THE KALEIDOSCOPE
It was the next Sunday morning that Miss Wollaston, who had decided to
stay in town even though the emergency she had been summoned to meet was
found mysteriously to have evanesced when she arrived, asked Wallace
Hood, walking home with her from church, to come in to lunch.
"I haven't the least idea," she said, "whether we shall be quite by
ourselves or whether the entire family, including the latest addition to
it, will come straggling in before we've finished."
She would not have considered it quite delicate to have owned to him how
very clearly she hoped to have him, for an hour or two, all to herself.
He would be found, she was confident, not to have gone through the
looking-glass into the world of topsy-turvey that all the rest of them
seemed to be inhabiting, these days. It would be comforting to talk with
somebody who was still capable of regarding things right side to.
She was much too penetrating a person not to have been perfectly aware
from the first that, astonishing as were the facts John had communicated
to her, upon her arrival from Hickory Hill a week ago, other facts of
major importance were being suppressed.
She had found her brother apparently occupied in the normal Sunday
morning manner with his newspaper, and he had answered her rather
breathless inquiries about Mary by saying that she was all right. She was
finishing off her night's sleep but would, he supposed, be down by and
by. There was nothing the matter. Rush had been unnecessarily alarmed,
lacking the fact which explained the case. And then he sprang his mine,
informing her that Mary was engaged to marry Anthony March.
When, after a speechless interval, she had asked him, feebly, whether he
didn't mean Graham Stannard, he had been very short with her indeed. The
engagement to March was an accomplished fact, and the sooner we took it
for granted the better. He showed a great reluctance to go further into
detail about the matter and he flinched impatiently from the innocent
question;--when had he himself been informed of this astounding state of
things. Well, naturally, since in the train of his answer the fact had
been elicited that he hadn't come to town until this morning and that
Mary had spent another night alone. And it was not Mary but March who
had, already this morning, told him about it.
Beyond that John couldn't be driven to go. He concluded by putting a
categorical injunction upon her. She wasn't to expostulate with Mary nor
to attempt to examine either into her reasons for this step nor into her
state of mind in making it. He was satisfied that the girl knew what she
was doing and that it represented her real wishes. His sister's
satisfaction on these points would have to be vicarious.
The surmise had formed itself irresistibly in Lucile's mind that John
himself was involved in this decision of Mary's. Had she done this
thing--involved herself in the beginnings of it, anyhow,--as a desperate
measure to bring her father and his wife together again? By removing a
temptation that Paula was still in danger of yielding to? She didn't put
it to herself quite as crudely as that to be sure.
Certainly she had no intention of asking Wallace Hood what he thought
about it. But perhaps he might have some other explanation of her
niece's sacrifice. It must have been a sacrifice to something. An answer
to some fancied call of duty. Unless it were a freak of sheer perversity.
But this was dangerous ground for Lucile.
The queerest thing about it all was the way it seemed--magically--to be
producing such beneficent results. John and Paula were reconciled by
it,--or at least as soon as it happened. Paula had come down from Ravinia
that very day, had had some sort of scene with her husband, and the two
had been almost annoyingly at one upon every conceivable subject since.
Something had happened also during the week to Rush, which lightened the
gloom that had been hanging on him so long,--some utterly surprising
interview with Graham Stannard's father. Pure coincidence one must
suppose this to be, of course. Mary's engagement couldn't have anything
to do with it. And then Mary herself! The girl was a new person.
Absolutely radiant. Orthodox conduct of course for a just engaged
girl--but in the circumstances one would think...
Lucile saw that Wallace hesitated a little about accepting her
invitation to lunch and recalled the fact that he hadn't dropped in on
them once during the week though he had known that they were more or
less back in town.
"Why, yes, I'll come with pleasure," he said. "I don't know precisely
what sort of terms I'm on with John. He felt for a few days, I know, that
I'd been rather officious, but I may as well have it out with him now as
later. And I shall be glad of an opportunity to give Mary my best wishes.
I wrote her a note, of course, the day I read the announcement of the
engagement in the newspapers." He added, "I certainly was in the dark as
to that affair."
"Aren't you--still more or less, in the dark about it?" Miss Wollaston
inquired. "I don't mind owning that I am. Mary's sense of social values
always seemed to me to be at least adequately developed. On the surface
one would have to call her rather worldly, I think."
"On the surface perhaps," Wallace interposed, "but not really; not at
heart. Still, I'll grant it isn't easy to understand. There's a certain
attraction about the man of course. And then there's his music."
