr. and

Mrs. Barnaby up in Bauer are planning for a trip to the Pacific coast.

"Joyce and Miss Henrietta have shut up the studio for a few weeks, and

have gone to Tours to join Cousin Kate and sketch awhile in that lovely

chateau region. And that reminds me of the question you asked in your

last letter about Jules Ciseaux. I wonder how you happened to think of

him. He came to America last year just as he had expected to do, but he

got no farther than New York. Joyce told us all about him when she was

home last Christmas. She says he has grown up to be a wonderfully

interesting young fellow, slim and dark, with a most distinguished air

and courtly manner. Something called him back to France before he made

his Western trip, and he lamented to her that he could not meet her

'young sister Marie,' whom he 'pictured to be most charming and

accomplished.' But I suppose it's destined that we shall never see each

other, for he's married now to a little artist whom he met in Paris when

he was studying there. He came across her again in New York, and Joyce

says she knows now that that is what took him back again so suddenly to

Paris. The girl was just starting, and he took passage on the same

steamer. They are living now in the home of his ancestors behind the

great Gate of the Giant Scissors, and Joyce was entertained there at

dinner one night, and was charmed with young Mrs. Jules. She says they

are as happy as two Babes in Candyland.

"Oh, I've just thought--I _am_ doing something, although it may not

appeal to your masculine mind as anything worth mentioning. Mamma and I

are both at work on some beautiful embroidery for Betty. It is so fine

and intricate that we can only do a little at a time, but it is a labor

of love, like the touches the old monks used to put on their illuminated

missals. Nothing can be too fine and dainty for our dear Betty, and we

are counting the months until we can really claim her. Do you suppose

you will be back in the States by that time? I truly hope so. In the

meantime don't forget your old friends of the Wigwam days, and

especially, _this_ member of the House of Ware."

CHAPTER VII

A DESERT OF WAITING

It was so still on the porch where Mary and her mother sat sewing that

warm May afternoon that they could distinctly hear the Moredock

phonograph, playing some new records over and over. One of them was a

quick-step that the military band had often played at Fort Sam Houston,

and as Mary listened an intolerable longing for stir and excitement took

possession of her. She wanted to be back in the midst of people and

constantly changing scenes. She felt that she could not endure the

deadly monotony of Lone-Rock another day.

Usually she had much to say as they sat and sewed through the long still

afternoons, but to-day the music claimed her attention. It was very

pleasing at that distance, but it was disquieting in its effect. She

dropped her embroidery into her lap and sat looking out at the narrow

grass-grown road winding past the house and over the hill, and ending in

a narrow mountain path beyond.

"Mamma," she asked suddenly, in one of the pauses of the music, "were

any of our ancestors tramps or gypsies? Seems to me they must have been,

or I wouldn't feel the 'Call of the Road' so strongly. Don't you feel

it? As if it beckons and you _must_ break loose and follow, to find

what's waiting for you around the next turn?"

Mrs. Ware shook her head. "No," she said slowly. "I'm like the old

Israelites. When they came to Elim, with its wells and palm trees, they

were glad to camp there indefinitely. This is my Elim."

"I wonder, now," mused Mary, "if they really were satisfied. I don't

mean to be irreverent, but only last night I read that verse, '_Whether

it were two days or a month or a year that the cloud tarried upon the

tabernacle, the Children of Israel abode in their tents and journeyed

not._' And I thought that among so many, there must have been a lot of

them who were impatient to get on to their promised land; who fretted

and fumed when day after day the pillar of cloud never lifted to lead

them on. I'd have been like that. If we could only know how long we have

to stay in a place it would make it lots easier. Now, if I had known

last fall that eight months would go by and find me still here in

Lone-Rock, I'd have made up my mind to the inevitable and settled down

comfortably. It's the dreadful uncertainty that is so hard to bear."

Just then the phonograph started up one of its old records. "_I want

what I want when I want it!_" They both looked up and laughed at each

other.

"That is the cry of the ages," said Mrs. Ware merrily. "I've no doubt

that even the tribes of Israel had some version of that same song, and

wailed it often on the march. But their very impatience showed that they

were not fit to go on towards their conquest of Canaan."

"Then you think that _I_ am not fitted yet to take possession of my

Canaan?" Mary asked quickly.

"I don't know, dear," was the hesitating answer, "but I've come to

believe that every one who reaches the best that life holds for him

reaches it through some Desert of Waiting. You remember that legend of

old Camelback Mountain, don't you?"

Mary nodded, and Mrs. Ware quoted softly, "No one fills his crystal vase

till he has been pricked by the world's disappointments and bowed by its

tasks. . . . Oh, thou vendor of salt, is not any waiting worth the while,

if in the end it give thee wares with which to gain a royal entrance?"

Mary waited a moment, then with an impatient shrug of her shoulders

picked up her embroidery hoops again. In her present mood it irritated

her to be told that waiting was good for her. The legend itself

irritated her. She wondered how any one could find any comfort in it,

least of all her mother, whose life had been so largely a desert of hard

work and hard times.

Presently, as if in answer to her thought, Mrs. Ware looked up, saying,

"You spoke just now of the call of the road. It is strange how strongly

I've felt it all afternoon, only my call takes me backward. I've been

living over little scenes that I haven't thought of before in years;

hearing little things your father said when Joyce and Jack were babies;

seeing the neighbors back in Plainsville. Maybe that is one reason I am

not impatient to push on any farther into the future. I have such a

beautiful Memory Road to travel back over. I'd rather sit and recall the

turns in that than wonder what lies on ahead."

"For instance," suggested Mary, and Mrs. Ware immediately began a

reminiscence that Mary remembered hearing when a child. But to-day she

realized that there was a difference in the telling. Her mother was not

repeating it as she used to do to amuse the children who clamored for

tales of Once upon a time. She was speaking as one woman to another,

opening a chapter into the inmost history of her heart.

"She recognizes the fact that I'm grown up," Mary thought to herself

with satisfaction, and she was conscious that her mother was taking

quite as deep a pleasure in this sense of equal understanding and

companionship as she.

It was nearly sundown when a slow creaking of wheels and soft thud of

hoofs on the grass-grown road called their attention to a short

procession of wagons and horsemen, winding along towards the house. A

long pine box was in the first wagon, and several families crowded into

the others.

"Oh, it's a funeral procession!" whispered Mary, pushing back a little

further into the shadow of the vines, so as to be out of sight. "It must

be that Mr. Locksley who was killed yesterday over at Hemlock Ridge by a

falling tree. Isn't it awful?"

She gave a little shiver and her eyes filled with tears as they rested

on the children in the second wagon. There had been a pitiful attempt to

honor the dead by following the conventions. The woman who sat bowed

over on the front seat like an image of despair, wore a black veil and

cotton gloves; and black sunbonnets, evidently borrowed from grown-up

neighbors, covered the flaxen hair of three little girls in pink calico

dresses, who nestled against her. There was a band of rusty crape

fastened around the gray cow-boy hat that the boy wore.

