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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Making of Mary, by Jean Forsyth
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Making of Mary
+
+Author: Jean Forsyth
+
+Release Date: September 22, 2006 [EBook #19343]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAKING OF MARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Melissa Er-Raqabi, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by the Canadian Institute for Historical
+Microreproductions (www.canadiana.org))
+
+
+
+
+
+THE "UNKNOWN" LIBRARY
+
+
+THE MAKING
+OF MARY
+
+BY
+JEAN FORSYTH
+
+
+NEW YORK
+THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO.
+31 EAST 17TH ST. (UNION SQUARE)
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY
+THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO.
+
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
+RAHWAY, N. J.
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+
+A STURDY northeast wind was rattling the doors and windows of a deserted
+farmhouse in Western Michigan. The building was not old, measured by
+years, but it had never been painted or repaired, and its wooden face,
+prematurely lined with weather stains, looked as if it had borne the
+wear and tear of centuries. The windows, like lidless eyes, stared
+vacantly at the flat stubble fields and the few spindling trees, a
+dreary apology for an orchard. There were plenty of shingles off the
+roof to allow the inquisitive rain-drops to follow one another through
+the rafters, and thence to the floor of the room below, where the
+darkness was creeping out of the corners to take possession.
+
+The house had been but recently vacated, for there was still a "slab"
+smoldering on the hearth of the wide fireplace in the outer kitchen, and
+something that looked almost human, wrapped in a ragged bedquilt, was
+lying much too near it for safety. A friendly gust of wind came down the
+chimney, bringing back the smoke, and drawing a faint cough from the
+bundle. Another gust and another cough, and then a sneeze which burst
+open the quilt, to disclose an ill-clad little girl, six or seven years
+old.
+
+She gazed about with drowsy blue eyes till terror of the darkness made
+her draw the tattered comforter over her head again, and crouching
+nearer to the smoldering log, she tried to warm her fingers and toes.
+More wind down the chimney made more smoke, and sent the child coughing
+back from the fireplace. She was wide awake now, and stood listening.
+Sounds there were, indeed, but not one that could be associated with any
+living thing in the house. She felt her way around the walls to where
+the candle used to be, but it was gone. There was no furniture to
+stumble over, and when she came to the side of the wall in the inner
+room from which the stairway crept up, she mounted it on her hands and
+knees, trembling, partly with cold, partly with fear at the noise made
+by the flapping of the sole of one of her old shoes. There was a step
+missing at the turn of the stairs, but the child knew where the vacancy
+was, and pulling herself over it, she reached the landing, felt all
+around the walls there, and made the circuit of the three small rooms
+in the same fashion. They were entirely empty.
+
+Cautiously the girl stole down the broken stairs and back to her former
+place by the smoking slab, where she curled herself up into the old
+quilt again, as into a mother's arms, and spoke aloud, though there was
+none to listen but the obstreperous wind:
+
+"Anyhow she won't be here to lick me no more!" That thought seemed to
+compensate for darkness and loneliness. The voices of wind and rain were
+apparently more kindly than the human tones to which she had been
+accustomed, and soothed by their stormy lullaby, the little maid fell
+asleep.
+
+The sunshine poured freely into the forsaken house next morning, drying
+up the damp floors, and turning to gold the scrap of yellow hair that
+showed through a hole in the old quilt. Presently the small girl shook
+the covering away from her and stood up, to yawn and stretch herself
+out of the stiffness from a night spent on the hard floor. She was not a
+pretty child, unless naturally curling fair hair, that would be fairer
+when it was washed, could make her so. The long, thin legs that came
+below her torn dress made her too tall for her age, and what might have
+been a passable mouth was spoiled by the departure of two of the front
+"baby" teeth and the tardy arrival of the later contingent.
+
+Part of the day the child seemed satisfied with her new-found liberty.
+Having discovered a stale crust or two in a cupboard, she wanted no
+more, for her diet had never been luxurious. Into every corner of the
+house she intruded her small freckled nose, pulling down from shelves
+all sorts of odds and ends that had been left behind as worthless at the
+flitting.
+
+There was an old straw bonnet with a pair of dirty strings, and
+therewith the damsel elected to adorn the tousled head, which evidenced
+but slight acquaintance with comb or brush. She could not find any
+feminine garments to please her fancy, but there was a boy's jacket, out
+at elbows and ragged round the edges, which she proudly donned, and as a
+finishing touch she popped her long slim legs, old shoes and all, into a
+worn-out pair of man's top-boots that reached to her knees.
+
+"I just wish Mawm Mason had lef' a lookin'-glass behin', so's I could
+see how I look. My! wouldn't she whack me if she seen me with this
+bonnet on!" The child smiled broadly as she continued her confidential
+address to the other valueless things left behind. "I allays knowed she
+warn't my own mother, an' I'm glad Pete nor Matty aint my own brother
+nor sister neither. I'd like him to see me in his jacket!"
+
+She pulled the coat across her narrow little chest to where it met in
+the days when there were buttons on it, and marched up and down the
+room, making as much noise as possible with the big boots.
+
+This killing of time was all very well while the daylight lasted and the
+sun warmed up the frosty November air, but when the darkness began to
+assert itself once more the small waif did not feel so contented.
+
+"There aint no use goin' over to Mis' Morgan's. She don't want me no
+more'n Mis' Mason did. I guess I'll sleep upstairs to-night with some o'
+them things over me. I'll be warm anyhow."
+
+In the middle of the front bedroom she heaped up all the _debris_ and
+crawled beneath it. A fantastic pile it seemed to the moon when he
+looked in after the rain had stopped, the childish head resting on the
+cover of an old bandbox at one side and a pair of man's boots sticking
+out at the other.
+
+The last scrap of bread was finished next day, and the two potatoes
+picked up in the yard proved uneatable without the softening influence
+of fire, so there was nothing for it but Mrs. Morgan's. After sunset,
+when the rapidly falling temperature and the heavy bank of clouds in the
+west gave warning of a snow-storm, the little girl, still wearing the
+old bonnet, boy's jacket, and man's boots, left the only home she could
+remember, and made her way slowly over the hard rough fields and snake
+fences to the next farmhouse.
+
+Mrs. Morgan was running in from the barn with a shawl over her head.
+
+"Good sakes alive! Mary Mason! I hardly knowed you. What you got on? I
+thought you was one o' them scarecrows out o' the fall wheat. Mis'
+Mason moved to Californy three days ago. Didn't she take you with her?"
+
+"No, mawm."
+
+"So it 'pears. Wal, she hadn't any call to, I s'pose. You aint none o'
+hers."
+
+By this time they were in the kitchen of the farmhouse, Mrs. Morgan
+rubbing her hands above the stove, and Mary Mason also venturing near,
+stretching out her thin arms to the heat, for the adopted jacket was
+somewhat short in the sleeves.
+
+"What's that mark on yer wrist?"
+
+"Bruise--but it don't hurt now."
+
+"Who done it?"
+
+"Ma--Mis' Mason. I've lots worse'n that on me," said the small girl with
+some vanity.
+
+"There, now! I jest knew that Mis' Mason was a hard case, though my man
+would never hear to it. What you going to do now?"
+
+"I dunno." The accent implied that to be a matter of small moment.
+
+"I don't s'pose we can turn you out to-night. There's room in the attic
+for you to sleep, but don't you go near one o' my girls' beds with that
+head o' yourn."
+
+As a hostess, Mrs. Morgan was a slight improvement upon Mrs. Mason. She
+never took stick or strap to the foundling, and if she occasionally gave
+her a cuff on the ear it was never strong enough to knock the girl down.
+But the Morgan children bullied Mary Mason, the Morgan father grumbled
+at an extra mouth to feed, and when she had been about a month in the
+house the mistress of it told her she must move on.
+
+"There's an old dress of Ellie's you can have, an' a pair of Sue's
+cast-off boots, and Tom's old cap."
+
+"Where am I to go, mawm?"
+
+"You jest go on from one farmhouse to another, till you find a place
+where they'll keep you all winter. It's comin' on to Christmas, an'
+people won't be hard on ye. Tell 'em you aint got no folks."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The forlorn little pilgrim took up her march down the snow-covered road.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF MARY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+MY wife is a theosophist. This fact may account for her numerous
+eccentricities or be simply one of them. I incline to the latter
+opinion, because she preferred the unbeaten to the beaten track, both in
+walk and conversation, long before Modern Buddhism was ever heard of in
+the small Western town of whose chief newspaper (circulation largest in
+Michigan) I have the honor to be editor and proprietor.
+
+How such a hot-house plant as Theosophy ever took root in the swamps
+and sands of the Wolverine State may seem surprising at the first
+glance, but let the second rest upon our environment--the absence of
+mountain or swift-flowing river, the presence of fever and ague and
+half-burnt pine woods--and it will be seen that this Eastern lore with
+its embarrassment of symbols supplies a long-felt want to starving
+imagination. We of the West are forever reaching beyond our grasp, have
+intelligence and perception, but lack the culture necessary for
+discrimination, and therefore the romantic souls among us who rise above
+the rampant materialism of the majority go to the other extreme, and
+hail with enthusiasm the new-old religion.
+
+"It's better to believe too much than too little, but you theosophists
+swallow an awful lot," I say to Belle when she tries to convert me.
+
+I am well aware that many of my fellow-citizens consider me a subject
+for commiseration because I have lived for twenty years with so erratic
+a house-mate, for I have not deemed it necessary to explain to them that
+without the stimulus of her enlivening spirit, without the element of
+surprise constantly contributed by my wife's love of variety, the daily
+life, and therefore the daily paper, of their favorite editor would
+partake of that flatness which is the predominant characteristic of this
+western part of the State of Michigan.
+
+Our four sons and two daughters enjoy their mother fully as much as I
+do, for is she not the most fascinating romancer they ever knew? Now
+that they are all of an age to be attending school and looking out for
+themselves, after the manner of independent young Americans, they
+require from her nothing but sympathy, for their grandmother sews their
+buttons on. Grandma!--Ay, there's the rub.
+
+I have no hesitation in owning that I am Scotch by birth. My mother left
+her native land to make her home with us entirely too late in life to
+allow Western ideas regarding Sabbath observance, the rearing of
+children, or the amount of respect due to the opinion of elders, to
+become ingrafted upon Scottish prejudice concerning these matters.
+
+Mrs. Gemmell Senior has, however, the national peculiarity of judging
+"blood thicker than water," and whatever her convictions may be
+concerning the methods of Mrs. Gemmell Junior, she restricts the
+expression of them to our family circle--in fact, I may say, to myself.
+She generally seizes me when I lie at my ease on the well-worn lounge in
+our sitting room, more properly dubbed the "nursery," for it is Liberty
+Hall for the youngsters. Two rooms have been knocked into one to
+accommodate their dolls' houses, bookshelves, toys, and printing
+machines. Belle had the whole side torn out of the house to build an
+open fire-place, on purpose to burn slabs, over which the children roast
+pop-corn to their hearts' content.
+
+"A body wad think," said my mother one cold night five or six years ago,
+when I lay on the sofa, trying to send my weariness off in smoke, "A
+body wad think there had been nae cherritable wark dune in the toon ava,
+till they theossiphies set aboot it. If yer provost and baillies lookit
+efter things as they ocht, there wad be a dacent puirs-house for the
+idignant folk, an' a wheen daft leddies like Eesabel needna gang roun'
+speirin' at yon infeedels for their siller tae build a hoose o' refuse."
+
+"There is a county poorhouse, mother, but it doesn't happen to be
+located in this city, and they won't take in anybody there that hasn't
+been a resident of the county for a certain time."
+
+"Aweel! there's plenty o' kirks, though ye never darken the door o' ane.
+Do they no' leuk efter their ain puir folk?"
+
+"Yes; but after nobody else's. This House of Refuge is to be
+non-sectarian, non-religious, humanitarian, in the broadest sense of the
+term. Ah! There's Belle now," and I gave a sigh of relief as I heard my
+wife's latch-key in the front door.
+
+She came in with an out-of-door breeze, her dark face glowing from the
+wintry wind, flakes of newly fallen snow resting like diamonds upon her
+prematurely white hair, and her brown eyes sparkling with the animation
+of twenty summers rather than of forty-two.
+
+"Children all gone to bed? That's right! Don't go, mother! I'm sure
+you'll like to hear about the House of Refuge. We've got it fixed at
+last! Those rich old lumbermen that won't give a cent to a church, or
+any charity connected with one, have gone to the bottom of their pockets
+this time. Fancy Peter Wood, Dave--five hundred dollars! And Jeff
+Henderson, five hundred. I have the list in my bag. Like to see it?"
+
+"No' the nicht, thenk ye," said my mother stiffly, but I added:
+
+"Hand it over to me, and I'll put it in to-morrow's _Echo_. That's what
+they want."
+
+"Nothing of the kind, you old cynic! I shan't tell you another thing
+about it." But still she went on: "We've taken the old Laurence house on
+the corner of Garfield Avenue and Pine Street, and it's to be fitted up
+to accommodate any sort of refugees."
+
+"Irrespective of race, creed, sex, or color," I whispered
+parenthetically.
+
+"No one is ever to be turned from the door without a good square meal,
+and there's to be a back, outside stair erected, up which a tramp can go
+at any hour of the night, and find a nice clean bed awaiting him--locked
+away from the rest of the house, of course."
+
+"Oh, why?" I innocently inquired. "Surely you have enough faith in your
+brother man to believe that he would not commit any breach of
+hospitality?"
+
+"_I_ have," replied Belle, squeezing my recumbent form further against
+the back of the sofa, upon which she had seated herself. "But remember
+we are not all theosophists on the Board."
+
+In the words of the historic witness against Mrs. Muldoon, "That's the
+way the row began!" Belle was elected Treasurer of the House of Refuge,
+but as she knows nothing of figures, I had to keep the books of that
+unique institution, and was therefore enabled to form a practical
+estimate of its workings.