"And Mary," Miss Wollaston observed, "happens to be the one utterly
unmusical person in the family. She's completely absorbed in the
preparation for his opera however." Then after a little pause, "She may
prove rather more explanatory with you than she has been with me. She
seems to take a certain pleasure in mystifying me. In saying things in a
matter-of-fact way that are quite astounding. That's the new generation,
of course. They talk a different language from mine. It will be a
comfort," she concluded, rather pathetically, as they mounted the high
steps to her brother's door, "to talk the matter over quietly with some
one to whom my ideas and standards are still intelligible."
But this comfort was, for the present, to be denied her. Mary had spent
the morning in her room writing notes and was coming down the stairs when
the church-goers came in.
She negotiated what were left of the steps in a single swoop, gave her
visitor both hands along with the "Wallace! How nice!" that welcomed him,
and then, drawing back with a gesture which invited his scrutiny, said,
"Well? What do you think?--Oh, but thanks for your note, first. I've just
answered it."
Radiant was the word. There couldn't be any doubt of that. And younger.
There was a twinkle of mischief that he had to go back-five years,
anyhow, to remember the like of.
He had none of Lucile's feeling that decency required one's joy over an
event of this sort to be of the chastened variety and he brightened in
instantaneous response to the girl's mood, but the mere impact of her
left him for a moment wordless.
"You needn't try to make me a speech," she said. "I know you're pleased.
Not as pleased as you would be if you knew all about it, but ..."
"As pleased as possible, anyhow," he said. On that, amicably arm in arm,
they followed Miss Wollaston into the drawing-room.
"I don't believe we've seen each other," she said, "since the night we
had dinner together at the Saddle and Cycle, weeks and weeks ago."
"No," he said. "I remember very well that we haven't."
Miss Wollaston had drifted away from them (occupied, as she so often
was when there were no persons present in the formal status of guests,
in making minute readjustments of pillows and things as a sort of
standing protest against the demon of disorder), and having noted this
fact he went on:
"I didn't come for the picnic tea you invited me to the other day. If I'd
known how the land lay, I shouldn't have sent a substitute. I'm afraid,
perhaps, that was rather--tactless of me."
He saw the queerest look come into her face,--enough in itself to startle
him rather though it wasn't without a gleam of humor.
"I was just wondering," she explained, "whether if you had come that
particular day, I mightn't be engaged to you now instead of to Tony."
Unluckily Lucile heard that and froze rigid for a moment with horror.
Then recovering her motor faculties, she moved in a stately manner
toward the door.
"I think if you will excuse me," she said, "I'll go up and prepare for
luncheon."
Mary gazed conscience-stricken from her to Wallace who was blushing like
a boy caught stealing apples. "I'm sorry," she gasped, but not quickly
enough for the apology to overtake her aunt. "It's terrible of me to say
things like that and I do, every now and then. Can you bear with me until
I've had time to quiet down? It's all so new, to be happy like this, I'm
a little--wild with it."
In his nice neutral unexaggerated way he told her that her happiness
could never be anything but a joy to him; and after that, when they were
seated side by side upon the cane davenport he asked about her plans;
when they were going to be married, where they meant to live, and so on.
"Why, we'll be married, I suppose," she said, "at the end of the
customary six weeks' engagement. There isn't a thing to wait for,
really."
"I'm glad of that," he remarked.
Anybody but Mary would have taken that at its face value; he was glad
that they would have to wait no longer. But he flinched as she glanced
round toward him and at that she laughed and patted his hand
reassuringly.
"We're doing everything correctly," she told him; "beginning with
father's announcement of the engagement in the papers, Tuesday. We
remain on exhibition during the conventional six weeks and then we're
married at noon over in the Fourth Church. Impeccable! That's going to
be our middle name."
Mary used so very little slang that she was able to produce quite
extraordinary effects with it when she did.
"I'm glad," Wallace said, a little ruffled by the start she had given
him, "that you have not been persuaded to do anything--differently."
"Who do you suppose it was," she asked, "who insisted, in an adamantine
manner, that it be done like that? It wasn't me and it wasn't Aunt
Lucile. It was Anthony March." She added, after a reflective silence, "He
was right about it, of course, because when that's over it's done with.
And then--what he hasn't thought of, and I wouldn't have, most likely
until it was too late--he'll have a friendlier audience next Tuesday
night than if he'd given me my way and made a trip to the City Hall with
me last Monday. I wanted to burn my bridges, you see;--and he laughed at
me. I haven't told that to any one but you.--All the same, if he thinks,
from that, that he can go on accumulating--millstones ..."