The pathetic little procession wound on past the house and up the hill,

then was lost to sight as it passed into a grove of cedars on the right,

behind which lay the lonely cemetery. Only a few times in her life had

Mary come this close to death. Now the horror of it seemed to blot out

all the brightness of the sweet May day, and the thought of the

grief-stricken woman in the wagon cast such a shadow over her that her

eyes were full of unshed tears and her hands trembled when she took up

her needle again.

"It's so awful!" she exclaimed, when they had passed out of hearing.

"They were all over at that dinner at Hemlock Ridge that Pink took me to

last winter. I remember Mr. Locksley especially because he was so big

and strong-looking, like a young giant, almost. I asked Pink who he was,

because I noticed how good he was to his family, carrying the baby

around on one arm and helping his wife unpack baskets with the other.

Yesterday morning when he left the house he was just as well and strong

as anybody in the world, Captain Doane told me. He went off laughing and

joking, and stopped to call back something to his wife about the garden,

and two hours later they carried him home--like that! In just an instant

the life had been crushed out of him."

Her voice broke and she swallowed hard before she could go on.

"I've always thought death wouldn't be so bad if one could die as dear

Beth did, in 'Little Women.' Don't you remember how sweetly and gently

she faded away, and so slowly that there was no great shock when the end

came? She had time to get used to the idea of going, and to say things

that would comfort them after she was gone. But to be snatched away like

Mr. Locksley--without a moment's warning--it seems too dreadful! I don't

see how God can let such cruel things happen."

"But think, little daughter," urged Mrs. Ware gently, "how much he was

spared. No long illness, no racking pain, no lingering with the

consciousness that he was a burden to others! There is nothing cruel in

that. It's a happy way for the one who goes, dear, to go suddenly. It

is the way of all others I would choose for myself."

"But think of the ones left behind!" said Mary, with a shudder. "I don't

see how that poor woman can go on living after having the one she loved

best in all the world, torn so suddenly and so utterly out of her life."

"But he isn't, dear!" persisted Mrs. Ware gently. "You do not think

because Joyce has gone away to another land, which we have never seen,

and an ocean rolls between us, that she is torn out of our lives, do

you? She does not know what we are doing, and we cannot follow her

through her busy, happy days over there, but we know that she is still

ours, that her love flows out to us just the same, that separation

cannot make her any less our own, and that she looks forward with us to

the happy time when we shall once more be together. That's all that

death is, Mary. Just a going away into another country, as Joyce has

gone. Only the separation is harder to bear because there can be no

letters to bridge the silence. I used to have the same horror of it that

you do, but after your father went away I learned to look upon it as God

intended we should. Not a horrible doom which must overtake every one of

us, but as a beautiful mystery through which we pass as through an open

gate, with glad surprise at the things that shall be made plain to us,

and with a great sense of triumph."

As she spoke, the light of the sunset seemed to turn the mountain trail

up which she was gazing, into a golden path which led straight up to the

City of the Shining Ones, and its radiant glow was reflected in her

face. Mary's eyes followed hers. Somehow she felt warmed and comforted

by her mother's strong faith, but she said nothing. Only sat and watched

with her, the gorgeous colors of the sunset that were transfiguring the

gray old mountain.

If there were only some way of recognizing at their beginning, the days

which are to be hallowed days in our lives! We know them as such after

they have slipped by, and we enshrine them in our memories and go back

to live them over, moment by moment. But it is always with the cry, "Oh,

if I had only known! If I had only filled them fuller while I had them!

If I had not left so much unasked, unsaid!"

Unconscious that this was such a time, Mary sat rocking back and forth

in the silence that followed, drifting into vague day dreams, as they

watched the changing colors over the western mountain tops. Then a

click of the back gate-latch called them both back to speech, and Norman

came around the corner of the house swinging a string of fish. He

announced that Billy Downs had helped catch them and was going to stay

to supper to help eat them.

Billy usually stayed to supper three or four times a week, and on the

nights when he was not there Norman was at his house. The two boys were

inseparable, and a pleasant intimacy had grown up between the families.

That night as usual, he went home at nine o'clock, but came running back

almost immediately, bareheaded and breathless. His mother had been taken

suddenly ill. The only doctor in the place had been called to a case on

the other side of the mountain, and nobody knew when he would be home.

His father and Sara were nearly scared stiff, they were so frightened,

and wouldn't Mrs. Ware please come and tell them what to do?

It was the beginning of a long siege, for no nurses were to be had in

the little settlement, and there were only the neighbors to turn to in

times of stress and trouble. What true neighborliness is, in the fullest

meaning of the word, can be known only in pioneer places like this.

Hands already full of burdens stretched out to help lighten theirs, and

for awhile one common interest and anxiety made the families of

Lone-Rock as one.

But most of the women who came to offer their services had little

children at home, or helpless old people who could not be left long

alone, or more work than one pair of hands could manage. The only two of

experience, not thus burdened, were Mrs. Ware and old Aunt Sally Doane.

So they took turns sitting up at nights, and did all they could on

alternate days to relieve poor frightened Sara and her anxious father.

Mary, not experienced enough to be left in charge in the sick room, did

double duty at home. She did the baking for both families, sometimes

three; for many a time old Aunt Sally, too worn out to cook, went home

to find a basket full of good things spread out for her and the Captain

on the pantry shelves. The Downs family mending went into Mary's basket,

and Billy's darns and patches alone were no small matter. Several times

a week she slipped over to sweep and dust and do many necessary things

that Sara had neither time nor strength to do.

Remembering how valiantly the neighbors had served them during Jack's

long illness, Mary gladly did her part, and a very large one towards

relieving the stricken household. When she saw Mr. Downs' anxious face

relax, at some evidence of her thoughtfulness, and heard Sara's tearful

thanks poured out in a broken voice, she was glad that fate had kept her

in Lone-Rock to play the good angel in this emergency. If she had not

been at home, Mrs. Ware could not have been free to take charge of the

invalid, and it was her skilful nursing, so the doctor said, which would

pull her through the crisis if anything could.

After the first week, Mrs. Ware came home only in the afternoon each

day, to sleep. While she was doing that, Mary tiptoed softly around the

house till her tasks were done, careful not to disturb the rest that was

so precious and so necessary. Then she took her mending basket out on

the front porch, where she could meet any chance comers before they

could knock, or could chase away the insistent roosters who

tantalizingly chose that corner of the yard to come to when they felt

impelled to crow.

It was hard to sit there alone through the long still afternoons while

her mother slept. There were a hundred things she wanted to talk about,

so many questions she wanted to ask, so many little matters on which she

needed advice. There was not even the Moredock phonograph to listen to

now, for it had not been wound up since the beginning of Mrs. Downs'

illness, lest its playing disturb her. All she could do was to sit and

stitch as patiently as she could, till she heard the bedroom door open,

and then fly to make her mother a cup of tea and have a tempting little

supper ready for her when she should come out, dressed and ready to go

back to another exhausting vigil.

The few minutes while Mrs. Ware sat enjoying the dainty meal were the

best in the day for Mary, for she poured out her pent-up questions and

speeches, reported all that had gone on since the last time she sat

there, and crowded into that brief space as much of Jack's sayings and

Norman's doings as she could possibly remember.