+
+I shall not attempt a description of the numerous "cases" in which my
+advice, if not my pocketbook, was freely drawn upon, but shall leave
+them, along with the description of the many antecedent fads of my
+beloved better half, to some historian of longer wind, and shall content
+myself with recounting the particular "case"--and attachments--which
+most nearly affected our family life and happiness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This is what I call solid comfort," said Belle to me one evening late
+in September, as we sat in the parlor in a couple of deep, springy
+armchairs, fronting a huge grate fire, that would be banished by the
+lighting of the furnace. "Children all in school again, your mother off
+on a long visit, and plenty of new books on the table."
+
+I looked up from one of the aforesaid new books.
+
+"Just wait! The season's business hasn't begun in the Refuge yet."
+
+"Everything is in good shape for it, though. We've had enough donations
+of groceries and vegetables to keep us going almost all winter. We've
+lots of wood for the furnace, and Mack and Hardy have given us some
+second-hand furniture and----"
+
+The electric door-bell sent out a long, imperative summons.
+
+"Who can that be, Dave, at this time of night? None of the boys locked
+out?"
+
+"No; they all went up to bed a while ago."
+
+Belle rose and walked to the door. I pulled the tidy from my chair-back
+over my bald head to protect me from the draught, but that did not
+prevent me from hearing what went on.
+
+"Are you Mrs. Gemmell?" This from a female voice, breathless with
+excitement.
+
+"I am."
+
+"Then you are one of the trustees of the House of Refuge?" gasped
+another feminine speaker.
+
+"Yes. Won't you come in?"
+
+"No, thank you. We've just come to tell you about this young girl who
+has run to us for protection."
+
+"We're school-teachers, mawm."
+
+"She's in my class, and she hasn't a friend in the city and knew nowhere
+else to go."
+
+Then followed some hysterical whispers, which roused my curiosity so
+much that I went to the door and peeped over the shoulder of my tall
+wife. The two plain, business-like young women were evidently much
+distressed, but between them was a fair-haired slip of a girl of
+fifteen or sixteen, the least disturbed of the group. The three older
+women might have been talking in a foreign tongue, or of someone else,
+so unconcerned did she appear, present danger being over.
+
+"How did she happen to be with these people?" Belle was asking as I came
+forward.
+
+"The wife of this brute of a man told us that she was nursemaid with the
+Ferguson Family Concert Company, but they dropped her here in Lake City
+without a friend or a cent."
+
+"She took her in to help sell fruit and ice cream evenings, and she let
+her go to school through the day."
+
+At this juncture the subject under discussion broke into a beaming
+smile, showing all her fine teeth. Her cheek dimpled and reddened, and
+her blue eyes, full of fun, looked straight into mine. I became
+suddenly aware that I had forgotten to remove the tidy, and retired in
+confusion, but heard Belle's conclusion of the interview:
+
+"Just wait a second till I give you a line to the matron of the House of
+Refuge. You can leave the girl there till we see what can be done for
+her. She'll be perfectly safe, and had better keep on going to school as
+usual."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A week afterward I asked my wife what had become of her latest
+_protegee_.
+
+"You mean Mary Mason? She's in the refuge yet, attending school, and
+we've settled that man's ice-cream saloon."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Boycotted him. We can't reach him any other way."
+
+"That's rather hard on his wife, who seems to be a decent sort of
+party."
+
+"The innocent often appear to suffer with and for the guilty, but if
+you understood the law of Karma you would know that all the evil that
+befalls us is really the result of some wrongdoing of our own in a
+previous incarnation. Mary Mason herself is an instance."
+
+"What's the matter with her?"
+
+"Poor girl! She's been knocked from pillar to post all her days. She
+hasn't an idea who her parents are, and there isn't a creature in the
+world she has any claim upon. She must have gone very far astray _last
+time_ to have been brought into the world again with such
+disadvantages."
+
+"It appears to me she has a great many advantages--lovely blue eyes,
+good teeth, the fashionable golden shade of hair, and the prettiest
+complexion I've seen for many a day."
+
+"Don't be provoking, Dave! The poor little thing has the marks of some
+of her beatings on her yet. The Ferguson family were the first who ever
+treated her decently, or paid her any wages."
+
+"Why did they drop her?"
+
+"One of our Committee took it upon herself to write and ask them. They
+replied that the girl was of perfectly good character, so far as they
+knew, but she fell so ridiculously in love with Frank Ferguson, their
+eldest son, that she was making a nuisance of herself, and so they had
+to let her go."
+
+I laughed.
+
+"There are generally two sides to that kind of story."
+
+"At the meeting of the trustees to-morrow it is to be decided what's to
+be done with her, because she says she doesn't want to go to school any
+more. She's never had much of a chance before to learn anything, and
+she's in a class with little bits of girls, and she doesn't like
+it--says she'd rather go to work to earn her own living."
+
+Belle came home from that meeting with her face ablaze with righteous
+wrath. Her hands trembled so much over the teacups at our evening meal
+that even sixteen year old Watty, our eldest son, remarked it.
+
+"What's the matter with _mamma_? Her trolley's off."
+
+I knew there was trouble in the wind, so I fortified myself with a good
+supper and read my paper at the same time, to leave myself free for what
+was to follow. The children study their lessons in the back end of the
+nursery, and I therefore forbore to take up my usual position upon the
+sofa, but withdrew to the parlor with my pipe.
+
+Presently my wife followed me, nearly walking over the furniture in her
+excitement.
+
+"Go on, Belle; out with it!"
+
+"You will listen, will you, seriously?"
+
+"Certainly, mawm. I never had any sort of an objection to your making a
+scavenger barrel of me, so go ahead."
+
+"Oh, these benevolent women, Dave! Any one of them alone is as
+good-hearted as can be, but lump them together on a committee, and
+they're as cold and cruel and grasping as the meanest business man you
+could name!"
+
+"More so!" said I, approvingly, and for once Isabel did not resent the
+disparagement of her sex.
+
+"The question arose, what was to be done about Mary Mason, and every one
+of them, David--every one of them, with young daughters of their own
+growing up at home, voted to let that girl go round this town selling a
+book."
+
+"Was that what she wanted to do herself?"
+
+"Yes; but think of them letting her do it! You know as well as I do what
+sort of a city this is, and whether it's safe for a lovely girl like
+that to go to men's offices, trying with her pretty looks and ways to
+wheedle them into subscribing for Stanley's 'Darkest Africa.' Oh, I was
+wild! I said to Mrs. Robinson: 'How would you like your Lulu to do it?'
+'The cases are very different,' said she; 'my daughter has no need to
+earn her living.' 'Mrs. Constable,' said I, 'if your grandchild were
+left alone in the world, what would you think of the charity of any body
+of women who allowed her to go from under their protection to make her
+living in this way?' 'I don't see the connection,' said she; 'Mary
+Mason's been fighting the world since she was seven years old, and just
+because she happens to have a pretty face, you seem to think she should
+be put in a glass case and never do anything for herself.'"
+
+"She had you there, Belle," said I, pulling her down to the arm of my
+big easy-chair. "Let the girl alone; she'll come out all right. She's
+too good-looking for a nurse or a housemaid, and she doesn't know enough
+arithmetic to be a shop girl. I don't see what else she can do."
+
+"That's just what the ladies calmly decided," said my wife, walking the
+floor again. "They seemed to think that a little business training would
+just be the making of Mary. Oh, these Christians!"
+
+"You see, my dear," said I, "committees are not supposed to have any
+conscience. They have the income of the Refuge in trust for the
+contributors, and they have no right to keep on supporting a girl who is
+willing to work for herself. How she proposes to do it is none of their
+business."
+
+"That's just what it is--their business; their business to see that she
+doesn't meet the very fate we've saved her from once already. Oh!
+there's no getting these narrow-minded, orthodox, bigoted people to see
+more than one side of a question."
+
+"Take care you don't become dogmatic on your own side," said I, rising
+to knock the ashes out of my pipe. "If it's the law of Karma that's
+responsible for her having been left to shift for herself at so early an
+age, it's the same law that's after her now, and I wouldn't interfere
+with its operations, if I were you."
+
+"You don't in the least understand what you are talking about," and
+Belle sailed from the room to settle a noisy dispute in the nursery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+THROUGH that winter I caught occasionally a glimpse of Mary Mason on the
+street, but as I had not the pleasure of her acquaintance, I did not
+stop to ask her how she was getting on. My wife told me, however, that
+she lived in a room over a store down town, and took her meals out, and
+that she was succeeding very well with her subscription list.
+
+"The girl is all right, if only the gossips would let her alone. Some of
+them assert that she had a child in the Refuge, and though the ladies on
+our committee indignantly deny that, they shake their heads, and say of
+course they don't know anything about her now."
+
+"It's the only excitement a lot of these women have," said I. "They
+wouldn't read a French novel for the world, and some of them wouldn't be
+seen in a theater, so they have to satisfy their morbid craving for
+sensationalism by hearing and repeating all sorts of unsavory tales--and
+they do it in the name of charity! They're very sorry that there is so
+much wickedness in the world, but since it is there, they enjoy the
+investigation of details, and it doesn't matter very much whether
+they're doing any good or not."
+
+"There aren't any details to investigate, so far as Mary Mason is
+concerned. I took pains to make sure of that, when I heard that a big
+hulk of a machinist, who rooms on the same flat, was telling lies about
+her, just because she refused to have anything to say to him."
+
+When I was leaving the _Echo_ office at noon one day I saw Henderson's
+handsome black span, with the wreck of a sleigh behind them, come down
+the street at a full gallop, and I was just debating with myself whether
+my duty as a citizen, which called me to attempt to stop the brutes, was
+stronger than my duty to my wife and family, which bade me stay where I
+was, when a young lady jumped the snow ridge at the edge of the sidewalk
+and flung herself at the bit of the nearest horse. The powerful animal
+swung her right off her feet, but he was checked for an instant, and in
+that instant a young man seized the mate on the other side; the team was
+stopped and surrounded by a crowd directly. Then I saw it was Mary Mason
+who was the heroine of the drama. She withdrew from the throng,
+straightened her flat hat above her rosy face, and walked off with her
+habitual indifferent air.
+
+"She's got good grit, that girl," said I to myself, but I thought no
+more about her till I came home on a certain evening in March, and found
+her comfortably ensconced on one side of our nursery fire, while my
+mother from the other side cast suspicious glances at her over her
+spectacles. "Miss Mason," had supper with us, and then I retired to my
+big leather-covered spring rocker in the parlor to await developments.
+That chair needs to be approached with deference, for it has a
+precocious trick of either tilting in the air the feet of any unwary
+occupant, or of tipping him out on the floor. I know its disposition,
+can preserve my proper balance, and have never been flung either forward
+or backward--except once each way.
+
+Presently Belle followed me, "loaded up," as the boys say.
+
+"It seems as if I was never to get free from the responsibility of that
+child."
+
+"What's up now?"
+
+"Down town to-day I met the chief of police----"
+
+"Great chum of yours!"
+
+"Yes, indeed. We've had considerable conversation at different times
+about some of my cases. To-day he said, 'You're interested in that young
+girl, Mary Mason, aint you, Mrs. Gemmell?' 'Yes,' said I, though my
+heart sank, and I didn't see why he couldn't have addressed any other
+one of the committee; 'anything wrong with her?' 'Not yet,' said he;
+'but there will be pretty soon if somebody doesn't look after her.
+There's a scheme on foot to take her off to Chicago--to sell a book--so
+they say.' 'Good gracious! Nobody would dare!' 'Wouldn't they, though?'
+said he. 'There's a well-known drummer in this town at the bottom of
+it. He's aware the girl has no friends, and in Chicago she don't even
+know a soul. It's too bad, for I've had my eye on the young woman all
+winter, and she's kept perfectly straight.'
+
+"You may think, Dave, that I ought to be hardened to horrors by this
+time, but I became fairly dazed as the chief of police went on to say,
+'I can't move in the matter. We never can touch these things until the
+mischief is done; but if you like to make inquiries, you'll find out
+that I've been telling you the truth.'
+
+"When he left me, I turned to come home, not knowing what to do, but
+going round the first corner, didn't I run right into Mary Mason
+herself! I hadn't laid eyes on her for a couple of months. 'How d'ye do,
+Mrs. Gemmell?' she said, for I stopped and stared at her as if she'd
+been a white crow. 'What about "Darkest Africa?"' I found breath to
+ask, though it was Darkest Chicago I had in my mind. 'I've done with
+that now,' she said; 'did very well, too.' 'And what are you going to do
+next?' 'I dunno. Whatever turns up. I've got an offer to go to Chicago
+to sell a book there.' I caught her by the arm as if I'd been the chief
+of police. 'Mary, will you please go to my house and wait there for me
+till I come?' 'Oh, yes, mawm, if you want me to,' and off she went,
+asking no questions.
+
+"Well, Dave, I've put in four hours of amateur detective work this
+afternoon, and I feel as if I needed a moral bath. I found out it was
+all true, as the chief of police had said. There was a plot to ruin the
+girl, and I don't think the author of it will forget his interview with
+me in a hurry."
+
+"What good will that do the young woman? There are plenty more of his
+kind in the world, and with her inherited tendencies I suppose it's only
+a question of time--how soon she goes to the bad."
+
+"David Gemmell!"
+
+It is worth while making a caustic speech occasionally to see Isabel
+rise to her full height. Her brown eyes positively emit sparks, and her
+gray hair, which she wears waved and parted, gives her an air of
+distinction that would not be out of place upon an avenging spirit.
+
+"I came home all tired out," she went on, sinking into the chair beside
+mine, "and looking through the nursery window, there sat Mary Mason with
+our little Chrissie on her knee. The two faces in the firelight looked
+so much alike that my heart gave a great thump, and I vowed that girl
+should never be set adrift again. This is the second time she has been
+cast upon my shore, and I must see to her."
+
+So Mary Mason dropped into our family circle without anybody having very
+much to say in the matter--except my mother!
+
+"Wha's yon 'at Eesabell's ta'en up wi' the noo?"
+
+"Her name's Mason," said I; "Mary Mason."