"Tell me where you are planning to live," Wallace said, getting back as
he was always glad to do, to firm ground again. "Not too far away, I
hope, for us to go on seeing a lot of you."
"Oh, it's very sad about that," she told him. "I was hoping to live with
him in his secret lair over the Italian grocery. No, but it was really
delightful. One big room, bigger than this, with dormers and dusty beams
and an outside stair. He's had it for years. It's not half a mile from
here--and Paula could never find out where it was! But, unexpectedly,
he's being turned out. I could have wept when he told me."
"Unexpectedly!" quoted Wallace, the professional real estate man in
him touched by this evidence of lay negligence. "March hadn't any
lease, I suppose."
"He didn't need any," said Mary. "He owned it."
"If he owns it how can they turn him out--unexpectedly?"
"What he owned was the second story. Well, he still does, of course. But
when they tear the first floor and the basement out from under him, as
they're going to do next week, his second story won't do him much good."
"But, good gracious, they can't do that!" Wallace cried. "They must
leave him his floor and his ceiling just where they are now. And his
light. They can build above and below--I suppose that's what they're
tearing the old building down for--but that layer of space, if he
really bought it and has got anything to show that he really bought it,
belongs to him."
"Do you mean seriously," she demanded, "that it's possible to buy the
second story of a building? It's like Pudd'n-'head Wilson's joke about
buying half a dog and killing his half."
"Of course I mean it," he insisted. "An easement like that cost our
estate thousands of dollars only a year or two ago. Serious! I should
think it was! Ask Rodney Aldrich. See what he says.--Of course, it's
nothing unless he can show some instrument that proves his title. But if
he can it might be worth ... Well, it's just a question how badly they
happen to need that particular bit of land. Those people we fell foul of
managed to hold us up for a tidy sum."
She was looking at him thoughtfully, a faint, rather wry smile just
touching her lips. "A minute ago," she said, "I was about to fling myself
upon your neck and thank you for so wonderful a wedding present to us as
that would be. And now I'm wondering ... Wallace, I don't suppose it
would strike you that there would be anything--shady about doing a thing
like that."
"Shady!" He was, for a moment, deeply affronted by the mere suggestion.
Then, remembering her total ignorance of all such matters, he smiled at
her. "My dear Mary, do you think--leaving my rectitude aside--that I'd
have referred you to Rodney Aldrich if I'd felt that there was anything
questionable about it?"
"I know," she conceded. "And Martin Whitney would feel the same way. And
father, I suppose, and Rush. Everybody we know. Yet I was wondering
whether I'd say anything to Tony about it. I've decided I will, but I'm
going to ask you not to, nor to anybody else, until I've talked to him.
I'd like it left--altogether to him, you see."
He agreed, rather blankly to this. Presently she went on:
"I'm glad he's a real genius, not just a fragment of one as so many of
them are. There's something--robust about him. And since that's so, I
don't believe we'll do him any real harm; we--advantage-snatchers, you
know. That's so very largely how we live, we nice people (it's why we're
able to be nice, of course)--that we get perfectly blind to it. But he's
so strong, and he can see in so deep, that I guess he's safe. That's the
belief I have to go on, anyhow."
She sprang up and gave him another pat upon the shoulder. "He'll be
getting here in a few minutes, I suspect. Father telephoned that he and
Paula were going to bring him down as soon as his rehearsal was over. I'm
going up now to try to make my peace with Aunt Lucile."
After lunch she told the family that she had matters to talk over with
Tony and meant to take him for a walk. His father and mother expected
them to drop in at their house about five and the intervening two hours
would give them just about time to "cover the ground." She was openly
laughing at her own pretense at being matter-of-fact.
It was pretty hot for walking, her father thought. Why not let Pete drive
them around a while in the car? Or take the small car and drive herself?
But she was feeling pedestrian, she said, and, anyhow, the topic she had
in mind couldn't be discussed in a motor-car. They'd go to Lincoln Park
and stroll around in the shade.
"And if we get tired," she added with a flicker, in response to her
aunt's movement of protest, "we can squeeze in among the other couples on
some grassy bank.--Oh, Aunt Lucile, don't mind! We _won't_ do
anything--disgraceful."
"You see what a cat I am," she told March as they set out. "I make her
squirm without meaning to, and then, when she squirms, I scratch. Now
talk to me until I can get in good humor with myself again."