"Oh, it'll be so good to have you home again to stay!" she would say

every time when Mrs. Ware rose to start back, ending her good-bye

embrace with a tight squeeze. "I miss you so I can hardly stand it. The

house is so still when you are gone, that if a fly happens to get in its

buzz sounds like a roar. You can't imagine how deathly still it is."

"Oh, yes, I can!" laughed Mrs. Ware. "I've been left alone myself. I

don't need to imagine. I've experienced it."

Mary hung over the gate to which she had followed her mother, and

looked after her down the road, thinking, "That never occurred to me

before. Of course, if I miss her as I do, quiet as she is, she would

miss a rattletybang person like me twice as much. I had never thought of

_her_ getting lonely, but she'd be bound to if I went away. How'd I feel

if she'd gone with Joyce and I had to stay here day after day alone, and

know that I'd never have her again except on flying visits, and that she

was wrapped up in all sorts of interests that I could never have a part

in?"

All that evening she thought about it, and all next morning; and when

Mrs. Ware came home in the afternoon she met her with a serious

question:

"Mamma, when I'm away from home and you're here by yourself, do you miss

me as much as I do you?"

"Oh, a thousand times more!" was the quick answer.

"Then I've made up my mind. Promised Land or no Promised Land, I'm not

going away to stay until Jack brings Betty here to take my place."

Taken by surprise, the look which illuminated Mrs. Ware's face for a

moment showed more plainly than she had intended Mary to know, how much

it had cost her to consent to her going away. After that if there were

times when Mary was tempted to pity herself and look upon that decision

as a great sacrifice, one thought of her mother's happy face and the

glad little cry that had welcomed her announcement, immediately

dispelled any martyr-like feeling.

"Such good news rests me more than any amount of sleep can do," declared

Mrs. Ware, as she slipped into her kimono and drew down the window

shades. "You don't know how the dread of having to give you up has hung

over me. Every time that you've gone to the post-office since last

October I've been afraid to see you come home--afraid that you were

bringing some summons that would take you away."

"Why, mamma!" cried Mary, surprised to see that there were tears in her

eyes, "I didn't dream that you felt _that_ way about it. Why didn't you

tell me?"

"Because I knew that you'd stay if I asked it, and I _couldn't_ block

the road in which you were sure you would find your highest good, just

for my own selfish pleasure. Oh, you don't know," she added, with a

wistfulness which brought a choke to Mary's throat, "what a comfort

you've been to me, ever since the day you came back from school, after

Jack's accident. You've always been a comfort--but since that time it's

been in a different way. I've _leaned_ on you so!"

Deeply touched past all words, Mary's only answer was a kiss and an

impulsive hug, before she turned away to hide her happy tears. All

afternoon as she sat and sewed, the words sang themselves over and over

in her heart: "You've always been a comfort," and she began planning

many things to keep them true. She would do something to stir up a

social spirit among her mother's small circle of friends; start a club,

perhaps, have readings and teas and old-fashioned quilting bees; even a

masquerade party now and then. _Anything_ to give an air of gaiety to

the colorless monotony of the workaday life of Lone-Rock. So with her

energies turned into a new channel she at once set to work vigorously

mapping out a campaign to be put into effect as soon as Mrs. Downs

should be once more on her feet.

It was a happy day when Mrs. Ware came home saying that her services

were no longer needed. The family could manage without her, now that a

sister had come up from Phoenix to help the invalid through her

convalescence.

"It is high time! You are worn out!" said Jack, scanning her face

anxiously.

It was pale and drawn, and after a quick scrutiny he rose and followed

her into the next room, saying in a low tone, "Mother, I believe you've

been having another one of those attacks. Have you?"

"Just a slight one, last night," she confessed. "But it was soon over."

He closed the door behind him, but low as the question had been, Mary's

quick ears caught both it and the answer, and she pounced upon him the

moment he reappeared, demanding to know what they were talking about. He

explained in an undertone, although he had again closed the door behind

him when he came back to the dining-room.

"That winter you were at Warwick Hall she had several queer spells with

her heart. The pain was dreadful for awhile, but the doctor soon

relieved it, and she made me promise not to tell you girls. She said she

had been over-exerting herself. That was all. It was that time the

Fitchs' house caught fire while they were away from home. She saw it

first and ran to give the alarm and help save things, and after it was

all over she had a collapse. I made her promise just now that she'd go

to bed and stay there till she is thoroughly rested. She's seen Doctor

Bates. He gave her the same remedies she had before, and she insists

she's entirely over it now."

With a vague fear clutching at her, Mary started towards her mother's

room, but Jack stopped her. "You mustn't go in there looking like a

scared rabbit. It will do her more harm than good to let her know that

you've found out about it. And really, I don't think there's any cause

for alarm, now that the attack is safely over. She responds so quickly

to the remedies that she'll soon be all right again. But she _must_ take

things easy for awhile."

All the rest of that day Mary was troubled and uneasy, notwithstanding

the fact that her mother dressed and came out to the supper-table,

seemingly as well as usual. Twice in the night Mary wakened with a

frightened start, thinking some one had called her, and, raising herself

on her elbow, lay listening for some sound from the next room. Once she

stepped out of bed and stole noiselessly to the door to look in at her.

The late moon, streaming across the floor, showed Mrs. Ware peacefully

sleeping, and Mary crept back, relieved and thankful.

CHAPTER VIII

A GREAT SORROW

Norman cut his foot the following day, which was Saturday; not

seriously, yet deep enough to need a couple of stitches taken in it, and

to necessitate the wearing of a bandage instead of a shoe for awhile.

Sunday morning, by the aid of a broom stick, he hopped out to the

hammock in the shady side yard, and proceeded to enjoy to the fullest

his disabled condition. For some reason there was no service in the

little school-house which usually took the place of a chapel on the

Sabbath, and he openly rejoiced that his family would be free to

minister to his comfort and entertainment all day long.

The hammock hung so near the side window of the kitchen that he could

look in and see Mary and his mother washing up the breakfast china in

their deft, dainty way. Jack was doing the morning chores usually

allotted to his younger brother. It was with a sense of luxurious ease

that Norman lolled in the hammock, watching Jack bring in wood and

water, carry out ashes and sweep the porch. In his rôle of invalid he

felt privileged to ask to be waited upon at intervals, also to demand

his favorite dessert for dinner. He did this through the kitchen window,

taking part in the conversation which went on as a brisk accompaniment

to the quick movements of busy hands.

It was a perfect June day, the kind that makes one feel that with a sky

so fair and an earth so sweet life is too full to ask anything more of

heaven. Time and again in the pauses that fell between their remarks,

Mary's voice jubilantly broke out in the refrain of an old hymn that

they all loved: "Happy day, oh, happy day!" And when Jack's deep bass

out on the porch and Mrs. Ware's sweet alto in the pantry took up the

words to the accompaniment of swishing broom and clattering cups, Norman

hummed them too, like a big, contented bumblebee in a field of clover.