+
+"I h'ard yer wife was thinkin' o' keepin' a hoosemaid, but I didna
+expeck tae see her pap hersel' doon at the table wi' the fem'ly."
+
+"She's not a housemaid. She's just staying with us for a while."
+
+"Ye'd think Eesabell micht hae eneugh adae wi' her ain, 'thoot takin' in
+ony strangers."
+
+"But Mary is to help with the housework, in return for her board and
+clothes."
+
+"Let her wear a kep an' apron, then, an' eat wi' Marg'et."
+
+"Margaret might object," and I laughed at the probable dismay of our
+stalwart, rough-and-ready five-foot-tenner, should this ladyfied blonde
+permanently invade her domain.
+
+"Hoo lang's she gaun to st'y?"
+
+"That's more than I can tell you."
+
+When Mary had been a week in the house, it became apparent that
+something must be done with her.
+
+"She's bound she'll not go back to the public school, Dave, and yet she
+cannot read or write. Do you think we can afford to send her to
+boarding-school--to a convent, for instance, where she'd be well looked
+after, and allowances made for her backwardness?"
+
+Belle and I were out driving together. It was the first springlike
+evening we had had, and I was trying Jim Atwood's new mare on Maple
+Avenue, which had been newly block-paved. So engrossed was I in watching
+her paces I did not reply to my wife at once, and she continued:
+
+"You were going to get me a horse and a victoria this spring, but I'm
+willing to give them up to send Mary to school."
+
+"Please yourself, my dear. You would be the one to use the turnout. I'm
+content to borrow from my friends. Isn't she a beauty?"
+
+Belle came out of space to answer me.
+
+"Yes, just now; but she'll not be when she's old. Her features are not
+good at all; her forehead's too narrow, and her nose too broad. Were it
+not for her lovely hair and complexion, she'd have nothing to brag about
+but a pair of very ordinary blue eyes."
+
+"Who? The mare?"
+
+"Don't be stupid, Dave, and do attend to what I am saying. I hardly ever
+have a chance to speak to you, goodness knows!"
+
+"You get the editorial ear oftener and longer than anybody else."
+
+"Lend it to me now, then. Don't you think a convent would be the best
+place for Mary?"
+
+"Perhaps--as there are no theosophical educational institutions that we
+know about."
+
+"Mary isn't far enough on for theosophist yet. She'll have to come back
+many times before she is. The Roman Catholic Church is on her plane this
+incarnation."
+
+"It does seem to catch the masses, that's a fact, whereas your theosophy
+doesn't appear to be practicable for uneducated people nor for
+children."
+
+"I don't agree with you there."
+
+"Then why were you so anxious to send Watty to a church school to finish
+his education, and why are you on the lookout already for a
+boarding-school for the two girls where they will have the best of
+Christian influences? What is your object in being so particular that
+the younger boys are regular in their attendance at our surpliced
+choir?"
+
+"It gives them a good idea of music--but that is not the point just now.
+Can we afford to send Mary Mason to a convent, or can we not?"
+
+"Choose between her and the buggy mare 'suitable for a lady to drive,'"
+said I; but in reality it was my mother who settled the question.
+
+When we came home that evening she was sitting by the fireside,
+
+    "Nursin' her wrath to keep it warm."
+
+"Ye maun either pit yon hizzy oot the hoose, or I'll hitta gang."
+
+"What's the matter now, mother?"
+
+"I tell't her to brush the boys' bits tae be ready for the schule in the
+mornin'. They were thrang wi' their lessons an' she wasna daein' a han's
+turn."
+
+"And what did she say?"
+
+"S'y! I wush ye'd seen the leuk she gi'ed me!"
+
+"The boys can brush their ain bits," said she; "I'm no' their servant."
+
+I laughed.
+
+"It's well seen she hasn't been brought up in Scotland, or she would
+know it was the bounden duty of the girls in the house to wait on the
+boys."
+
+"An' a hantle better it is than to see the laddies aye rinnin' efter the
+lasses, tendin' them han' an' fut as they dae here. When a man comes
+hame efter his d'y's wark, he should be let sit on his sate, an' hae a'
+things dune for him."
+
+"David," said Belle, sinking to a footstool at my feet with a dramatic
+gesture, "you shall never button my boots again! But seriously," she
+continued, as mother withdrew in high dudgeon to her sanctum upstairs,
+"I don't think Mary should be expected to brush the boys' boots. We
+didn't engage her as servant, and even if we had, there isn't a hired
+girl in this part of the country that wouldn't make a fuss if she had to
+brush the boots of the man of the house, not to mention the boys. We'll
+have to pack Mary off somewhere, if only to keep the peace."
+
+So Mary was sent to a convent, and at the end of three months came back
+for her holidays to our summer cottage at Interlaken. Being so near the
+big lake does not agree with my mother, and she rarely spends more than
+a week with us there, but during July and August visits my married
+sister in town. The coast was clear for Belle and me to decide what
+progress had been made in the making of Mary, and we fancied we
+discovered a good deal.
+
+"What have they done to you, those nuns, to tone you down so quickly,
+Mary?" I asked, as she sat beside me, swinging in a low rocker, and
+looking so pretty that I was quite proud of her as an ornament to our
+front veranda.
+
+"I dunno," she said, "unless it was the exercise for sitting perfectly
+still on a row of chairs. A nun goes behind us and drops a big book or
+something, and any girl that jumps gets a bad mark."
+
+"Capital!" I cried; "no wonder you have learned repose of manner."
+
+Thus encouraged, the girl continued:
+
+"Then we have little parties and receptions, and we have to converse
+with the nuns and with each other, and anybody that mentions one of the
+three D's gets a bad mark."
+
+"The three D's?"
+
+"Yes, sir--Dress, Disease, and Domestics."
+
+"Hear this, Belle," I said, laughing, as my wife took the rocking chair
+on the other side of me; "fancy any collection of women being obliged to
+steer clear of the three D's!"
+
+"You should ask Mary about her studies," was the severe reply. "We were
+much pleased with your letters."
+
+"Yes, mawm; Sister Stella was always very good about that; helped me
+with the big words, and often wrote the whole thing out for me.
+Sometimes I had to copy it two or three times before I could please
+her."
+
+Belle hastily changed the subject. "Let Mr. Gemmell hear that piece you
+recited to me this morning."
+
+I am no judge of elocution, but the general effect of the young girl
+standing there in the arch of the veranda, a clematis-wreathed post on
+either side, and her face, with its delicate coloring, turned toward the
+golden twilight, was pleasing in the extreme.
+
+"She'll maybe be famous some day," said Belle, when Mary had discreetly
+retired. "She is far quicker at learning verses off by heart than she is
+at reading them."
+
+"Still, to be a successful elocutionist nowadays one has to be
+thoroughly well educated, and Mary is too late in beginning."
+
+"You can't tell. She's got the appearance, and that's half the battle."
+
+"With us, perhaps; but remember, we are not capable critics, even though
+one of us is a Theosophist."
+
+"Laugh as you like, Dave. Theosophy satisfies me, because it explains
+some things in my own nature that I never could understand before."
+
+"It may be that you are too soon satisfied. That's the way with all new
+movements--one story is good till another is told. Your
+great-granddaughter will smile at the credulity of your ideas on this
+very subject."
+
+"She can smile, and so can you. We don't pretend to know everything; we
+only hope that we are on the right road to learn. I, for one, am
+thankful to think that there are wiser heads than mine puzzling over the
+problem of our psychic powers. I've always taken impressions from
+inanimate objects, and it has bothered me. Now I find my sensations
+analyzed and classified under the head of Psychometry, and it is a
+comfort to know that other people besides myself can discern an _aura_,
+and are foolishly wise enough to trust the impressions they receive in
+that way."
+
+"But if I were you, I don't think I'd make a parlor entertainment out of
+the gift,--if it is a gift,--as I heard you did at the Wades' the other
+night."
+
+"Who told you? What have you heard?"
+
+"Newspaper men hear everything. You asked Mr. Saxon to hold his
+handkerchief pressed tightly in his hand for a few minutes, and then to
+give it to you. You shut your eyes as you held it, and received the
+impression of his 'aura,' or the atmosphere which surrounds him, or
+whatever you like to call it, and then the company asked you questions,
+and you gave him a great old character. He didn't like it a bit, nor did
+his wife, nor his mother-in-law. You'll make enemies for yourself if you
+don't watch out."
+
+"It _was_ wrong of me to exercise my powers just to gratify idle
+curiosity. No good Theosophist would approve of it."
+
+"Say, rather, 'no sensible person would.' The Theosophists haven't a
+monopoly of common sense. To me they appear slightly deficient in that
+article, but I dare say they make up for it in uncommon sense."
+
+"You speak more wisely than you know," said Belle solemnly. "If I hadn't
+taken in some of the Brotherhood ideas I wonder where that pretty,
+innocent young girl would have been by this time. Would you like me to
+go back and be as I was in the old days, a rank materialist, caring for
+nothing but dress, dancing, and having a good time? You know you
+wouldn't, David. You know as well as I do that Theosophy has been the
+making of me, and through me it shall be the making of Mary too."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+TO the Scotchman or Englishman, with Loch Katrine or Windermere in his
+fond memory's eye, it is not surprising that the great lakes of America
+seem howling wildernesses of water, for the shores are mostly low and
+unpicturesque. There is no changing tide to give variety, no strong
+smell of seaweed nor salt breeze to brace the wearied nerves, but the
+wearied nerves are braced nevertheless. The sand is soft and clean to
+extend one's length upon, and the waves forever rolling up at one's feet
+are soothing in their monotony. There is no fear of the encroachment of
+the water, no fear of its leaving a bare mud-flat for nearly a mile; and
+the unlimited expanse of blue which meets the horizon satisfies the eye,
+which cares not if the land on the other side be hundreds or thousands
+of miles away, so long as it be out of sight.
+
+Two young people one evening in July seemed to find Lake Michigan
+perfectly satisfactory in every respect. The girl sat on a log of
+driftwood, poking holes in the sand with the pointed toes of her shoes,
+much too fine for the purpose, while the young man stretched at her feet
+looked at her instead of the sunset they had come to admire. I could not
+help thinking what a pretty picture they made, as I strolled along the
+shore with my pipe, to get cooled off after a very hot day in town.
+
+The family were all at Interlaken, but Margaret was left in Lake City
+to keep the grass watered, and to give me my midday dinner. I am unable
+to decide which occupation she considered the more important. It is not
+easy to get grass to grow with us, and anyone who can display a
+reasonably green patch in July and August gives evidence of considerable
+perseverance in the matter of lawn sprinkling. I told Margaret she would
+be ready to enter the Fire Brigade next winter, she was getting to be
+such an expert with the hose. But to return to the shore of Michigan.
+
+The pair of lovers interested me so much that I gradually edged nearer
+to them. The species seldom objects to the proximity of a stout little
+man with a prosaic pipe in his mouth and a pair of light blue eyes,
+handicapped by spectacles, that seem always to be looking for a sail on
+the horizon. In fact, I never attract any attention anywhere, unless my
+wife is along, and then I am only too proud and happy to shine in her
+reflection.
+
+So I sat down on a piece of stump, worn white and smooth like a skeleton
+before being cast up by the waves; but when the two caught sight of me,
+the man sprang up and came toward me, holding out his hand, while the
+girl sauntered off in the other direction, and I saw that she was Mary
+Mason.
+
+"Hello, Link?" said I to the young fellow. "Didn't know you were down
+here."
+
+"I'm at the hotel for a week or two. I've just been making the
+acquaintance of your adopted daughter."
+
+"My what?"
+
+"You have adopted her, haven't you?"
+
+"Don't know that I have--hadn't considered the matter at all."
+
+"She's a sweet girl, and a beauty too. Anyone would be proud to own
+her."
+
+"You'd better let Dolly Martin hear you say that."
+
+Abraham Lincoln Todd straightened himself up in the most independent
+bachelor style.
+
+"She can look after me when we're married, but in the meantime I'm a
+free man."
+
+He is considered very handsome, tall and dark, a good business man too,
+and Belle had quite approved of the engagement between him and Dolly
+Martin, who, though not a pretty girl, was strong and sensible, and the
+daughter of one of her oldest friends.
+
+Lincoln must be taking advantage of his intimacy with our family to
+flirt with Mary Mason.
+
+Interlaken is not a fashionable resort. Even the hotel is a homely
+abode, which the guests seem to run themselves, though they generally
+prefer to live outdoors and go inside only for meals and beds. Once in
+a while, on a chilly evening, the young people get up a dance, and some
+of us older folks are dragged into it too.
+
+Scotchmen love to dance, and I am no exception. I am not up to waltzing
+or any of the newfangled round dances, but give me a Highland
+schottische, or a square dance, when there is an inventive genius to
+call off the figures and prescribe plenty of variety. There was no
+professional caller-off at Interlaken, but Lincoln Todd did duty for one
+as he danced. When he tired of it, and led off into a round of waltzes,
+ripples, jerseys, bon tons, rush polkas, and goodness knows what
+besides, I remained as a wall-flower.
+
+The reason that I sat there was that I could not take my eyes off Mary
+Mason. Where she learned to dance I know not, but dance she did, with a
+grace and _abandon_ that made every other girl in the room a
+clod-hopper. Lincoln Todd was quite infatuated with her.
+
+Ours is one of the dozen or so of cottages that radiate from the big
+hotel. Most of the cottagers take dinner and supper at the hotel, being,
+like ourselves, in a servantless condition. Belle said she could get
+along perfectly well without Margaret, when she had Mary Mason to help
+her with the housework, and, indeed, there was not much to be done. The
+four bedrooms open into one central room that we call the sitting-room,
+but it is only in wet weather it justifies the name, for, as a rule, we
+sit in rockers or swing in hammocks on the broad veranda that runs round
+three sides of the house. The cottages lie so close together that a good
+jumper can easily spring from one veranda to the next, and the lady
+proprietors gossip across, and the men too when they come down from
+business every evening, or from Saturday till Monday. My lot is
+generally the shorter allowance, and one Sunday afternoon I lay in my
+favorite hammock on the north side of the veranda, sleeping the sleep of
+the brain-tired editor, till voices roused me.