"I've two or three things to tell you," he said. "I saw Sylvia Stannard
this morning. She came to rehearsal with the little Williamson girl, and
carried me off bodily for a talk. She's had a long letter from Graham.
"He's quite well," he went on swiftly, ignoring the gasp she gave, "and
doesn't want to be, as he says, fussed over."
"Where is he?" she asked. "I'll write him a letter, of course. Only
you'll have to tell me what to say."
"He's visiting a friend--a college classmate--on Long Island. And he's
already had a job offered him by his friend's father, in an engineering
office. He's a pretty good engineer, I believe. He thinks he'll accept
it. Anyhow, he is definitely not coming back to Hickory Hill. Sylvia
attaches some significance to the fact that his friend also has a pretty
sister, but that's just the cynicism of youth, I suspect."
This last suggestion silenced her--with another gasp, as perhaps he had
meant it to do. He added, presently:
"As for writing, I've already done that myself."
"You!" she exclaimed. "Where's the letter?"
"It's already despatched. I wrote it as soon as the rehearsal was over.
But I'll tell you what I said in it. I told him I supposed he had heard
of our engagement, but that I knew you wished him to be told of it
personally. You were very fond of him, I said, and the only thing that
clouded your happiness was a fear that he might not be able to share it.
I assured him that I was completely in your confidence and knew that you
had been through a period of very severe nervous stress, verging upon a
nervous breakdown, but that I believed you were on the way to a speedy
recovery. And I ended by saying that I believed a line from him to you,
setting some of your misgivings at rest, would hasten it. And I was his
most cordially."
She didn't try to pretend she wasn't aghast at this. "But what
an--extraordinary letter. Won't he be--furious? At you for
writing?--Speaking for me in a case like that. Telling him you knew all
about it!"
"Well, that was more or less the idea," he confessed, with a rueful grin.
"He'll think I stole you away from him; he'll think I gave you the
nervous prostration I hinted at. Heaven knows what he won't think! But,
of course, the more of a villain I am the less you're to be held
responsible. And there's nothing insupportable or--ludicrous about a
grievance against another man. At all events it enables him to get round
the statement you demolished him with. No, you'll see. He'll write you a
letter, correctly affectionate but rather chilly, and after that you'll
be off his mind. And if the pretty sister Sylvia alleges doesn't exist,
there'll be another one along pretty soon, who will."
She was obviously a little dazed by all this. It was the first time they
had talked of Graham since that night in his room and he knew the bruise
from that experience must still be painful to touch. So he hastened to
produce his other item of news--also provided by Sylvia.
"This is a perfectly dead secret of hers," he began. "Told me in sacred
confidence. She finished, however, by saying that she knew, of course,
I'd go straight and tell you. So to justify her penetration, I will.
Sylvia has accounted for her father's amazing change of attitude toward
Hickory Hill. It seems she's persuaded her father to give Graham's share
of it to her. She told him--what's obviously true--that she's a better
farmer now than Graham would ever be. She hates town and society and all
that, she says, and never will be happy anywhere but on a farm--anywhere,
indeed, but on that farm. He was very rough and boisterous about the
suggestion, she says, for a day or two, but finally he quieted down like
a lamb and gave in. He never has refused her anything, of course."
"But a partnership between her and Rush!" Mary cried. "It's perfectly
impossibly mad. Unless, of course ... You don't mean...?"
"Yes, that's the idea, exactly," March said. "Only Rush, as yet, knows
nothing about it. Hence the need for secrecy. Sylvia acknowledged to her
father that she couldn't possibly own a farm in partnership with a young
man of twenty-three unless she married him, but she said she'd intended
to marry Rush ever since she was twelve years old. She's confident that
he's only waiting for her eighteenth birthday to ask her to marry him,
but she says that if he doesn't, she means to ask him. And if he refuses,
she pointed out to her father, he can't do less than consent to sell the
other half of the farm to her. She treats that alternative, though, as
derisory.--And I haven't a doubt she's right. Evidently her father has
none, either.
"Well, it accounts for the change in Mr. Stannard's attitude toward the
farm, of course," he concluded. "A son's supposed to thrive on adversity.
It wouldn't be good morals not to make things difficult for him by way of
developing his character. But where a mere daughter is involved he can
chuckle and write checks. Under his tradition, he's entitled to regard
her as a luxury. Anyhow, your father has nothing more to worry about as
far as Rush and Hickory Hill are concerned."