Years afterward Mary used to look back to that day and fondly re-live

every hour of it. Somehow every little incident stood out so vividly

that she could recall even the feeling of unusual well-being and

contentment which seemed to imbue them all.

They had spread the table out under the trees at Norman's insistence,

and she had only to close her eyes to recall how each one looked as

they gathered around it. She could remember even the pearl gray tie that

Jack wore, and the way Norman's hair curled in little rings around his

forehead. And she could see her mother's quick smile of appreciation

when Jack slipped a cushion into her chair, and her affectionate glance

when Norman reached out and fingered a fold of her white dress. Both the

boys liked to see her in white, and never failed to comment on it

admiringly when she put it on to please them.

All afternoon they stayed out-doors, part of the time reading aloud in

turn; and that evening in the afterglow, when the western mountain tops

were turning from gold to rose and pearl and purple, they sat out on the

front porch watching the glory fade, and ending the day with Jack's

favorite song, "Pilgrims of the Night."

And the reason that this day stood out so vividly from all the others in

her life was because it was the last day that they had their mother with

them. That night the old pain came again, just for an instant, but long

enough to stop the beating of the brave heart which would never feel its

clutch again.

There are some pages in every one's life better skipped than read. What

those next few hours brought to Mary and the boys can never be told.

She found herself in her own room, after awhile, lying across the foot

of her bed and trying to thrust away from her the awful truth that was

gradually forcing itself upon her consciousness. Dazed and bewildered,

like one who has just had a heavy blow on the head, she could not adjust

herself to the new conditions. She could not imagine an existence in

which her mother had no part. She wondered dully how it would be

possible to go on living without her. Aunt Sally Doane came in presently

and took her in her arms and said the comforting things people usually

say at such times, and Mary submitted dumbly, as if it were a part of a

bewildering dream. At times she was sure that she must wake up presently

and find that she had been in the grip of a dreadful nightmare. It was

that certainty which helped her through the next few hours.

It helped her to a strange calmness when Jack came in to ask her about

the trip to Plainsville. She was the one to decide that he must go alone

to the quiet little God's Acre at their old home, because Norman's foot

would not allow him to travel, and she could not leave him behind with

just the neighbors at such a time. It was the sound of Norman's sobbing

in the next room which made her decide this, and yet at the same time

she was thinking, "This is one of the most vivid dreams I ever had in my

whole life, and the most horrible."

Hours after, when all the neighbors had gone but Aunt Sally and the old

Captain, who stayed to keep faithful vigil, Mary stole out of her room

to look at the clock. It seemed as if the night would never end. A dim

light burning in the living-room showed that everything there was

unchanged, while the old clock ticked along with its accustomed clatter

of "All _right_! All _right_!" Surely, with the daylight everything

would be all right, and would awaken to the usual round of life.

Anything else was unbelievable, unthinkable!

On the way back to her room Mary's glance fell on her mother's sewing

basket in its accustomed corner. A long strip of exquisitely wrought

embroidery lay folded on top. It was the piece which she had finished

for Betty on the day that Mrs. Downs was taken ill, that afternoon when

they sat and watched the little procession file over the hill to the

grove of cedars. How plainly Mary could recall the scene. How clearly

she could hear her mother saying, "It is a happy way for the one who

goes, dear, to go suddenly. It is the way of all others I would choose

for myself."

And then with a force that made her heart give a great jump and go on

throbbing wildly, Mary realized that she was not dreaming, that her

mother was really gone; that this bit of embroidery with the needle

sticking just where she had left it after the final stitch, was the last

that the patient fingers would ever do. Dear tired fingers, that through

so many years had wrought unselfishly for her children; so unfailing in

their gentleness, in their power to comfort!

With a rush of tears that blinded her so that she could no longer see

the beautiful handiwork which seemed such a symbol of her mother's

finished life, Mary rushed back to her room to throw herself across the

bed again, and sob herself into a state of exhaustion. Then after a long

time, sleep came mercifully to her relief.

When she awakened, the early light of a June dawn was stealing into the

room, and the birds were singing jubilantly. She lay there a moment,

wondering why she was so stiff and uncomfortable. Then she was aware

that she was still dressed, and memory came back in a rush, with a pain

so overwhelming that she felt utterly powerless to get up and face the

day which lay ahead of her, and all the stretch of dreary existence

beyond it.

An irresistible impulse seemed drawing her towards her mother's room.

Presently she opened the door a little way and stood looking in. Then

step by step she advanced into the room. It looked just as it had the

day before in its spotless Sabbath orderliness, except that the rosebuds

in the glass vase on the table had opened into full bloom in the night.

The white dress that Mrs. Ware had worn the day before lay across a

chair, the sleeves still round and creased with the imprint of the arms

that had slipped out of them.

As Mary stood by the bed, looking down on the still form with the smile

of ineffable peace on its sweet face, her first thought was that she had

never seen such gentle sleep; and then the knowledge slowly dawned on

her, overwhelmingly, with a great feeling of awe that stilled her into

utter calm, that that was not her mother lying there; only the familiar

and beloved garment that had clothed her. She had slipped out of it as

her body had slipped out of the white dress, lying there across the

chair. A holy thing it was, to be sure, hallowed by the beautiful spirit

which had tabernacled in it so long, and bearing her mother's imprint in

every part, as the white gown still held the imprint of the form that

had worn it; but no more than that.

Somehow there was a deep strange comfort in the knowledge, even while

the mystery of it baffled her. And her mother's words came back to her

as forcibly as if she were hearing them for the first time:

"_She is still ours. Her love flows out to us just the same. The

separation cannot make her any less our own! . . . That's all that death

is, Mary, just a going away into another country, as Joyce has done. . . .

A beautiful mystery through which we pass as through an open gate, with

glad surprise at the things that shall be made plain to us, and with a

great sense of triumph!_"

Now, as Mary faced this mystery, a belief began to grow up in her heart,

so soothing, so comforting, that she felt it was surely heaven-sent.

Somewhere in God's universe, this sunny June morning, her mother was

alive and well. She was loving them all just as tenderly and deeply as

she had loved them yesterday, when they all worked together, singing

"Happy Day." And just as it would have grieved her then to have seen

them mourning over any sorrow, so it would grieve her now to know that

they were heart-broken over her going away.

Mary picked up the white dress with reverent fingers and laid her cheek

against its soft folds a moment before she hung it away in the closet.

Then she turned again to that other garment which had clothed her mother

so long; the form which was so like her, and yet so mysteriously

different, now that her warm, living personality no longer filled it.

"Dear," she whispered, her eyes brimming over, "you were too unselfish

to let me see your loneliness when I wanted to go away to my Happy

Valley; now that you have gone to a happier one to be with papa, I

mustn't think of _my_ part of it, only of yours."

There was untold comfort in that thought. She clung to it all through

the hours that followed, through the simple service, and through Jack's

going away, and she brought it out to comfort Norman when the two were

left alone together.

"She's just away," she repeated, trying to console him with the belief

which was beginning to bring a peace that passed her understanding.

Every room in the house seemed to bear the imprint of the beloved

presence, just as they had done during those weeks when she waited every

day for her mother to come home from the Downs.