+
+"Mary, where did you get that new tennis racket?"
+
+"Mr. Todd gave it to me."
+
+"Haven't I told you distinctly that you were not even to take candy from
+Mr. Todd?"
+
+"He gives things to you and Chrissie."
+
+"That's a very different matter. Chrissie is a child, and he is an old
+friend of the family."
+
+"I can't help it if he likes to give me presents."
+
+"You can help taking them, especially from an engaged man."
+
+"I don't care if he is engaged. He says he don't care anything at all
+about Miss Martin. He only went after her for her money. He likes me
+best, and he says he'll never marry her."
+
+"Mary! I should think you'd know better than to make yourself so cheap.
+You give Mr. Todd back that racket right away, and tell him Mrs. Gemmell
+said you were not to keep it, and the next time he brings you down
+flowers or chocolates you do the same."
+
+If I had not known the sex and the approximate age of Mary, I should
+have thought it was a small boy in a temper who stamped off the veranda.
+
+The next Saturday night the full moon was assisted in her duties by a
+large bonfire down on our beach. The Adamless Eden, having received its
+"week-end" male contingent, was stimulated to a corn-roasting. The green
+ears, stuck on the ends of long sticks, were held by girls and men over
+the fire till roasted, and then passed on to a row of matrons, disguised
+in large aprons, who salted and buttered them ready for eating. If you
+know anything that tastes sweeter than a freshly roasted and buttered
+ear of Indian corn, your experience is broader than mine.
+
+Using my eyes habitually in the way of business, I could not avoid
+noticing that Lincoln Todd was not collecting his share of driftwood for
+keeping up the fire, nor did I see Mary Mason's pretty face in the
+garland of beauties bending with eager interest over the poles bayoneted
+with cobs of corn. It may have been fear of spoiling her complexion that
+kept her at one side whispering with Link, but it served them both right
+that Dolly Martin should choose that very moment for her stage entrance.
+She and her mother joined the group of butterers, and I noticed that
+Mrs. Martin returned Belle's cordial greeting rather stiffly. Then Miss
+Dolly calmly walked over to the pair sitting apart, having evidently
+recognized the back of Lincoln's blazer. She pretended to stumble over
+one of his feet.
+
+"Oh, excuse me!" said she; and when Link sprang up, Mary Mason had the
+pleasure of witnessing the warmest sort of a meeting between the engaged
+lovers. They sallied off in the moonlight, his arm around her waist.
+
+No one but me noticed the young girl slipping down on the sand, and
+laying her head on the log on which she had been sitting, and even I
+pretended not to see that her handkerchief was in action.
+
+"Hello, Mary!" said I, "I'll match you skipping stones. Look at this!"
+
+With that I sent a beautiful flat one skimming along with nearly a dozen
+hops in the brilliant track of the moon on the water. She did not pay
+any attention to me at first, and I kept skipping away, just as if I
+did not see her mopping her eyes. By-and-by a stroke worthy of myself
+sent a pebble spinning through the ripples, and Mary's ready laugh rang
+out beside me. Within twenty minutes of Dolly Martin's appearance on the
+scene, "Mamie" was the center of the corn-roasters, and the gayest of
+the gay. Belle told me she kept on that line of conduct during the whole
+week that Miss Martin and her mother stayed at the hotel.
+
+"It seemed to me that Dolly took a special pleasure in parading her
+happiness before poor Mary, but Mary never showed the white feather."
+
+"There's the making of a fine woman in her."
+
+"That may be," said my wife. "But this last week she has been extremely
+wearing on me. Having no particular man on the string, she has followed
+me about like a spaniel, wanted to know what I'm reading, and has begun
+a book the minute I'm through with it."
+
+"I've seen her carrying 'The Coming Race' about with her lately, but I
+notice that the bookmark always stays in the same place."
+
+Mary became fond of solitary rambles back in the pine woods, intersected
+by plank walks that made promenading possible. People liked to wander
+through there in the evenings, when the camp-lights in the hollows lent
+a mysterious charm, and on up to the big Knight Templar's Building,
+erected on the highest point of the sandy bluff overlooking Lake
+Michigan. Every night that prominent structure blazed with electric
+lights, and sometimes a band played on the veranda; but the only
+visitors were cottagers and guests from the hotel, who went up there to
+walk about and enjoy the prospect.
+
+Our city editor often surprises me with the depth and breadth of his
+local information. For example, I opened the _Echo_ one day to be made
+aware that "Miss Mamie Gemmell" had outstripped all the lady bicyclists
+in town by making the distance between Lake City and Interlaken in
+forty-seven minutes. It was also remarked that she was one of the most
+graceful lady riders on the road.
+
+I wonder how many generations a man must be removed from Scotland before
+he becomes callous to the disposition of the family name. I own that I
+squirmed inwardly, but with outward composure asked Belle where Mary got
+the "bike."
+
+"Watty's old one. He taught Mary to ride it, and then made her a present
+of it, for he's set his heart on a new wheel."
+
+"Confoundedly generous of him!"
+
+"I'm glad you look at it that way. It is so seldom that he does give up
+anything for anybody, I thought he ought to be encouraged, and I said he
+should have a new bicycle with pneumatic tires and all the latest
+improvements at Christmas, if you did not see fit to give it to him
+sooner."
+
+In August I took my annual day's fishing, which has come to be rather a
+joke in the house, because, in spite of my elaborate preparations the
+night before, and the unheard-of hour at which I rise in the morning, I
+have never been known to catch anything worth bringing home.
+
+This time my companion was a journalist from Chicago, an ardent young
+fellow, who could not keep from "shop" even when off on his holidays,
+and who had started a small weekly paper in which were to be recorded
+the doings of a certain congress holding a summer session in our grove.
+
+We rowed up the little lake on the edge of the lily-pads, fishing both
+sides of it, but caught nothing except a sunfish or two. Then we lit our
+pipes and talked.
+
+"What an extremely clever young lady that adopted daughter of yours is.
+I heard only the other day that she is not your own."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Yes, sir. No one would believe it to talk to her, but she's got a
+surprisingly bright mind for one so young. She can't be more than
+seventeen, but her descriptions are good enough for one of the best
+magazines, and she has evidently thought a lot on all the leading topics
+of the day. Why, she's up in Hypnotism, Evolution, Theosophy--everything!"
+
+"Bless my soul! How did you find all that out?"
+
+Thereupon he fished from his pocket a couple of his tiresome little
+publications.
+
+"I asked her to write something for our paper, that's how I know. Want
+to see?"
+
+I do not set up to be a literary critic, but I guess I know my own
+wife's style of composition when I encounter it. During the two years
+that we were engaged she lived in Detroit and I in Indiana, and I missed
+her letters so much after we were married that to this day she is in the
+habit of letting me read those she writes to other people. I was not
+going to give her away to that newspaper man, though, for the name "Mary
+Gemmell" stared me in the face from the end of each article; but I
+remonstrated with Belle when I reached home.
+
+"How could I help it, Dave? There was the girl teasing me to write
+something for her because this fellow had asked her to do it. She said I
+could scribble down something just as easy as not, and then she could
+copy it for him. Copy it! She took hours to do it, and I considered she
+deserved all the praise she got for the articles."
+
+"I wouldn't do it again, if I were you. It sets the girl sailing under
+false colors."
+
+"Poor Mary! Her one little accomplishment has been of no use to her
+since that professional elocutionist came to the hotel, and I hated to
+see her cast altogether into the shade, especially while Dolly Martin
+was here."
+
+Still there came another production from the pen of Miss Mary Gemmell.
+
+"Really, Belle," said I, "this is carrying the joke too far."
+
+"Don't you worry about it. Some of the old cats at the hotel began to
+suspect that Mary hadn't written those things, and accused me to my face
+of doing it myself, so I had to write an account of the picnic up the
+little lake, because they all know I wasn't there at all!"
+
+"Let this be the last, then."
+
+"It shall, I assure you, for I am much displeased with Mary. Since Mrs.
+Martin and Dolly left, she's been going it just as hard as ever with
+Lincoln Todd. If you walk up to the Knight Templar's Building I'll
+warrant you'll find them there promenading this very minute."
+
+"No, I won't, because I passed them just a little while ago as I came
+through the woods, sitting on a secluded bench, his arm round her waist
+and her head on his shoulder."
+
+"Didn't they see you?"
+
+"I dare say, but I never let on I saw them. What's the use? I can't be
+expected to leave the _Echo_ to my subs, and come down here to play
+special policeman to Mary Mason. I should have thought Todd was more of
+a gentleman."
+
+"So should I, but I've spoken to him, quarreled with him indeed, so
+that he doesn't come near the house, but I know that he and Mary meet
+just the same. Thank Heaven! he will be married soon."
+
+"Have you told Mary that?"
+
+"Yes; but she laughs and shrugs her shoulders; evidently thinks she
+knows more about Lincoln Todd's intentions than I do."
+
+In the last week of August Mr. Todd went off for a few days "on
+business," and then there came a dreadful morning when the announcement
+of his marriage to Dolly Martin appeared in the _Echo_.
+
+Mary would not believe her ears. She took the paper down to the beach,
+and spelled out the notice word by word. Then she lay down on the sand
+and bawled, kicking and squealing like a year-old infant when Belle
+appealed to her self-respect.
+
+"I could have spanked her well," said my wife. The worst of it was that
+the whole hotel was "on to the racket," as Watty vulgarly expressed it,
+and rather chuckled over Belle's mortification, instead of sympathizing
+with her in the trying time she was having with her "adopted daughter."
+
+Our grief, as a family, was not unbearable when the time came in
+September for Mary Mason to go back to the convent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+THE self-assertive sleigh-bells suddenly ceased their tinkling, and the
+long covered van, with its four horses, drew up in front of our "House
+of Many Gables," in Lake City. Watty, then a tall lad of eighteen,
+over-coated, fur-capped, and gloved, went quickly out, banging the front
+door after him, while his younger brothers and sisters made holes with
+their breath through the frost on the window panes, to watch his
+departure with the hilarious load of young folks.
+
+"Why aint you goin', Mame?" asked Joe, our smallest son, of the girl
+spending her Christmas holidays with us.
+
+"Wasn't asked," she replied defiantly. "An' what's more, I don't care to
+go anywheres, neither, if the girls don't act better to me than they
+done at that party the other night."
+
+Belle raised her head from the Treasurer's book of the House of Refuge.
+
+"Perhaps you weren't nice to them, Mary?"
+
+"Yes, I was too. I smiled whenever one of them looked at me, but they
+all turned their heads as if they'd never seen me before."
+
+My wife sighed as she bent over her book again. If the difficulty of
+befriending Mary rested only with outsiders it might have been patiently
+borne, but there was mother, to whom the girl's presence in the house
+was a constant grievance.
+
+I had been able to buy a quiet horse and a Mikado cutter for Belle when
+the snow came, but she had no pleasure out of them during the vacation.
+
+"I'm going to drive downtown, mother," I heard her say one morning.
+"Would you like to go?"
+
+"Is Mary gaun?"
+
+"I thought of taking her."
+
+"Then I'll no' gang. I wadna like to crood Mary."
+
+"Dear mother, there's plenty of room."
+
+"Ay, ay, but ye ken Mary doesna like tae sit wi' her back tae the
+horse."
+
+That sort of thing was always happening. One day the old lady came home
+from a round of visits, much perturbed in mind and body. The sandy hair
+I inherited, and have largely lost, does not show the gray with which it
+is mixed, and so light and wiry is she one finds it difficult to
+remember my mother's seventy years. She is a small woman, but her
+personality is sufficiently large for the ripples to be felt throughout
+the household when its surface is disturbed.
+
+"What dae ye think I've been hearin'?" she cried, finding me alone in
+the nursery on the sofa, and helpless in her hands.
+
+"I can't imagine, mother. You generally have something spicy to tell us
+after you've been calling on the MacTavishes."
+
+"Dae ye ken 'at yon hizzy ye've ta'en intill yer hoose ca's hersel' Mary
+_Gemmell_?"
+
+"Oh, well, what's in a name?"
+
+"I wonner tae hear ye, Davvit! What wad yer faither hae thocht aboot it,
+or yer gran'faither? Gie'n the femly name, that's come doon unspotted
+frae ae generation till anither, tae a funnlin' aff the streets! Ou, ay!
+I micht 'a' kent what wad happen when I h'ard tell o' ye bein' merrit
+till an Amerrican."
+
+"Hold up there, mother. You're just twenty years too late in raking up
+that story. If it suits me and Belle to have that girl called 'Mary
+Gemmell,' Mary Gemmell she shall be, if it turns all Scotland head over
+heels into the North Sea."
+
+So seldom do I break out that an eruption of mine never fails to clear
+the air of an unwelcome topic.
+
+Our boys have grown up on a sort of an "every-man-for himself"
+principle, and when it came to a fight for the favorite corner of the
+sofa, the favorite game, or picture-book, "Mamie" was in the thick of it
+every time.
+
+"What else can you expect?" said I to Belle, consolingly. "She's been
+fighting the world on her own account ever since she can remember, and
+our house represents to her only a change of battle ground."
+
+"I think her father must have been a gentleman."
+
+"He certainly had one gentlemanly peculiarity."
+
+"Don't be a brute, Dave. I mean that Mary's ancestors must have been
+wealthy people, she has such a taste for luxury."
+
+"That doesn't follow. I'm sure you've seen plenty of poor folks go
+without the necessaries of life in order to get the luxuries."
+
+"She is shiftless enough. To-day I took her into a store to buy her some
+stockings, and she refused to have any but the very best quality. 'The
+second best are what I get for myself, Mary,' said I; 'they wear much
+longer than the others.' 'I don't care,' she said. 'If I can't have the
+best, I don't want any.' 'Then do without,' said I, and we left the
+place. The fun of it is that she won't even darn her old ones! I can't
+always be so firm with her. I'm amazed at myself sometimes, the things
+she gets out of me. What do you suppose she wants now?"