"Life's a kaleidoscope," Mary said. "I'm tired. Let's sit down."--They
were half-way up the park by that time.--"Oh, here on the grass. What
does it matter?" When they were thus disposed she went back to her
figure. "There's just a little turn, by some big wrist that we don't know
anything about, and a little click, and the whole pattern changes."
"There are some patterns that don't change," he said soberly, but he
didn't try to argue the point with her. He knew too exactly how she felt.
"Tell me," he said, "what it was that you wanted to talk to me about."
She acknowledged that she'd been hoping he'd forgotten that, of the
momentousness of his two items of news had left her, as her talk about
kaleidoscopes indicated, rather disoriented. So he threw in, to give her
time to get round to it, the information that both Sylvia and the little
Williamson girl had decided they wanted to study music with him. "I
agreed," he added, "to take them on, when I got around to it."
"Tony," she said, "I won't let you do that. Not music lessons to little
girls. I won't."
"Afternoons?" he asked gently. "When I'm through the real day's work? It
would be pretty good fun, trying to show a few people--young unspoiled
people--what music really is. Dynamite some of their sentimental ideas
about it; shake them loose from some of the schoolmasters' niggling rules
about it; make them write it themselves; show 'em the big shapes of it;
make a piano keyboard something they knew their way about in. That
wouldn't be a contemptible job for anybody.--Oh, well, we can talk that
out later. But you needn't be afraid for me, my dear."
"That's what I said to Wallace Hood," she told him; "just before lunch.
When I was trying to decide to tell you what he'd been saying.--About
your room that they're turning you out of."
With that, she repeated the whole of the talk with Wallace and the
serio-fantastic idea that it had led up to.
He grinned over it a while in silence, then asked, "Are you willing to
leave it entirely to me?"
"Of course," she said.
"Well, then," he decided, "if I've still got that paper--and I think I
have ... I copied it, I remember, out of an old law-book, and to satisfy
Luigi's passion for the picturesque and the liturgical we took it to a
notary and got it sealed with a big red wafer--Well, if I've got it and
it's any good, I'll let Aldrich,--is that his name?--make what he can of
it. I'll square it with Luigi afterward of course."
"It's a compromise for you," she said gravely. "You wouldn't have done
that two weeks ago."
He laughed. "Folks use the word uncompromising as if it were always a
praiseworthy thing to be. But it hardly ever is, if you stop to think.
Certainly if life's an art, like composing music or painting pictures,
then compromise is in the very fabric of it. Getting different themes or
colors that would like to be contradictory, to work together; developing
a give and take. What's the important thing? To have a life that's full
and good and serviceable, or to mince along through it with two or three
sacred attitudes?--Wait a minute."
She waited contentedly enough, watching him with a misty smile as he lay
upon the grass beside her wrestling with his idea.
"All right," he said presently. "Here's the test that I'll agree to. I'll
agree to do things or to leave them undone, to the end that when
I'm--sixty, say, I'll have packed more of real value into my life--my
life as your husband and the father of your children--than that vagabond
you're so concerned about would have had in his if--if ..."
"If I hadn't gone to him a week ago last night?" She said it steadily
enough, where he could not say it at all.
"Yes," he said. "That's what I mean."
He reached out for her hand and she gave it to him. Presently his face
brightened once more into a grin. "I'll even promise to write more music.
Lord, if I've really got anything, you couldn't stop me. Come along.
Father and mother will be looking for us before very long now."
The critics agreed that the _première_ of March's opera was a "distinct
success," and then proceeded to disagree about everything else. The dean
of the corps found it somewhat too heavily scored in the orchestra and
the vocal parts rather ungrateful, technically. The reactionary put up
his regular plaintive plea for melody but supposed this was too much to
ask, these days. The chauvinist detected German influence in the music
(he had missed the parodic satire in March's quotations), and asked
Heaven to answer why an American composer should have availed himself of
a decadent French libretto.
The audience showed a friendly bias toward it at the beginning and were
plainly moved by the dramatic power of it as it progressed, but they
seemed shocked and bewildered by the bludgeon blows of the conclusion and
the curtain fell upon a rather panicky silence. Then they rallied and
gave both the performers and the composer what would pass in current
journalese for an ovation.
The Wollastons' friends, who were out in pretty good force, crowded
forward to be introduced to Mary's fiancé and to offer him their
double congratulations. They found him rather unresponsive and decided
that he was temperamental (a judgment which did him no serious
disservice with most of them), though the kindlier ones thought he
might be shy. Mary herself found something not quite accountable in
his manner, but she forbore to press for an explanation and let him
off, good-humoredly enough, from the little celebration of his triumph
which she had had in mind.