"We must think of her absence in that way," she repeated, "as if it is

only till nightfall. We can bear almost anything that long, if we take

it only one day at a time. It's when we get to piling up all the days

ahead of us and thinking of the years that we'll have to do without her

that it seems so unbearable. And you know, Norman, if she were here

she'd say by all means for you to go with Billy when he comes along with

the buggy. She'd want you to spend all this afternoon in the bright out

of doors instead of grieving here at home."

"But what about leaving you here alone?" asked Norman, with a new

consideration for her which touched her deeply.

"Oh, I shall be busy every minute of the time until you get back. I must

write to Joyce and Holland. They'll want to know every little thing. I

feel so sorry for them, so far away--"

"They'll never get done being thankful now, that they came home last

Christmas," said Norman in the pause that followed her unfinished

sentence.

"And I'll never get done being thankful that I didn't go away," rejoined

Mary. "There comes Billy now. You can hop out and show him what to do."

It had been arranged that Billy Downs should stay with them during the

few days of Jack's absence, to keep them company and to do Norman's

chores, which his disabled foot prevented him doing himself. Soon after

dinner the two boys started off in the old rattle-trap of a buggy to

drive along the shady mountain roads all afternoon in the sweet June

weather, and Mary went to her letter-writing. It was a hard task, and

she was thankful that she was alone, for time and again in telling of

that last happy day together she pushed the paper aside to lay her head

on the table and sob out, not only her own grief, but her sympathy for

Holland and Joyce so far away among strangers at this heart-breaking

time. She had one thing to console her which they had not, and which she

treasured as her dearest memory: her mother's softly spoken

commendation, "You've always been a comfort. I've _leaned_ on you so."

By the time the boys came back she had regained her usual composure, for

she spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden, weeding borders and

doing some necessary transplanting, and finding "the soft mute comfort

of green things growing," which gardens always hold. Next day in folding

away some of her mother's things she came across a yellowed envelope

which contained something of more permanent consolation than even her

garden had given. It was a copy of Kemble's beautiful poem, _Absence_,

traced in her mother's fine clear handwriting. The ink was faded and the

margin bore the date of her father's death. Several of the lines were

underscored, and Mary, reading these in the light of her own experience,

suddenly found the key to the great courage and serenity of soul with

which her mother had faced the desolation of her early widowhood.

"_What shall I do with all the days and hours

That must be counted ere I see thy face?_

. . . . . .

"_I'll tell thee; for thy sake I will lay hold

Of all good aims, and consecrate to thee

In worthy deeds, each moment that is told

While thou, beloved one! art far from me._

. . . . . .

"_I will this dreary blank of absence make

A noble task time . . ._

. . . . . .

"_So may my love and longing hallowed be,

And thy dear thought an influence divine._"

Up till this moment there had been one element in Mary's grief which she

had not recognized plainly enough to name. That was a sort of pity for

the incompleteness of her mother's life; the bareness of it. The

work-worn hands folded in their last rest seemed infinitely pathetic to

her, and some of her hardest crying spells had been when she thought

how little they had grasped of the good things of life, and how they had

been taken away before she had a chance to fill them herself as she had

so long dreamed of doing. But now, in the light of these underscored

lines, the worn hands no longer looked pathetic. They seemed rather to

have been folded with a glad sense of triumph that they had made such "a

noble task time" out of the dreary blank.

"And I shall do the same," whispered Mary resolutely, pressing her lips

together in a tight line, as she slipped the paper back into its

yellowed envelope and laid it aside to show it to Jack on his return.

So many household duties filled her time, that it was over a week before

she resumed her daily trips to the post-office. The first time she went

the old Captain's first question was:

"Of course you'll stay right on here in Lone-Rock."

"Oh, yes," was the quick answer. "As long as the boys need me." Then

with a wan little smile, "I've begun to think it was never intended that

I should reach my Promised Land, Captain Doane."

"Does look like it," assented the Captain gravely. "About everything

there is has stepped in to stop you. Well, your staying here is surely

Lone-Rock's gain."

"I shall certainly try to make it so," was Mary's answer. "Next week I'm

going to start a cooking class for the little Mexican girls. Mamma and I

had been talking it over for several weeks, and she was so interested in

the plan that I couldn't bear not to carry it out now, for it was her

idea. We found ten that will be glad to learn. I'm to have the class in

our kitchen, and Mr. Moredock has promised to donate the materials for

the first half-term and Mr. Downs for the second. I'm going down to the

store now to order the first lot."

"Make Pink donate something, too," suggested the Captain.

"Oh, he has, already. He's given a keg of nails and some tools to Norman

and Billy, so that they can teach practical carpentry to some of the

Mexican boys by showing them how to patch up their leaky shanties.

Norman is a first-class carpenter for his age. It was Pink's suggestion

that they should do that. I'm so grateful to him for getting Norman

interested in something of the sort. It seemed as if he could never get

over the dreadful shock--and--everything."

"I know," nodded the Captain, understandingly. "And there's nothing like

using your hands for other people to lift the load off your own heart."

The lessons in cooking and carpentry were only a few of the things that

went to the making of "a noble task time" out of the little mother's

absence. They kept her always in their lives by loving mention of her

name, quoting her daily, recalling this preference and that wish, and

settling everything by the question "would mamma want us to do it?" And

gradually time brought its slow healing, as God has mercifully provided

it shall, to all wounds, no matter how deep, and the daily round of

living went on.

PART II

_THE TORCH_

_Make me to be a torch for feet that grope

Down Truth's dim trail; to bear for wistful eyes

Comfort of light; to bid great beacons blaze,

And kindle altar fires of sacrifice.

Let me set souls aflame with quenchless zeal

For high endeavors, causes true and high.

So would I live to quicken and inspire,

So would I, thus consumed, burn out and die._

_Albion Fellows Bacon._

PART II

CHAPTER I

BETTY'S WEDDING

Spring had come to Lloydsboro Valley earlier than usual. Red-bud trees

glowed everywhere, and wild plum and dogwood and white lilac were all in

bridal array. At The Locusts the giant trees which arched over the long

avenue had not yet hung out their fragrant pennons of bloom, but old

Colonel Lloyd, sauntering down towards the gate, was clad in a suit of

fresh white duck. Usually he waited until the blossoming of the locusts

gave the signal for donning such attire.

As he neared the gate he quickened his pace, for he had caught sight of

a slim girlish figure hurrying along the path from Oaklea, and a

graceful little hand waved him a greeting. It was Lloyd, coming home for

the daily visit which she had never failed to make since her wedding

day, six months before.

"Good mawning, grandfathah deah," she called gaily from a distance.

Then added as she joined him and lifted her face for the customary kiss,

"How comes it that you are all diked up in yoah white clothes so early

in the season? Don't you know that we haven't had blackberry wintah yet,

and it's bound to turn cold again when they bloom? Or have you heard so

much about the wedding that you just naturally put on white?"

The old Colonel playfully pinched her cheek, and linking his arm in

hers, turned to go back toward the house with her.