+
+I gave a warning cough to signify that my mother had come into the
+nursery, but Belle gazed straight ahead into the wood fire, and seesawed
+in the rattan rocker--a tuneful symphony in a mauve tea-gown.
+
+"A cornet, if you please."
+
+"A cornet!" said I. "Whatever put that into her head?"
+
+"I can't tell. She says the music professor at the convent can teach her
+to play it, and she thinks if she learned she might be able to lead the
+singing in a church with one."
+
+"Perhaps somebody played the cornet in that concert company she was
+with."
+
+"Na, na. It's nearer hame than that," mother struck in. "She has a
+notion o' ane o' thae cratur's 'at pl'y at the Opera Hoose. I hae seen
+her gang by the window wi' him, an' spiered at Watty wha he was."
+
+"I don't like Wat's telling tales of Mary."
+
+"He dinna, Davvit, till I pit it tae him. He canna bear the tawpie, and
+doesna like to hae her p'inted oot as his sister. A body canna blame the
+laddie. It's a heap better than his fa'in' in luv wi' her."
+
+"Perhaps it is," groaned Isabel.
+
+When mother had gone to bed my wife said:
+
+"Mrs. Wade has been here to-day to ask Watty and Mary to a young
+people's dance on Friday night."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"I told her I wasn't going to dress that girl up and send her out to
+parties to be snubbed and slighted by the other girls, as she was at the
+dancing school ball. She said that if I let Mary go she'd see that she
+had a good time. For her part, she admired the way I'd stuck up for the
+girl in spite of everything; and if she was good enough to live with us
+as a daughter, it would surely not contaminate anybody else to meet her
+out of an evening."
+
+Saturday night I inquired of Belle how Mary got on at the party.
+
+"First rate. Mrs. Wade met her at the door of the drawing room and
+kissed her. 'How you've grown, Mary!' said she, and then she took her
+round and introduced her to all the girls in the room, including some of
+those who've been cutting her right and left, as well as to every boy
+she didn't know already. Of course she danced every dance, and had the
+best time going."
+
+"And, of course, she put it all down to her own superior attractions?"
+
+"Just exactly. This morning she didn't want to help me make the beds!"
+
+Mary's Christmas present had been a beautiful silver-plated cornet, and
+of course she must learn to play it when she went back to the convent.
+Word came shortly that the music master employed there could not
+undertake to teach her to play the instrument, but that a "professor"
+could be secured to go out from Detroit twice a week--if desired. We
+seemed to be in for it, so the lessons were desired, and we comforted
+ourselves with the assurance that if Mary did not turn out to be a
+tiptop reciter she would surely prove a tiptop cornet player. Her
+unusual talent would justify my wife in her unusual step, and the
+society of Lake City would forgive her for attempting to thrust the girl
+into its midst as an equal. Many of our acquaintances seemed to take
+mother's view of the case,--"Matter out of place becomes _dirrt_!"--and
+Belle was put on her mettle to convince the majority that she had done
+exactly the right thing in thus disclassing people. Disclassing
+people? In a free republic!
+
+We received glowing accounts of the cornet lessons.
+
+"Dear girl!" said Belle enthusiastically. "She must have the real
+artistic temperament to be so determined to excel in one or other of the
+arts."
+
+"She's dramatic, anyway," said I, and I was confirmed in my opinion
+along in the spring, when the cornet, and aught else, appeared to have
+palled upon the versatile Mary. She wrote that she had serious thoughts
+of taking the veil.
+
+"Bah!" said I; "what's she after now? She wants to scare us into
+something."
+
+Belle wrote privately to the Lady Superior, telling her that if she
+considered Mary would be a desirable acquisition to their ranks she had
+no sort of objection to her joining them.
+
+The good sister replied that Miss Gemmell had not a grain of the stuff
+of which nuns are made, that her leanings were all in a worldly
+direction.
+
+"No hope in that quarter!" laughed I, but Belle chided me for making fun
+of Mary in her absence.
+
+When "Miss Mamie Gemmell" joined us at Interlaken for the summer her
+convent manners lasted for about two weeks, and then gave place to those
+of a spoiled and pampered daughter of the house.
+
+We in America are accustomed to disrespectfulness and waywardness in our
+own children, but to notice the same attitude in a little nobody from
+nowhere we have taken in out of charity, makes a man or woman stand
+aghast.
+
+"I don't believe she cares a straw for me personally," Belle would say
+sometimes, "but I must confess I like her better than the cringing,
+fawning variety. She's outspoken in her impertinent demands."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a very hot week in July I joyfully took the train on Saturday
+afternoon for the five miles' ride to Interlaken, and went to sleep that
+night with my ears full of the sound of waves and pine trees; my heart
+filled with the satisfaction of knowing that I had a whole round day
+ahead of me--a sunrise and a sunset at either end.
+
+I omitted the sunrise part of the programme, but between ten and eleven
+I was ready for a walk down the pier to watch the bathers. American
+women are seldom plump enough to stand the undress uniform of a bathing
+costume. They run to extremes--become very stout indeed, or else very
+thin, but in girlhood the tendency is to over-slimness.
+
+I was thinking what a contrast our summer girls would present to a
+group of Scotch lasses, though, to be sure, I was never privileged to
+see any of the latter in bathing-dress, when a well-rounded apparition
+in sky blue luster and no bathing cap emerged from one of the disrobing
+houses. This damsel betook herself boldly to the pier, instead of
+splashing around the edge of the sand as the others were doing, and,
+coming near the end, took a run and then a beautiful header into the
+deep blue water.
+
+She had passed me too quickly to be recognized, but as her face appeared
+above the surface I saw it belonged to no other than our adopted
+daughter, for as such, at the moment, was I pleased to own her. She
+shook the water out of her ears, gave her knob of hair an extra twist,
+brushed back the ringlets that threatened her eyes, and looked as much
+at home as if there were eighteen feet of land, instead of eighteen feet
+of water below her.
+
+There were several young men swimming about at the end of the wharf, and
+they declared with gusto that a springboard must be erected for "Miss
+Gemmell" at once. I declined to assist in breaking the Sabbath over any
+such pranks, but a couple of scantily clad, dripping youths arose from
+the deep and succeeded in loosening a heavy three-inch plank from the
+flooring of the wharf. This was projected well out over the water, and
+the fair Mary was induced to ascend and exhibit therefrom. I did not
+approve at all, but thought it my duty to remain as chaperon until Belle
+and another lady, whom I perceived walking leisurely out the pier,
+should arrive.
+
+The young men sprang back into the water to be on the reception
+committee, and Mary teetered on the far end of the plank. There was
+heard a loud, suggestive _crack_, and she leaped into space in a most
+graceful semicircle before touching the water; but that awful board, the
+instant her weight was removed, rose straight up in the air, nearly
+knocked me off the dock, and with a groan slid through the opening
+whence it had been raised, into the depths below.
+
+Belle rushed to my rescue, while the other woman stood still and
+shrieked.
+
+"Nobody hurt!" called out from the water a nice-looking lad who was
+swimming beside Mary, and apparently daring her to further exploits.
+
+"Who is the young man?" I asked my wife, being ready to change the
+subject from my own narrow escape.
+
+"You mean the one with the Burne Jones head and the sleepy blue eyes
+that's round with Mary all the time? His name's Flaker, and he's a
+medical student from Chicago. That's all I know about him." But she was
+destined to hear more, as we sat on the hotel veranda that night, from
+two old ladies inside the open window and closed blind.
+
+"Isn't it scandalous," said one, "the way Mrs. Gemmell tries to shove
+that girl forward on every occasion?"
+
+"Yes," said the other. "The old friendship between her and Mrs. Martin
+is all broken up since she tried so hard to get Lincoln Todd entangled
+with her last summer, and now she's doing her best to catch young
+Flaker."
+
+"I don't believe he has any idea who the girl is, or rather who she is
+not."
+
+"No, indeed, and his people would be in a great state if they knew the
+sort of company he was keeping."
+
+"Who are they?"
+
+"Don't you know? His father is Dr. Flaker, who has that fine mansion on
+the Grand Boulevard, and his mother belongs to one of the best New York
+families. They're all as proud as Lucifer."
+
+"I think it is time we went home, David. Listeners never hear any good
+of themselves," said Belle, loudly enough to arrest the attention of the
+two dames.
+
+Walking over the dried-up moonlit grass to our cottage, I threatened to
+go back and give them a piece of my mind, but my wife said:
+
+"Maybe I did need a slight reminder. I haven't paid much attention to
+Mary's goings-on this summer. I must talk to Mr. Flaker the first
+chance."
+
+The opportunity came before the Evening was over, while I was in my pet
+hammock round the corner of the cottage, and Belle in a rocking-chair at
+the front.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Flaker," I heard her say. "I don't think you've ever
+seen the inside of our cottage. Won't you step in for a moment, now that
+it is lighted up?"
+
+The moment satisfied him, for he speedily returned to the veranda.
+
+"I never saw such a beautiful swimmer as Miss Gemmell," said the mannish
+voice, and Belle replied impressively:
+
+"I believe you are not aware, Mr. Flaker, that the young lady you call
+Miss Gemmell is not my own daughter."
+
+"Your stepchild is she, or your husband's niece?"
+
+"Neither. She is no relation at all--just a poor girl whom I have taken
+up to educate. She can barely read or write. I felt that I ought to tell
+you this because you have been paying her a good deal of attention."
+
+"Indeed, Mrs. Gemmell, I admire Miss Gemmell very much; but I assure
+you I never regarded her as anything else than a pleasant summer
+acquaintance."
+
+And Mary was dropped forthwith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+THE winter of 1892-93 Mary spent at home with us. Her first expressed
+wish, when the family returned from Interlaken, was to be confirmed, and
+the Rev. Mr. Armstrong of the church we do not attend was duly notified.
+
+"He says I must be christened first," said Mary. "Would you mind if he
+called me 'Mary Gemmell'? There aint any name that I've a right to, and
+I don't want to be called 'Mason,' because that's the name of the woman
+that abused me when I was little. I'd rather have yours."
+
+She was such a pathetic-looking young person, standing there before
+Belle in her fresh and innocent loveliness, that my wife had not the
+heart to refuse her anything.
+
+When I came home that same evening there was a _tableau vivant_ in front
+of the parlor fire. Dressed in white, Mary sat on a low stool at the
+feet of the Rev. Walter Armstrong, her hands clasped in her lap, gazing
+up into the clean-shaven clerical face, with that which passed for her
+soul in her eyes. In spite of his stiff round collar and long black coat
+the rector is a young man, and I saw that he was impressed.
+
+"You understand, do you, Mary," he said tenderly, "that when you are
+received into the Church you have God for your Father and Christ for
+your Elder Brother?"
+
+"Yes, I understand, Mr. Armstrong," replied the girl earnestly. "And
+that's just what I always wanted--was to have _'folks.'_"
+
+I retired in haste to the dining room, where Isabel was brimming over
+with a new scheme.
+
+"I've always found the housekeeping a drag, and it becomes more so every
+year as my outlook broadens. I want to keep up to the times, but I never
+have any leisure for reading, and our four eldest being boys, there
+seemed to be no hope for years of having any one to relieve me."
+
+"Mary's a godsend," said I.
+
+"I wish you really thought that, as I do. She's quick and adaptable, and
+I'm going to hand over to her a weekly allowance and let her keep the
+house on it."
+
+"What about her accomplishments--the elocution and the cornet?"
+
+"They can stand in the meantime. Do you know, Davie," hesitatingly, "I'm
+beginning to be afraid she hasn't a good ear for music."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"The other night when the Mortons were in she sat and talked to Frank
+Wade the whole time Eva was playing."
+
+"That's nothing. Everyone else did the same."
+
+"But for a girl who is trying to pose as a cornet player, who thinks she
+might earn her living leading a church choir with one, it's bad policy,
+to say the least of it."
+
+"Earn her living! I asked Joe Mitchell, when he was listening to her
+practicing out in the summer-house, what he thought of her playing, and
+he said she'd better keep to a penny whistle."
+
+"Very rude of him!"
+
+"No, it wasn't. I asked him point blank if I should be justified in
+paying for the more lessons she wants, and he said decidedly I should
+not."
+
+"Well," said Belle wearily, "we'll try the housekeeping. That's a
+woman's true vocation, according to orthodox ideas. I shouldn't have set
+my heart on Mary turning out to be anything extraordinary. If she'll
+only be kind of half decent, and help me out with the housework, I'll be
+more than satisfied."
+
+The sense of power gave new brightness to Mary's fair face, and her step
+through the house was of the lightest during the next week or two, but
+the boys rebelled in turn.
+
+"_Mam_ma! Mary's locked the pantry. Must we go to her for the key
+whenever we want anything?"
+
+"I call it a mean shame!" from Joe.
+
+"What were you doing?"
+
+"We didn't do nothin', on'y eat up the pie she meant for dessert. I'm
+sure Margaret wouldn't mind makin' another."
+
+"Mary's perfectly right, boys; I've indulged you too much."
+
+Then it was Watty who complained:
+
+"Mary says she won't have us mussing up the parlor after she's tidied
+it, and that we've got to change our boots when we come into the house."
+Or Chrissie:
+
+"Mary says I'm big enough now to keep my own room in order, and she aint
+going to do it any more. She's wors'en grandma!"
+
+To their grandma did they go with their woes when they found their
+mother so unaccountably obdurate, but they did not get much comfort
+there. Detest Mary as she might, my poor mother is always loyal to the
+powers that be, and she told the children:
+
+"Yer mither kens fine what she's aboot, an' ye needna fash yer heids tae
+come cryin' tae me."
+
+She even went so far as to back Mary up in her suggestion that the boys
+should eat what was set before them, asking no questions.
+
+"That's the w'y yer faither was brocht up. If he didna finish his
+parritch in the mornin', they were warmed up for him again at nicht. Ye
+tak' but a spinfu' 'at ye could hardly ca' parritch, for they're jist
+puzhioned wi' sugar."