The fact was that he had come through the experience, which no one who
has not shared it with him can possibly understand, of discovering the
enormous difference between the effect of a thing on paper, or even in
its last rehearsal, and the effect of it when it is performed before an
audience which has paid to see it. It was no wonder he was dazed, for the
opera he found himself listening to seemed like a changeling.
He worked all night over it and told LaChaise the next morning that he
had made serious alterations in it and would need more rehearsals. The
opera had been billed in advance for a repetition on the following
Saturday night, the understanding among the powers being that if it
failed to get a sufficient measure of favor the bill should be changed.
It was touch and go, but the final decision was that it should have
another chance.
So LaChaise agreed to March's request, ran over the composer's revised
manuscript with a subtle French smile, sent for the timpani player, who
was an expert copyist, and put him to work getting the altered parts
ready, instanter. March told Mary he was making a few changes and asked
her to stay away from rehearsals so that on Saturday night, from out in
front, she might get the full effect.
Really, as it turned out, he did not need any individual testimony, for
one could have learned the effect of the new ending from half a mile
away. When he came back into the wings from his fourth recall he saw
her face shining with joy through her tears. But his heart sank when he
saw, standing beside her, Paula. He thanked his gods that Mary had a
sense of humor.
Paula was smiling in high satisfaction, and she spoke first. "Well,
stupid," she demanded, "what have you got to say for yourself, now?"
"Not a word," he answered, smiling too, "except that we have to live
to learn."
Then he explained to Mary. "That ending--having the girl come back to
life again, to sing some more after she'd been shot--was one of the
things Paula was trying to make me do, all the while. And some of the
other changes were, too."
"But not that trumpet," said Paula, and he could only blush.
In a moment of dead silence, just before the crash that accompanied the
descent of the curtain, he had scored for the C trumpet, muted and
pianissimo, a phrase in the rhythm of the first three bars of the
_Marsellaise_, but going up on the open tones and sustaining the high G,
so that it carried also, a suggestion of _The Star Spangled Banner_. A
flagrant trick, but it had served to remind the audience, bruised by the
horror of abomination it had just witnessed, of the vengeance which, afar
off, was gathering.
"I'd like to know what you'd have said to me," Paula went on, "if I'd
asked you to do that!"
Mary laughed, and pushed her lover toward the stage. "Oh, go back," she
said. "They want you again, my dear."
They gave _The Outcry_ two more performances during the next week, one of
them being the closing performance of the season, and by that time, so
far as a single success could be said to establish any one, March was
established. He and Mary discussed this rather soberly as they drove home
in the small car after the convivial wind-up supper at the Moraine, where
this fact had been effusively dwelt upon. Their wedding was now less than
a month off.
"I know," she admitted, "it looks as if I were all wrong. To go on being
afraid of--harness and millstones and all that. But just the same ...
Oh, you can live my sort of life. That's been made plain enough. But I
wish I could think of some way of making you sure that I could live
yours, as well. Your old one; the _Chemineau_ one. The way it was when
you came to Hickory Hill."
A few minutes later she gave a sudden laugh. "Tony," she said, "will you
swear you will do something for me--without knowing what it is? Oh, it's
nothing very serious. It's about our honeymoon. A girl has a right to
decide about that, hasn't she?"
"You've got something up your sleeve, all right," he said dubiously; but
she remained severely silent until he gave in and promised.
"Well, then," she said, "this is what our honeymoon is going to be. We'll
take one of the farm Fords-Rush can spare one, I'm sure, in October-and
we'll get some camping things and start out--oh, along any one of your
old routes--without one single cent of money. And we'll tune pianos as we
go. We'll live off the country. Really and honestly take to the road. For
a month. If we can't find any pianos we'll go hungry--or beg! The one
thing we won't do, whatever happens, is to telegraph. After we've done
that we'll come back and be--regular people. And I won't mind, then.
Because, don't you see, you'll know. And if it's ever necessary to do it
again, we'll do it again."
"There's no one in the world," he remarked in a voice that wanted to
break, "--no one in the world who'd have thought of that but you. But, my
dear, I don't need any reassurance like that."
"Tony, dearest, don't be solemn," she admonished him. "Won't it be
_fun_!"
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Mary Wollaston, by Henry Kitchell Webster