"Well, Mrs. Rob Moore, if you must know, my actions are guided by the

thermometer and not by the almanac, and I haven't heard much about this

wedding, except that a young Lochinvar has come out of the West to carry

away our little Betty before we are ready to give her up. It's too much

to lose you both within half a year of each other."

"How utterly you have lost me!" teased Lloyd. "You see me mawning, noon

and night. When I'm not at The Locusts you're at Oaklea, or at the othah

end of the telephone wiah. Heah I am, come to spend the whole live-long

day with you, and you say you have lost me. Own up, now. Honest! I'm

yoah same little girl that I've always been. I haven't changed one

bit."

"I know," he admitted, smiling down affectionately into the glowing face

lifted to his. "It might have been worse. But it will be losing Betty in

reality when _she_ goes. Arizona is a far country. I wish that young

jackanapes had never seen her. There are plenty of fine fellows back

here in Kentucky she might have had, and then we'd have had her where we

could see her once in a while. How long has it been since she came to

The Locusts to live?"

"Twelve yeahs, grandfathah," said Lloyd, after a pause, in which she

counted backward. "She's been just like a real sistah to me, and I feel

worse than you do about giving her up. Lone-Rock does have a dreadfully

dismal fo'saken sawt of sound. But I can ovahlook that for Jack Ware's

sake. He's such a splendid fellow."

The Colonel made no answer to that, for he fully agreed with her, but

changing the subject said in an aggrieved tone, "I suppose that even the

few days that are left to us will be so taken up with folderols and

preparations that we'll scarcely see her. It was that way when Eugenia

had her wedding here; caterers and florists turning the house upside

down. And it was the same way with yours. So many people in the house

always going and coming, so many things to be planned and discussed and

decided, that I scarcely got a word in edgeways with you for a whole

week before."

"It will not be that way this time," Lloyd answered. "It has been less

than a yeah since Jack's mothah died, so Betty wouldn't have anything

but a very quiet affair on that account. It is to be so simple and so

different from any wedding that you've evah seen that you'll nevah know

it's going to take place till it is all ovah. There's to be no flurry or

worry about anything. Mothah wanted to make a grand occasion of it, but

Betty wouldn't let her. There'll not be moah than half a dozen guests."

They had reached the house by this time, and on again being assured that

Lloyd intended to remain all day, the Colonel left her and turned back

to take his usual morning walk, which her coming had interrupted. The

telephone bell rang just as she entered the door, so Lloyd ran up-stairs

to her own room, knowing that her mother would be busy for a few minutes

with giving the daily household orders. Lloyd's own ordering had been

done nearly an hour, for Rob's business necessitated an early breakfast

to enable him to catch the eight o'clock car into the city. He did not

return until six, so she could stay away from home any day she chose,

with a clear conscience. She took her housekeeping seriously, however,

and had turned out to be a most capable and thorough-going little

housekeeper, but with experienced servants who had taken charge of

Oaklea for years her cares were not heavy.

Her room had been kept for her, just as she had used it, all through her

girlhood, and Mom Beck put fresh flowers in it every day. Lloyd always

darted in for a quick look around, even when she came for only a short

while. There was a glass bowl of pink hyacinths on her desk this

morning, and she sat down to make a list of several things which she

wanted to suggest for the coming event. Presently there was a rustle of

stiffly starched skirts in the hall, and she looked up to see Mom Beck

in the doorway. The old black face was beaming as she called: "How's my

honey chile this mawnin'?" Then without waiting for an answer, she

added, "Miss Betty said to tell you she's up in the attic rummagin', and

wants you to come up right away."

Passing on down the hall, Lloyd paused beside her mother, who sat with

telephone receiver to her ear, long enough to seize her in an

overwhelming embrace that muffled the conversation for an instant, then

hurried up the attic stairs to find her old playmate. The little dormer

windows were all thrown open, and the morning sun streamed in across the

motley collection of chests, old furniture and the attic treasures of

several generations.

On a camp-stool in front of a little old leather trunk, sat Betty. It

was the same shabby trunk that had held all her earthly possessions when

she left the Cuckoo's Nest years before, and she was packing it with

some of those same keepsakes to take with her on her wedding journey to

her new home in the far West. A bright bandanna was knotted into a cap

to cover her curly brown hair, and a long gingham apron protected her

morning dress from the attic dust.

Somehow, as she sat over the old trunk, carefully folding away the

relics of her childhood, she looked so like the little Betty who had

fared forth alone from the Cuckoo's Nest to the long ago house-party at

The Locusts, that Lloyd exclaimed aloud over the resemblance. The three

years of teaching at Warwick Hall had given her a certain grown-up sort

of dignity, added a sweet seriousness to the always sweet face; but the

wistful brown eyes and sensitive little mouth wore the same trustfulness

of expression that they had worn for the mirror in the little room up

under the eaves at her Cousin Hetty's.

[Illustration: "'DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU EVER SAW THIS?'"]

As Lloyd's bright head appeared at the top of the stairs, Betty glanced

up, calling gaily, "You are just in time, Lloyd, to see the last of

these things. Don't they take you back? Do you remember the first time

you ever saw this?"

She dangled a little white sunbonnet by the string, and Lloyd, picking

her way between boxes and barrels, reached out her hand for it, then

dropped to a seat on the rug which had been spread out to receive the

contents of the trunk.

"Indeed I do remembah it," she exclaimed. "You had it on the first time

I evah saw you--travelled in it all the way to Louisville. I was so

scandalized to see you arrive in a sunbonnet, that I could scarcely keep

from letting you know it."

"And this," continued Betty, holding up an old-fashioned basket of brown

willow with two handles and a lid with double flaps, "this was my

travelling bag. My lunch was in this, and my pass, and five nickels, and

the handkerchief that Davy gave me, with Red Ridinghood and the wolf

printed in each corner. Here's that self-same handkerchief!" she cried,

lifting the lid to peep in.

Scattered all around on the rug at her feet were many articles to be

packed in the trunk, but for the next half-hour the work went slowly.

Each thing that Lloyd picked up to hand to her suggested so many

reminiscences to them both that they made little progress. One was a

newspaper, bearing the date of Lloyd's first house-party. It was

beginning to turn yellow, and Lloyd scanned the columns, wondering why

Betty had saved it. Then she came to a poem marked with a blue pencil,

and cried:

"Oh, Betty! Heah's yoah first published poem! The one called 'Night.'

How wondahful we all thought it was that you should have something

printed in a real papah, when you were only twelve. Don't you remembah,

you had the measles when we carried it in to show it to you? But yoah

eyes were so bad you couldn't see, and it was so pitiful. You asked to

feel it. I had to guide yoah poah little groping fingah down the page

and put it on the spot. It almost broke my heart!"

"I know," answered Betty. "I thought that I was going to be blind

always, and that my long, long night had begun. And it seemed queer that

the only thing I had ever published should be called Night. That was a

terrible experience."

She laid the paper carefully back into the portfolio from which it had

slipped, and picked up the next thing, a box of typewritten manuscript.