+
+Mary was not naturally fond of children, and, having entered our family
+full-grown, she found it hard to put up with the freaks of our six,
+there being no foundation of sisterly love upon which to build
+toleration.
+
+Belle's housekeeping had always been lavish. She ordered her groceries
+wholesale, and when they were done never inquired what had become of
+them.
+
+"I decline to go into details--life is too short! I don't know where my
+patience ends and my laziness begins, but I'd rather be cheated than
+lock things up, or try to keep track of what Margaret wastes. She's not
+an ideal 'general,' but it's only one in a hundred that would stand the
+children pottering about in the kitchen so much."
+
+After the time-worn custom of new brooms, Mary made a bold attempt to
+record each item of expenditure, and ordered what she wanted from day to
+day; but there was no calculating the appetites of four growing boys,
+especially when, as Mary affirmed, they sometimes over-ate themselves
+just to spite her.
+
+"We're living from hand to mouth, _pa_pa," they would say, when an
+unwonted scarcity occurred.
+
+Truth to tell, I began to sympathize with my revolting sons when I
+brought an old friend home with me to dinner one day, and went to
+announce the fact to our "housekeeper."
+
+"I just wish that Bob Mansell would quit coming here so much when he's
+not expected. There's only enough pudding for ourselves."
+
+"Mary," said I sternly, "Mr. Mansell's been coming to this house before
+you were here, and he'll keep on coming after you're gone, if you're not
+careful."
+
+It was the first time I had ever spoken sharply to her, and I flattered
+myself that I had done some good, though she held her head high and left
+the room.
+
+Belle came to the conclusion that the housekeeping scheme did not work
+smoothly, and she resumed the reins of government. Mary was still
+supposed to do the work of a second maid, but it was evident that her
+heart was not in it.
+
+"What does Mary want now?" I asked my wife when she took her usual seat
+beside me, as I lay on the sofa with my pipe.
+
+"She thinks she'd like to go to the Boston School of Oratory to prepare
+herself to be a public reader."
+
+"Is it necessary that she should be before the public in one way or
+another?"
+
+"She doesn't seem to be much of a success in private life."
+
+"In that respect she's no worse than half the girls in town. None of
+them dote on housework."
+
+"But, considering that this girl has no earthly claim on us, you'd think
+she might be different."
+
+"Don't be angry, Belle, at my saying so, but you've only yourself to
+thank for that. You've been most anxious that Mary should be just like
+one of ourselves--should not feel that she was accepting charity, and
+you've succeeded only too well. The girl takes everything you do for her
+as her right, and asks for more."
+
+"Well, what about Boston?"
+
+"I think it would be arrant folly to send her there. How do we know she
+has any more talent for elocution than for music?"
+
+"She has the desire to learn. I suppose that's a sign of the ability."
+
+"She has an intense desire for admiration, that's about the size of it.
+To be the center of all eyes, giving a recitation in a drawing room,
+pleases her down to the ground, but it doesn't follow that she would be
+a success professionally."
+
+"I dare say we've spent about as much on her education as you care to do
+just now."
+
+"We have indeed!"
+
+My wife and I are much in demand at all the social functions of our
+town, and, though I accompany her under protest, I confess that, once
+the affair is in full swing, I enjoy as much as anybody a hand at
+"Pedro" or a dance.
+
+The houses of our city are mostly wooden and mostly new, for an annual
+conflagration keeps building brisk. Hardwood floors and mantels are the
+order of the day, and if some of our lumbermen and their wives have not
+a command of English grammar in keeping with their horses, their
+sealskins, and their diamonds, they have a heartier than an English
+welcome--except, of course, for guests of such questionable antecedents
+as our Mary.
+
+Mrs. David Gemmell is a bright and witty woman, though I say it, who
+should not. But why should I not? She did not inherit her wits from me.
+Mrs. David Gemmell let the leading ladies of the town understand that
+unless Mary was invited to everything that was going on, we stayed away
+ourselves. Lake City society could not proceed without Isabel, so the
+"white elephant" was received in her train, and truly she did us credit
+in company, if nowhere else. She was always stylishly dressed, and her
+dancing was a joy forever. We did not marvel when Will Axworthy, the
+most eligible young man about, took it into his head to introduce the
+german to our benighted citizens, that he chose Mary for his partner to
+lead it with him. She had private lessons from himself, as well as from
+the dancing master, and proud and happy were Belle and I to sit at the
+side of the ballroom and watch her going through the figures and
+bestowing her favors with all the grace and dignity of one of the four
+hundred.
+
+"She shall go to Boston to-morrow, if she wants to," said I, but this
+time Belle demurred.
+
+"I think she seems likely to have a good time here this winter, and we
+may as well let her have her fling."
+
+The prophecy was fulfilled. In spite of the supreme jealousy of the
+other girls, who could not say mean enough things about her, Mary
+became quite the rage with the young men.
+
+One Sunday afternoon Will Axworthy called. He is short and broad, has
+reddish hair and a chronic blush hardly to be looked for in the Ward
+McAllister of Lake City. Too nervously did he plant himself in my frisky
+spring rocker, and therefore involuntarily did he present the soles of
+his boots to the assembled family, while his head bumped the wall, to
+the huge delight of our boys!
+
+Undaunted by that inauspicious beginning, he came again the next Sunday,
+smoked my best cigars, and talked lumber, the one subject upon which he
+is posted, for he was the manager of a mill here.
+
+He stayed to supper that evening and went with Mary to church afterward.
+Then he called for her with a cutter the first bright day, and took her
+sleigh riding. The embryo wrinkle left Belle's forehead.
+
+"Do you really think he means anything?" said she.
+
+"Don't be too sanguine about it. Nowadays, young men pay a girl a great
+deal of attention with nothing in their heads but a good time."
+
+"Still, Axworthy's no boy. He's thirty if he's a day, and he has a good
+salary, and can afford to marry whenever the mood takes him."
+
+"Let us hope and pray that it may take him soon!"
+
+"Amen!" said Belle solemnly.
+
+The daily friction with her _protegee_ was becoming too much for the
+good-natured patience even of my better half. Acting upon generous
+impulses is all very fine, but they need to be backed up by a large
+amount of endurance and tolerance if the results are to be successfully
+dealt with.
+
+From my vantage-ground on the nursery sofa, behind my screen of
+newspaper, I frequently hear more than is suspected by the family.
+
+"Mary, you're not going to the rink to-night!" in Belle's most imploring
+tone.
+
+"Yes, mawm, I am. Lend me your wrench, Watty."
+
+"Mary, I positively forbid you to go to the rink!"
+
+"Well, I do think that's just too mean for anything. Every girl in town
+goes."
+
+"Every girl in town doesn't skate with barber, or bandsman, or anybody
+who comes along, as you do."
+
+"Watty's been telling!"
+
+"Watty hasn't been telling!" broke in our eldest son in indignant
+protest, which he further emphasized by going out and banging the door
+after him.
+
+"And, Mary," Belle continued, "are you engaged to Mr. Axworthy?"
+
+"No!" sullenly.
+
+"Then if I were you I wouldn't let him kiss me when he says
+'Good-night' at the door after bringing you home from a party."
+
+"You're old-fashioned. All the girls do it!"
+
+"No _lady_ would permit a man to take such a liberty. You're spoiling
+your chances with Mr. Axworthy, I can tell you. I never knew a man yet
+that would bind himself to a girl when he could have all the privileges
+of an engaged man, and none of the responsibilities."
+
+"I don't care anything at all about him. I don't want to marry him. He's
+just giving me a good time."
+
+A good time he undoubtedly did give her throughout the winter. To the
+smartest balls and parties he was her escort, and she always wore the
+roses he never neglected to send. Every Sunday about dusk he would come
+round to our house, and, martyrs to a good cause, Isabel, mother, and I
+vacated the cozy parlor with its easy chairs and blazing fire for the
+nursery--always uproarious with children on that day.
+
+"I wonder what those two find to talk about," speculated Belle. "Mary
+has no conversation at all, and Axworthy hasn't much more."
+
+"Perhaps he takes it out in looking at her. By the way, Belle, when are
+you going to appear in the new dress I gave you that fifty dollars to
+buy? I am quite tired of the mauve tea gown."
+
+My wife glanced over her shoulder to make sure that Grandma was out of
+hearing.
+
+"The truth is, Dave, I thought I must wait to see how much of it I had
+left after getting Mary rigged up for the Robinsons' dance. She goes out
+so often that she needs a change of evening dress."
+
+"Did she ask for it?"
+
+"Not directly, but she remarked that she didn't see what I wanted with
+a new black silk, that I had plenty of clothes, and that when she was my
+age she didn't think she'd bother about what she had to wear."
+
+I sprang up from the sofa, prepared to shove Mary out of the house, neck
+and crop, but Belle's outburst of laughter calmed me.
+
+"Her cheek is so great that it passes from the ridiculous to the
+sublime!"
+
+"Why do you stand it, Belle? You wouldn't from anybody else."
+
+"I can't very well go back on her at this stage, and send her about her
+business. She's shrewd enough to know that."
+
+"People would laugh; that's so!"
+
+"Besides, if she marries Axworthy, she'll be our social equal here in
+this town, and it must never be in her power to say that we did not
+treat her well."
+
+"What is the prospect with Axworthy?"
+
+"Good, I think. He is thoroughly kind to her, and he has given me plenty
+of hints about the state of his affections, hopes by another winter that
+Mary will have somebody else to look after her, and so on. He is always
+most particular in seeing that she is well wrapped up, and that is
+highly necessary, for she is extremely careless about how she goes out.
+In spite of a certain amount of physical dash, she isn't a bit strong;
+has no staying power."
+
+"It won't be much fun for Axworthy to be saddled with a delicate wife."
+
+"Well, I guess he needs some discipline, just as much as I do. I've had
+my share out of Miss Mary for the last three years, and I am quite
+willing to let somebody else have a turn. He walks into this thing with
+his eyes open. He knows her history."
+
+"But does he know her disposition?"
+
+"Let him find that out--if he can. Most mothers don't think it necessary
+to tell their daughters' suitors how the girls get on with them in the
+house."
+
+"You say she has no constitution. Supposing he does marry her, how about
+the possible children? What have they done that they should have Mary
+for a mother?"
+
+"That's exactly the right way to put it--what have they done? We don't
+know, but they must have gone far astray last time, if they are given
+such a bad start this incarnation."
+
+Will Axworthy left town in the spring. Lumber was done in our part of
+Michigan and he had to follow it further south. He and Mary
+corresponded, for I caught Belle in the act of correcting one of her
+letters.
+
+"Do you think that's quite fair to Axworthy? If they become engaged, the
+first unedited letter he gets from Mary will be considerable of a
+surprise to him."
+
+"Don't you bother your old head, Dave! I'm running this thing! He's
+arranging to meet us in Chicago, and hopes to have the pleasure of
+showing Mary the Columbian Exhibition. Something is sure to happen while
+we're there!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+ALL winter we had been talking about the Fair, reading up about the
+Fair, making plans for the Fair; and Belle declared that even if she
+never saw the Fair she would be glad it had been, on account of the
+amount of preparatory information she had laid up.
+
+We did get off at last in the end of June, the whole of us, including
+Mary, of course--my first experience of traveling in her company. We
+went to Chicago by boat,--a night's crossing,--and a rare time I had
+securing berths for the family in the overcrowded propeller. I was
+thankful for an "extension," a sort of shell run out between two
+staterooms and partitioned off by curtains and poles. The boys had to
+sleep on sofas, floor, anywhere, which to them was but the beginning of
+the fun.
+
+The first of my Herculean labors at an end, I was enjoying my smoke aft
+in the cool of the evening, when Belle came back to me, her brow drawn
+up into what I had begun to call the "Mary wrinkle."
+
+"David, I'm afraid you'll have to talk to that girl. She's sitting up in
+the bow there flirting with one of the waiters, and though I've sent
+Watty twice after her, she won't stir."
+
+As majestically as my five feet four would permit, I moved to the front
+of the boat.
+
+"Mary, Mrs. Gemmell wants you right away."
+
+She took time to exchange a laughing farewell with the good-looking
+waiter, and explained to me _en route_:
+
+"That's Bill Moreland. I knew him quite well in Lake City. I've met him
+at balls."
+
+In the morning before we reached Chicago, she managed to get in a long
+confabulation with another waiter, whom I am sure she had never met in
+Lake City, nor anywhere else.
+
+"See here, Mary! If this is the way you're going to behave, you go
+straight back to Lake City on that boat, and don't see one bit of the
+Fair."
+
+Her manners were mended till we were actually in Jackson Park, but then:
+
+"She's a philanthropist, Belle, a lover of _man_kind--Columbian Guard,
+Gospel Charioteer, Turk in the bazaar. The creed or the color doesn't
+matter so long as he calls himself a man."
+
+I am afraid I was cross, for it did not take one day to realize what an
+undertaking it was going to be to keep track of my family, who had never
+before seemed too numerous. Daily at 10 A. M., in the Michigan Building,
+did I hand over to Will Axworthy the most troublesome of the lot, and
+daily did I wish he would keep her for better or worse.
+
+On the Fourth of July cannonading began at daybreak, and for once I
+sympathized in my mother's objection to the license accorded to young
+Americans. They set off firecrackers, not by the bunch but by the
+bushel; kerosene and dynamite were their ambrosia and nectar. What with
+fighting for lunch in overcrowded restaurants, and then retaliating by
+stealing chairs out of the same, hunting through the various booths in
+the Midway to collect my three younger sons when it was time to send
+them home, and rescuing my two little girls from an over-supply of ice
+cream sodas and chocolate drops, I did not specially enjoy the glorious
+Fourth.
+
+Toward evening there was not a foot of Fair ground undecorated by a
+banana skin, a crust of bread, or a flying paper. Belle considered the
+signs "Keep off the Grass" quite superfluous, and pulling one up by the
+roots she sat down on it, thereby keeping the letter, if not the spirit
+of the law.