"My ill-starred novel--my story of Aberdeen Hall," she laughed. "Don't

you remember the night at the Lindsey cabin when I read it aloud, and

each one of you girls made such a solemn ceremony of wrapping it up? Gay

furnished the box, Lucy the paper, and Kitty tied it with a fresh pink

ribbon slipped out of her nightgown. And you put on the big red sealing

wax seals."

"With the handle of the old silvah ladle that had the Harcourt family

crest on it," interrupted Lloyd eagerly. "I can see it now, a daggah

thrust through a crown, and the motto, 'I strive till I ovahcome!'"

"That was an appropriate motto," laughed Betty. "It nearly killed me

when the novel came back from the publisher. I'd have burned it on the

spot if it hadn't been for your grandfather. But what he said encouraged

me to put that motto into practice. I'm glad now that I didn't burn the

manuscript, for I've lived to see its many faults, and to be thankful

that the publishers didn't accept it. I'd be heartily ashamed now to

claim it as mine before a critical public. But it has much that is good

in it, and I'll do it over some day and send it out as it ought to be.

In the meantime--"

She interrupted herself with a glad little cry. "Oh, I didn't tell you.

I've been so joyful thinking that Jack is coming to-night, that I forgot

I hadn't told you my good news. You know I've been working all winter on

a book of school-girl experiences. Well, I sent it to the publishers

several weeks ago, and I've just had their answer. They are so pleased

with it that they want me to go on and make a series of them. The letter

was lovely. I'll show it to you when we go down-stairs. It makes me feel

as if fame and fortune might be just around the corner."

"Oh, Betty!" was the breathlessly joyful answer. "I'm so _glad_! I'm so

_glad_! I've always told you you'd do it some day. It's a pity--" She

stopped herself, then began again. "I was about to say that it's a pity

you're going to be married, because you may be so taken up with yoah

housekeeping and home-making that you'll nevah have time for yoah

writing. But, on second thought, I can't say it. I know from experience

that having Rob and a home like mine are bettah than all the books that

anybody could write."

"_Jack_ will never be a hindrance to authorship," asserted Betty

positively. "He's already been the greatest help. He's so proud of

everything I write, and really so helpful in his criticisms that he is a

constant inspiration."

At this mention of him she reached forward and began to scrabble things

hastily into the trunk.

"Here I sit, dawdling along with this packing as if the morning were not

fairly flying by, and he'll be here on the five o'clock train. There's

so much to do I don't know what to touch first."

Thus inspired to swift action, Lloyd began to help vigorously, and the

pile of relics were soon out of sight under the travel-worn old lid.

Souvenirs of their boarding-school days at Lloydsboro Seminary, of

Christmas vacations, of happy friendships at Warwick Hall, went in in a

hurry. Her old tennis racquet, a pennant that Rob had sent her from

college, a kodak album of Keith's that they had filled together one

happy summer, Malcolm's riding whip, all in at last, locked in and

strapped down, ready for their journey to their new home.

Down-stairs there was other packing to do, but Mrs. Sherman was

attending to that with the assistance of Mom Beck and Alec. All the

stores of household linen, which was her gift to her beloved

god-daughter, from whom she was parting so reluctantly, were carefully

folded away. The chest of silver from Papa Jack, all the collection of

bric-a-brac and fancy work sent in by many friends in the Valley,

Lloyd's gift, a Persian rug, and the old Colonel's, a large box of

carefully selected books, had already been shipped to Lone-Rock, to

transform the plain old living-room into a thing of beauty. The etching

which the Walton girls sent would help largely in that transforming

process, also the beautiful painting of beech trees which Mrs. Walton

gave, knowing that Betty loved the stately old trees as dearly as did

she herself.

It was Betty's great regret that The Beeches was closed at the time and

the family all away, for she longed to have these especial friends with

her on her happy day. Elise was still in school at Warwick Hall, Mrs.

Walton visiting Allison in her beautiful Washington home, and Kitty had

gone to San Antonio for another visit with Gay Melville at the post. The

wedding was to be so very quiet and simple that she could not ask any of

them to come so far to be present, but she wished for them all over and

over.

Eugenia would have come had it not been that it was too far to bring

little Patricia for such a short visit, and she was not willing to leave

her behind. She wrote a long letter, recalling her own beautiful

wedding, at which Betty had been a bridesmaid, and added, "If you're

only half as happy as I am, Betty, dear, you'll never regret for an

instant giving up the grand career we all prophesied for you. But in

order to remind you that it is still possible for you 'to be famous

though married,' Stuart and I are sending you the most efficient

typewriter we can find in the shops. It has already gone on to await you

in Lone-Rock."

Ever since the arrival of the first gift, a little silver vase from Miss

Allison McIntyre, which would always suggest the donor's love of flowers

and her garden which she shared lavishly with the whole Valley, Betty

had been in a beatific state of mind over the loving favor showed her by

her friends. Her pleasure reached high tide, however, when the last one

arrived, a box marked from Warwick Hall. It was from Madam Chartley. The

box was so big that they made all sorts of wild guesses as to its

contents. Layer after layer of paper and excelsior were lifted out, and

all they could find was more wrappings. At last, from the very centre,

Alec lifted out a fragile cup and saucer, which Betty recognized with a

cry of astonishment and delight.

"One of the ancestral teacups! I didn't suppose Madam would part with

one of them for anybody!"

She turned the bit of delicate china so that Mrs. Sherman could see the

crest, and the motto, "I keep tryste." The note folded inside brought

happy tears to her eyes, for it said that she was the only one to whom

one of these treasured heirlooms had been given. Madam felt deeply that

a spiritual kinship existed between her old ancestor Edryn and the

little friend who had kept tryst so faithfully in all things.

Jack came at five o'clock. He was to be the guest of Oaklea, but most of

his time was spent at The Locusts. That night, when moonlight and

springtime filled the valley with ethereal whiteness and sweetness, he

and Betty sat out on the porch. Three generations of Romance made

enchanted ground of the whole place. In the library an older Jack and

Elizabeth sat recalling the night like this when they had entered

_their_ Arcady. Outside, under the arching locusts, up and down, up and

down, paced the old Colonel in the moonlight. But not alone; for every

lilac-laden breeze that stirred the branches whispered softly,

"_Amanthis! Amanthis!_"

Once Jack looked at Betty, sitting beside him in the broad shaft of

moonlight, its glory streaming across her white dress and fair face and

said, "It's like that song, 'Oh, fair and sweet and holy,' out here. Why

couldn't we have the wedding on the porch, where I first saw you,

instead of in the house? Right here in this moonlight that makes you

look like a snowdrop."

"Would you really like to have it out here?" asked Betty, pleased by the

idea herself and pleased because he suggested it. "It would be a very

simple matter to have it so, and there'll be nobody critical enough

among our few guests to call us sentimental if we do."

So it came about that the wedding next night was the simplest and most

beautiful that any one there had ever witnessed. Besides the two

families, Miss Allison and Alex Shelby were the only guests; Alex,

because of the part he had played in restoring Jack to health, and Miss

Allison, because no occasion in the Valley seemed quite complete without

her. She had been too closely bound up with all the good times of

Betty's little girl days and her happy maidenhood, not to be present at

this time.