+
+"Now, Dave," said she, "the family are all safe off the grounds, and you
+can go and get a gondola to come and take us for a sail before dark.
+Everybody is moving toward the lake front to wait for the fireworks, and
+the lagoons are not so crowded as they were. Let's pretend we're on our
+honeymoon."
+
+So seldom does Belle wax sentimental over me, I hailed her proposition
+with outward indifference but inward joy. Securing a gondola to
+ourselves, in it we were gently swayed through canal and under bridge in
+the mystical evening light.
+
+The distant rumble of a train on the Intramural, or a quack from a
+sleepy duck among the rushes, alone broke the stillness.
+
+"This is where I belong!" exclaimed Belle. "I've seen before those
+Eastern-looking towers and minarets, with the sunset glow on the cloud
+masses behind them. Look! there's a Turk and a Hindoo crossing the
+bridge. This is the region, this the soil, the clime. I always knew I
+wasn't meant for Western America."
+
+"You must have been very naughty _last time_ to have been raised in
+Michigan this trip. Still this is only Chicago!"
+
+"It's not Chicago! It's the world! Listen to that now--the music of the
+spheres!"
+
+We approached another gondola that had withdrawn itself from the center
+of the channel close in to a small island. The man at the stern was
+doing nothing very picturesquely, but the man at the bow, a swarthy
+Venetian, was pouring out his soul in an aria from "Cavalleria
+Rusticana." His voice might not have passed muster at Covent Garden, but
+in the unique stage setting, which included a group of eager listeners
+on abridge behind him, one could forgive a break on a high note or two.
+
+The singer threw himself into the spirit of the composition, cast his
+eyes upward with hand on his heart, and bent them to earth again for the
+approval of his passengers. There were but two, a young man and a young
+lady, and to the latter was the hero in costume directing his amorous
+glances.
+
+"There's romance for you!" said I to Belle, who is notoriously on the
+lookout for it. I directed our gondolier to draw nearer to his
+enamoured compatriot. My wife replied uneasily:
+
+"I don't know the man, or boy, for that's all he is, but if that isn't
+Mary's hat----"
+
+"Mary! Phew! What's become of Axworthy?"
+
+As we approached the comfortable-looking pair, Mary bowed to us
+smilingly, and called the attention of her companion to her "father and
+mother"--darn her impudence!
+
+The boat ride was spoiled for Belle and me, our white elephant having
+arisen to haunt us once more. We landed and walked over to the lake
+front, where the whole slope was packed with people waiting for the
+fireworks to begin.
+
+Someone started to sing "Way Down upon the Swanee Ribber," and everybody
+joined in. "Nearer, my God, to Thee" was also most impressive from the
+vast impromptu chorus. In the foreground Lake Michigan lay darkly
+expectant, with a large black cloud upon its horizon, though the stars
+shone overhead. A half-circle of boats extended from the long Exhibition
+Wharf on the right, round to the warship _Illinois_ on the left, and
+from the latter a search light, an omnipresent eye, swept the crowd with
+rapidly veering glance, till it concentrated its gaze on the dark
+balloon which rose so mysteriously from the water. Suddenly from this
+balloon was suspended the Stars and Stripes in colored lights. The crowd
+cheered like mad, the boats whistled, and sent up rockets galore.
+
+On went the programme. Bombs tested the strength of our wearied
+ear-drums, fiery snakes sizzled through the air, big wheels spurted
+brilliant marvels, and along the very edge of the lake, to the great
+discomfort of the front rows of the stalls, a line of combustibles
+behaved like gigantic footlights on a spree.
+
+"David, who do you suppose that was with Mary?"
+
+I had been up in the air with George Washington, surrounded by "First in
+War, First in Peace, etc.," in letters of fire, and I was unwillingly
+recalled to earth.
+
+"Haven't the remotest idea. Hope she hasn't given Axworthy the slip."
+
+"I'm only hoping that he has not given her the slip. I'd never have
+brought her to the Fair if he hadn't agreed to look after her."
+
+At that moment there was a surging of the mighty crowd, caused by a band
+of college students pushing their way through, shoulder to shoulder,
+singing one of their rousing ditties. Some people who had been standing
+on their hired rolling chairs had narrow escapes from being flung upon
+the shoulders of those in front. Some did not escape--Mary for
+instance, who landed between us as if shot from a catapult.
+
+"I knew I was going to fall, so I just jumped to where I seen you two,"
+said she, with her customary calmness, and then she turned to assure her
+escort of the gondola, who was anxiously elbowing his way to her, that
+she was entirely unhurt.
+
+Blushing prettily, she introduced the lad as "Mr. Tom Axworthy--cousin
+of the Mr. Axworthy you know."
+
+Mr. Tom talked to Mrs. Gemmell with the ease and assurance of ninety
+rather than nineteen, while I exchanged a few words aside with the
+maiden:
+
+"Where is the Mr. Axworthy that we know?"
+
+"He had some business to do in town to-night, so he left me in charge of
+this cousin of his--just a lovely fellow!"
+
+"Humph! Introduced you to any more of his relations?"
+
+"Oh, yes--an uncle; quite an old bachelor, but lovely too!"
+
+"And I suppose you've been round with the uncle as well."
+
+"Not very much. He was to have taken me up in the balloon yesterday, but
+the cyclone burst it."
+
+"We're going home now, and I think you'd better say 'Good-night' to Mr.
+Tom Axworthy and come with us."
+
+After waiting two hours and a half for standing room on a suburban
+train, we reached the hotel at an early hour on July the 5th, dusty,
+smoke-stained, and powder-scented, like veterans from a field of battle.
+
+That was not by any means the last of Mr. Tom Axworthy. During the
+remainder of our stay in Chicago it was he quite as frequently as his
+more mature and eligible cousin who exchanged a lingering farewell with
+Mary at the ladies' entrance to our hotel, and a great fear arose in the
+heart of Belle that the young woman was fooling away her time with this
+impecunious boy, instead of making the most of her opportunities to come
+to a satisfactory understanding with his cousin. Every morning did she
+gaze pathetically into my face, saying:
+
+"I do hope Axworthy will propose to-day!" and once she added:
+
+"I cannot face another winter in the same house with that girl and your
+mother. Grandma has taken it into her head that Mary is my pet lamb, the
+idol of my heart, for whom she, and you too, have been set aside. She
+doesn't see that it worries me half to death to have Mary tagging round
+after me the whole time, and overrunning the house with her beaux.
+Neither of our own girls is old enough yet, thank goodness, to consider
+herself my companion and equal, to wear my gloves, my boots, my best
+hairpins, and to use my favorite perfume; to come and plant herself down
+beside me whenever I'm talking confidentially to anyone, to be
+determined to have her finger into every pie, to know what I'm reading
+or thinking about. She'll insist on knowing my dreams next!"
+
+"Perhaps you mesmerize her."
+
+"If I did, I'd make her keep away from me! I could stand it all better
+if I thought she really cared a straw for me, but I have the feeling
+that she regards me merely as a basis for supplies."
+
+"We can only trust, then, that the basis may be speedily transferred to
+Axworthy!"
+
+On our return from the World's Fair, the family stopped off at
+Interlaken, but I had to go on into town to the _Echo_ office. To my
+surprise, Mary joined me at my solitary dinner at the "House of the
+Seven Gables," where Margaret, as usual, was in charge, and she remained
+there for the rest of the week.
+
+"Where's Mary?" was Belle's greeting, when I joined her on Saturday.
+
+"She's in town."
+
+"Why didn't you bring her out with you?"
+
+"Didn't know you wanted her. She said she'd like to stay in Lake City
+over Sunday, to take the Communion."
+
+"Take the Communion indeed! She wants to be left there alone with
+Margaret, so that she'll have a chance to flirt with every man in town.
+I thought you had more sense, David."
+
+I pulled my soft felt hat further over my diminished head.
+
+"Did she get any letters?"
+
+"One or two."
+
+"Wretch! I told her to come out here with you to-night for certain."
+
+Monday morning, mother, who had been spending the summer with my married
+sister in Lake City, came out to stay for a week with us at Interlaken.
+
+She could hardly wait till the youngsters were out of hearing to pour
+her story into my ears. I had to take back to town the train by which
+she had come out, but she made the most of her time.
+
+"There's been great doin's in yer hoose in yer absence. Marg'et 's been
+tellin' yer sister's servant a' aboot Mary's luv affairs. Mary tell't
+her 'at Eesabelle bade her write Willum Axworthy an' spier his
+intentions; that if she didna, Mrs. Davvit said she'd d'it hersel'. An'
+a' the time she's correspondin' wi' a yunger ane, an Axworthy tae, 'at
+she tells Marg'et she likes a hape better. Yer sister's sair affronted
+to think o' the w'y the fem'ly name's bein' cairted thro' the mire."
+
+Belle came out on the veranda, her broad hat in her hand, ready to walk
+down to the train with me.
+
+"So Axworthy didn't propose at the Fair?" said I, when we were out of
+earshot of the cottage.
+
+"No; and I think it's a crying shame, too, after the way he appropriated
+the girl all last winter, and in Chicago too."
+
+"A great relief to you! Well, I guess the whole town knows by this time
+that you made Mary write and ask his intentions."
+
+"This is too much! Has your mother----"
+
+"Mary's been making a _confidante_ of Margaret, that's all. That
+inestimable domestic is so much one of ourselves, it was hard for the
+unsophisticated mind to know exactly where to draw the line."
+
+"I hope she has drawn the line at showing Margaret his reply. I haven't
+seen that myself."
+
+"What can you expect it to be? If he had wanted to marry the girl there
+was nothing to prevent him asking her, and if he did not, no letter of
+yours would make him want to."
+
+"She wrote it herself, and all she said was that she would like to know
+definitely how she stood with him. I did nothing but correct the
+spelling."
+
+"Better if you had written in your own name, and without her knowledge.
+No daughter of the house would ever have been put in such a position. So
+far as I can judge, Mary and Mr. Will Axworthy are quits. If he has had
+a good time in her society, she has had an equally good time in his, and
+he does not enjoy her letters so much as he did her propinquity."
+
+"He's a cold-hearted, cowardly----"
+
+"Tut! tut! my dear!"
+
+By this time we were on the platform, and the engine was backing its one
+car down to receive me and the other unhappy toilers compelled to go
+away and leave that sapphire-blue lake behind.
+
+"Don't you think, Isabel, that it's about time you quit trying to play
+Providence and gave God a chance?"
+
+"Dave! you're blasphemous!"
+
+"No, I'm not. I only wish to remark that in your schemes for the welfare
+of one particular person, you are apt to overlook the comfort and
+happiness of everyone else concerned. That's the worst of not being
+omniscient. You're only an amateur sort of a deity after all."
+
+"Send that girl out here by the very next train." And I obeyed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+ANOTHER week of night work, and then the sunniest of Sundays on the
+shore of old Lake Michigan.
+
+I noticed that Mary was in deep disgrace with my wife, who would hardly
+speak to her, and I judged therefore that Mr. Will Axworthy had not been
+brought to time.
+
+I am not a venturesome boatman, and generally confine my aquatic outings
+to the smaller lake, but that Saturday night there was not a breath of
+wind, and the water was placidity personified, so I drifted in my small
+skiff through the channel that connects the smaller with the larger body
+of water. On the sandy point jutting out at the mouth, upon an old
+stump, sat a solitary maiden, the picture of woe.
+
+"Hello, Mary!" said I, ignoring the tears; "want to go for a boat ride?"
+
+"I don't care if I do," she replied, seating herself in the stern, which
+I turned toward her.
+
+Silently I pulled out into the big lake, where the copper-colored sun
+going down in a haze near the horizon bade us beware of a hot day on the
+morrow. Out of the lake to the right rose the full moon, failing as yet
+to make her gentle influence felt against the radiant glow the sun was
+leaving behind him.
+
+"So Axworthy's gone back on you, Mary?"
+
+The fountains played again.
+
+"Yes; and it aint the first time I've got left, neither."
+
+With Mrs. Mason, the Ferguson Family, Lincoln Todd, and young Flaker on
+the tablets of my mind, I could truthfully assent to that remark.
+
+"Still, it may be just the making of you in the long run."
+
+"I'm not breakin' my heart over Will Axworthy; didn't care nothing 'tall
+'bout him, on'y I'd got used havin' him round, and I'd have married him
+if he asked me. I think a sight more of his cousin."
+
+"The boy we saw at the Fair?"
+
+"Yes. He's written me a lovely letter. Would you mind reading it aloud
+to me? Some of the big words I couldn't make out, and neither could
+Margaret. I wrote him all myself!"
+
+Never before had it fallen to my lot to play father confessor to a lady
+in love difficulties, but the editorial mind is equal to any emergency,
+so I let my oars slide and adjusted my reading-glasses to peruse Mary's
+precious epistle.
+
+When I had read on to the signature. "Your devoted lover 'Tom,'" Mary's
+face was radiant.
+
+"Aint he smart? You know he was at the Fair, reporting for a newspaper."
+
+"That explains his glibness. Don't have anything to do with him, Mary.
+He's just trying to draw you on. The burnt dog should dread the fire."
+
+"But he admires me, don't he?"
+
+"He says so, but he is much more anxious that you should admire him.
+Why, it's part of his business to keep his hand in by being in love, or
+rather by having some silly little fool of a girl in love with him.
+You'll just get left again if you encourage this young scamp."
+
+April showers once more.
+
+"I think the best thing I can do is to jump overboard here into Lake
+Michigan. It don't seem to me I'm wanted anywheres."
+
+"That might do very well, but you're too good a swimmer to drown
+easily, and you'd catch on to my boat and upset me. I can't swim a
+stroke, and there'd be five--six young Gemmells and a widow and a mother
+cast upon the world. No, we'll have to think of something better than
+that."
+
+Mary's laughter was always quick an the heels of her tears.
+
+"What do you think I'm good for, anyhow?"
+
+"I can testify that you're not a success as a housekeeper."
+
+"Nor a nursemaid."
+
+"And as a lady's companion you're not all that could be desired, even if
+there were a demand for the article in West Michigan."