Betty had said, "I want my last evening at The Locusts to be just like

the first one that I ever spent here, in one way. Then Lloyd sang and

played on her harp. I've missed it so much since she took it over to

Oaklea. I'd love to have the memory of her music one of the last that I

carry away with me."

So that night, when she stepped out on the porch all dressed for her

bridal, she found the harp standing in one corner, gleaming in the

moonlight like burnished gold. Fair and tall, it impressed her as it had

done when it first struck her childish fancy, that its strings had just

been swept by some one of the Shining Ones beyond, who were a part of

the Pilgrim's dream. She was standing beside it when Lloyd and Rob and

Jack walked over from Oaklea. Her filmy white dress, exquisitely

cloud-like and dainty, was as simple and girlish as the one she had worn

the night before; but this time Jack did not compare her to a snowdrop.

The moonlight gave such an unearthly whiteness to her gown, such a

radiance to her upturned face, that he, too, thought of the Pilgrim's

dream, and likened her to one of the Shining Ones herself.

With that thought came the memory of a beloved voice as he had heard it

for the last time at the end of a perfect Sabbath, singing of those

"Angels of Light," that had been so very real to him since they first

trailed comfort through his earliest lullabies. Man as he was, something

like a poignant ache seemed to grip his throat till he could not speak

for a moment, because "the little mother" was having no part in this,

the crowning happiness of his life.

Later, Miss Allison and Alex dropped in as informally as if they had

come to make an ordinary evening call, and they all sat talking awhile.

Then Lloyd took her place at the harp and sang the songs that Betty

loved best, till the moon rose high enough to send a flood of silvery

light between the tall white pillars. There was a little stir around the

hall door, and Lloyd, seeing the colored servants, who had gathered

there to listen, step back respectfully, gave a signalling nod. The old

minister, who had just arrived by the side door, came out past them.

Lloyd's fingers went on touching the harp-strings, so softly that it

seemed as if a wandering breeze had tangled in them. Every one rose as

the minister came out, and Jack, taking Betty by the hand, led her

directly to him. There was no need of book to prompt the silver-haired

old pastor. He had joined too many lives in the course of his long

ministry, not to know every word of the solemn ritual.

There in the fragrant stillness of the moon-flooded place, with the odor

of the lilacs and the snowy wild-plum blossoms entrancingly sweet, and

the melody dropping softly from the harp-strings like a fall of far-off

crystal bells, they gave themselves to each other:

"I, John Alwyn, take thee, Elizabeth Lloyd."

"I, Elizabeth Lloyd, take thee, John Alwyn."

"Until death us do part."

It was all so sacred and beautiful and still, that even Rob felt the

tears start to his eyes, and no one moved for a full moment after the

benediction. Even then there was not the usual buzz of congratulations

that always follows such a ceremony; but the tender embraces and

heartfelt hand-clasps showed that the spell of the solemn scene was

still upon them.

Suddenly lights streamed out through all the windows, the dining-room

doors were thrown wide open, and Alec bowed the party in to the bridal

repast. It, too, was as simple as all that had gone before, save for the

towering cake in the centre.

"We just had to have that a mammoth and a gorgeous affair," explained

Lloyd, "to send around to all Betty's admiring friends and old pupils

who could not be asked to the ceremony. We'll be busy for a week sending

off the little boxes."

"No," she replied later, to Alex Shelby, "Betty wouldn't have any of

the usual charms and frills, like 'something borrowed, something blue.'

She says she's lost faith in them since so many of them that she's known

of at different weddings have failed to come true. Besides, everybody

heah has their fate already settled. We all know about yoah engagement

to Gay, even if it hasn't been announced. You'll be the next to go. You

don't need a ring in a cake, or the bride's bouquet thrown over the

bannistah to tell you _that_."

Later, when it was time to start to the station, and Betty had joined

them again in her travelling dress, the old Colonel looked out to see

what was delaying the carriage.

"It's not coming at all, grandfathah deah," explained Lloyd. "The

baggage has gone on ahead and Betty wants to walk. She said she'd rathah

go that way, just as if she were only saying good night to you and

mothah and Papa Jack, and would be back in a little while. She doesn't

want it to seem like a long good-bye. She wants her last look at you all

to be heah at home."

But, in spite of everybody's efforts to make it appear that this was

just a casual going away, only a temporary separation, Betty found the

parting almost more than she could bear. She clung to her god-mother a

moment at the last, wanting to sob out all her love and gratitude for

the beautiful years she was leaving behind her, but there were no words

deep enough. Her last kiss was given in silence more eloquent than

speech. At the bottom of the steps she whisked away the tears which

would gather despite her brave resolve to fight them back, and turned

for one more look at the House Beautiful before she left it to go

farther on her pilgrim way.

There they stood, the three who had filled her life so full, who had

taken the place of father and mother and indulgent grandfather in her

life. She smiled bravely as she gave them a parting wave of her hand.

She could not let tears dim her last sight of those dear faces. Another

wave for Mom Beck and Alec Walker and old Aunt Cindy, who stood behind

them calling their blessings and good wishes after her. Then she went on

with the others.

The moonlight filtered down through the trees, casting swaying shadows

on the long white avenue. Rob, walking ahead with Lloyd, looked back

when they came to the "measuring tree," to say to Miss Allison and Alex,

who were just behind:

"It doesn't seem natural for a crowd of this size to start out on a

night like this in such a quiet way. We always used to sing. Strike up,

Alex!"

Instantly there was wafted back to the watchers on the porch the words

of a familiar old song:

"It was from Aunt Dinah's quilting party

I was seeing Nellie home."

How many scores of times had that song echoed through the valley! They

had sung it crunching through the snow with their skates on their

shoulders; they had hummed it strolling through starry August nights

when the still air was heavy with the smell of dew-laden lilies. Now,

once more they sang it, like boys and girls together again, and Betty

wiped her eyes with a little thrill of pleasure when Jack's voice joined

in the chorus. She had never heard him sing before and she did not know

that he had such a deep, sweet voice. It pleased her, too, to know that

he was familiar with the song and could join in with the others as

readily as if he had always had a part in her happy past.

At the gate she turned for one more look at the house, with its lights

streaming from every window, and wondered when she would ever see it

again.

"But no matter how long it may be," she thought, "I can carry the cheer

of those lights with me always, wherever I go. It's been such a happy,

happy home."

When they reached the station there were only a few moments to wait for

the train. She stood holding Lloyd's hand in silence while the others

talked, until they heard it rumbling down the track. It was a fast

express that stopped only by special order, and then only long enough to

throw the trunks on, so the leave-taking was over in a rush. In another

instant she was sitting with her face pressed against the window pane,

peering out for a last glimpse of the place. She saw just one quickly

vanishing light as they sped by, and whispered, "Good-bye, dear Valley."

A sudden feeling of homesickness took possession of her for one long

moment. Then Jack's hand closed over hers, holding it in a warm, strong

clasp, and she knew that he understood just what that parting meant to

her. Instantly there sprang up in her heart the knowledge that all she

had left behind was as nothing to the love and sympathy that was to

enfold her henceforth.