+
+"As a gentleman's companion I am all right," and the girl showed her
+perfect teeth in a smile.
+
+"It's no joking matter, Mary. You're not very happy in our house, and
+things will be worse for you next winter, with no Will Axworthy coming
+to see you, and no engagement to him in prospect. What do you think
+yourself that you're fit for--putting reciting and cornet playing out of
+the question?"
+
+The young lady rested her chin on the palm of her hand and composed her
+face into a bewitching expression of profound meditation.
+
+"I can't teach, and I can't sew, and I can't cook. I couldn't bear
+sitting still all day at a typewriter, and there's no room in the
+telephone office. You know quite well that there aint a thing for girls
+like me to do but to get married. That's why God made us pretty, so's
+we'd have a good chance."
+
+"Don't be flippant, miss. How do you think you'd like to be an hospital
+nurse?"
+
+"I dunno; I wouldn't mind trying. I'm generally good to folks--when
+they're sick--and I aint a bit scared of dirty nor of dead ones. I laid
+out an old woman that died in the Refuge."
+
+"You're not particularly thin-skinned, that's a fact; but it's the
+educational qualification I'd be afraid of. There's some sort of an
+examination to be passed before you can get into any of these Training
+Schools nowadays. I'll write for some forms of application, and we'll
+see. If once you were able to support yourself, you'd think very
+differently about marrying anybody that turned up, just for the sake of
+a home. Ours mayn't be much of a one for you, but marry to get out of
+it, and you'll perhaps find yourself out of the frying-pan into the
+fire."
+
+"I think it would be just lovely to be a nurse! There was one came down
+from Chicago when Mrs. Wade was sick, and the uniform was awfully
+pretty. I'm sure it would suit me."
+
+"It would be very becoming, I haven't any doubt of that; and when it's
+all settled that you are going to an hospital you can write in reply to
+Will Axworthy's last letter."
+
+"He wanted me to keep on writing to him just the same; said he'd like
+always to be good friends with me."
+
+"I wouldn't write him but once again, and do it all by yourself. Just
+say that the reason you wrote the other letter, asking how you stood
+with him, was that you had been thinking of leaving us altogether, but
+before taking the decided step of entering an hospital, you had thought
+it only fair to him to give him the chance to object, if he really had
+the objections he had led you to take for granted."
+
+We heard a shouting and a blowing of tin horns upon the beach at this
+juncture. I took the oars and pulled in, seeing Belle and the boys
+waving their hats in the bright moonlight. My wife's face expressed the
+blankest astonishment when she saw who was my shipmate.
+
+"We thought you must have fallen asleep out there. Didn't know you had
+company!"
+
+Mary was still in the black books when I came down the next Saturday.
+Belle had a bitter complaint.
+
+"She sat there the whole afternoon yesterday and part of the evening,
+writing and rewriting a letter before my very eyes. 'Are you replying to
+Will Axworthy?' I asked quite cordially, for I did want to have a hand
+in answering that letter--had some cutting sentences all ready for him.
+'Yes, mawm,' said she very shortly; 'but I guess I can manage to get
+along by myself.'"
+
+I did not dare own up to the advice I had given, but I saw that matters
+must be hastened. Having business in Chicago about that time, I visited
+almost every hospital in the city, telling Mary's story in my most
+dramatic newspaper style. I made it understood that it was very noble
+and self-sacrificing of the young woman, when she might live in the lap
+of luxury,--for thus did I unblushingly describe my own modest
+establishment,--to embrace a nurse's vocation and labor for the good of
+humanity, including herself, of course. The education--or the lack of
+it--was the drawback everywhere, and also the youth of the applicant,
+twenty-five being a more acceptable age than barely twenty-one.
+
+But my perseverance was at last rewarded by finding the superintendent
+of a training school who still had some imagination left, and who became
+deeply interested in Mary's "tale of woe."
+
+"Make her study her reading, spelling, and arithmetic as hard as she
+can for the next few months, and I'll get her in the very first
+opening."
+
+The prospect roused Belle's old-time vigor, and she had spelling matches
+for Mary's benefit, made the girl read aloud to her, gave her dictation
+to write, and heard her the multiplication tables every forenoon--when
+she did not forget.
+
+One delightful morning in October I had the honor of taking our
+_protegee_ into Chicago and delivering her up to the lady
+superintendent. If she could only stand the month of probation, we
+flattered ourselves that she would be safe.
+
+Three weeks later I met the Rev. Mr. Armstrong on the street.
+
+"I think it is only right to tell you what people are saying," said he.
+
+"It's my business to know," I replied.
+
+"I mean about your adopted daughter. I have just been told by two
+reputable parties, one after the other, that she has been dismissed from
+the hospital for flirting, and that you and Mrs. Gemmell are hushing the
+matter up as well as you can, but that you don't know at all where she
+is."
+
+When I reached home my first question was:
+
+"Have you heard from Mary lately, Belle?"
+
+"Not for a week, and I'm quite worried about her. Before that, she wrote
+to me dutifully every two or three days, telling me all about her work.
+I've kept on writing to her just the same, making excuses for her to
+herself, and never doubting her for a minute; but to tell you the truth,
+Dave, I'm getting dreadfully anxious."
+
+Then I told her what I had heard.
+
+"Don't you believe it, David! I never shall till I hear it from
+herself. I know now for a certainty that I love that girl! I'll believe
+her before all the world! I'll stick by her through thick and thin! I'll
+not insult her by writing to the Hospital! What now matters the little
+inconveniences of living with her? What have a few clothes and toilet
+articles, more or less, to do with it? If she has failed, she shall come
+_home_, and we'll begin the three years' fight all over again. I'll sit
+down now and write her the nicest letter I can write."
+
+That sounded very brave, but inwardly I knew that my wife suffered
+agonies the next few days.
+
+"Perhaps if I had done this," she would say, "or if I had done that--it
+seems precisely like a death, and I've killed her."
+
+Tuesday morning, two letters came from Mary. They were hurriedly and
+excitedly written.
+
+"My dear good mother, I am accepted! It is the happiest day of my life;
+it will be a red letter day for you! I love you. I have tried so hard
+for your sake; I have tried to make my life hear one long prayer and the
+dear Lord helps me. I did not write because the exam. was delaid, and I
+wanted to wait untill I had something _good_ to tell you. I look nice in
+the unniform. It is pink and a white cap, apron and cuffs. Oh I am so
+contented; this work is so filling. I never get lonely or homesick. _We_
+nurses had a party, and we danced and served ice cream, and there was
+some lovely doctors here, and the Princippal is so kind to us we have
+lots of fun"--and so the letters ran on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reaction was too much for Belle. She cried, then she laughed, then
+she fell on her knees and thanked God, and she told me she added that,
+for pity's sake, He _must_ set His angels to guard Mary, for she was a
+poor, frail child, who had got lost in coming this time, and many
+persecuted her because she was pretty, and might find a resting place
+and get a little of what rightfully (?) belonged to them.
+
+After a while she went down to see Mr. Armstrong, and read him the
+letters. He turned very white.
+
+"Oh, the pity of it!" said he.
+
+"I wish I could gather her slanderers into one room and read them these
+letters," said Belle.
+
+For days afterward she button-holed people in the street to tell them
+about Mary, or to read them scraps of her letters. If they had said she
+was vain and idle, and selfish and incompetent, just like the half of
+their own daughters, Belle could have forgiven them. It was their
+determination to shove her into the gutter which made my wife her
+valiant champion.
+
+"Whatever that girl amounts to, Dave, will be born of our faith in her,
+and we must never go back on her. She writes me that whenever she has a
+hard task, such as attending fits, there I stand at her back and help."
+
+"Just between ourselves, though, you must confess that it is a great
+relief to have her away."
+
+"You can't begin to feel that as I do. I live again! I read my own
+books, think my own thoughts. I belong to myself. No one says, 'What's
+the matter?' 'Where are you going?' 'What makes you grave--or gay?' I
+sit and chat with my 'odd-fish.' I go to all kinds of meetings and
+discuss all kinds of 'isms, and have no tag-tail constantly asking
+'Why?' 'Why?' or 'Tell me!' It's the little things that grind. The next
+time I try to help a young girl, I'll not risk losing my influence with
+her by taking her into my house. Do you know, Dave, I sometimes feel
+that Mary must have been my own child in a previous incarnation, and I
+neglected and abused her; that's why she was thrust back upon me this
+time, whether I liked it or not."
+
+After Christmas Isabel decided that she must go up to Chicago to see
+Mary, and on her return thrilling was the account she gave of her
+experiences, which included an attendance at an autopsy--but upon that I
+shall not enlarge.
+
+Introducing herself to the Superintendent of the School, she said:
+
+"Can I have Miss Gemmell for two days at my hotel?"
+
+"Indeed, no, madam. We are short of help, and it would be entirely
+against the rules."
+
+"Then I'll stay here with her."
+
+The Lady Superintendent looked distressed.
+
+"Don't think us inhospitable, but there is absolutely no provision for
+guests in all this great building."
+
+"Oh!" said Belle, unabashed. "I seem to be unfortunate in breaking, or
+wanting to break, the rules of this house. Now, will you kindly tell me
+what I can do? How can I see the very most of my Mary while I am in
+Chicago?"
+
+After some thought the answer came:
+
+"You may have Miss Gemmell to-morrow afternoon, and two hours on
+Sunday."
+
+"That will not suit me at all! Now, please forget all that has been
+said, and I will tell you that I Mrs. David Gemmell of Lake City,
+Michigan, am a poor tired woman, threatened with nervous prostration,
+have already chills of apprehension running down my back, coupled with
+flushes of expectation to my head." By this time Mary, the Lady
+Superintendent, and two other nurses present were all attention, and
+Belle added gravely:
+
+"I want one of your best private rooms on Corridor B, where Miss Gemmell
+is on duty, and I should like to see the House Surgeon at once."
+
+So Belle was comfortably and luxuriously established in the hospital,
+and the only drawback was that she had to be served with her meals in
+her room.
+
+"What feasts we had--Mary and I," she said. "What fun! Before I left I
+had demoralized that whole hospital staff, and broken every rule in the
+institution. It did them all good."
+
+"I hope you haven't been indiscreet," said I.
+
+"Indiscreet?"
+
+"You must remember that Mary braced herself up to go to the hospital
+when she was 'out' with you. Now you've gone and made so much of her
+that she'll think, whenever things become too hot for her, she has only
+to march straight back here again."
+
+"She assures me she _will_ graduate."
+
+"There should never be any question of that."
+
+"David, I've only told you the one side. If that girl were my very own I
+should pluck her out of that particular fire. I'd get down on my knees
+and beg her pardon for having thrown her into it. It burns up their
+youth, their bloom, their originality, their modesty. It thrusts the
+girls into a charnel house of sin, sickness, and death. It shatters the
+nervous system of nine out of ten, or it leaves them calm, steady,
+burnt-out women, who have been behind the scenes of life and are
+disillusioned. When that little pink and white thing sat there and told
+me of some of the awful situations that she'd been placed in, and over
+which she was made responsible, the tears rolled down my face. I forgave
+her lots of things."
+
+"Plenty of refined, educated women with a very different bringing up
+from Mary's go through the same."
+
+"Well, I advised her to go on and finish the course, if only to show her
+friends, and enemies, the stuff she's made of. When I think of those
+free wards, and the menial, disgusting offices that frail little girl
+has to perform! What did she sow that she should reap this fighting in
+the thickest of the fight, so poorly equipped?"
+
+"I dare say there are alleviations."
+
+"Oh, yes! She flirts--says she'd die if she didn't--with every man in
+the place, from the elevator boy to the head doctor, and, really, I
+excused her. The head nurse in Mary's ward is very harsh with her, but
+I let her and everyone in the place understand that Miss Gemmell is no
+stray waif without influence to back her. Every day I send out
+thought-waves--hypnotism--whatever you like to call it--to compel that
+Dean woman to think of something else than the making of trained nurses,
+and physical wrecks at the same time. People are greater than
+institutions."
+
+"The discipline will be the making of Mary."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+DURING the famous Pullman strike of last summer, duty bade me cross to
+Chicago in the interests of the _Echo_. On Saturday afternoon, July the
+7th, I was at the pulse of the Anarchist movement, near the corner of
+Loomis and Forty-ninth Streets. Taking up my stand in the deep entry of
+a "House to Let," I watched the operations of a body of strikers
+gathered round a box car close to the Grand Trunk crossing. They had set
+it afire, and were trying to overturn it upon the railway track,
+encouraged by the cheers of a mob numbering about two thousand men,
+women, and children.
+
+The incendiaries were so much engrossed that they did not observe,
+backing swiftly down upon them, the wrecking train it was their purpose
+to block. While still in motion, the cars disgorged Captain Kelly and
+his company, who had been guarding the Pan Handle tracks all day, but
+had not yet, it seemed, earned their night's repose.
+
+The crowd greeted the soldiers with stones, brickbats, and pieces of old
+iron, but the car burners proceeded with their little job, paying no
+attention at all to the approach of the military.
+
+A pistol bullet out of the mob swished in among his men, and then
+Captain Kelly gave the order to fire. When the smoke of the volley
+cleared away, I saw the people stand still, shocked and dumb with
+surprise. A second later, realizing that the worm had had the audacity
+to turn, they vented a medley of shrieks and roars, and closed round
+the handful of soldiers, to be met by the points of bayonets.
+
+The yelling mass of humanity scattered, took refuge in lanes and houses,
+but regaining courage, appeared here and there in sections, to be
+assailed once more by soldiers and police. The latter had to fight it
+out by themselves after a while, for the military boarded the wrecking
+train again, and the engineer, completely "rattled," opened the
+throttle, and whisked them away to the West, leaving a dozen
+revolver-armed policemen to meet the assaults of a mob that had now
+increased to five thousand.
+
+The Press abuses the police on principle, but, seeing that heroic
+encounter, I wavered in the keeping of my promise to Belle not to run
+into danger. Even as I hesitated, "hurry-up wagons" arrived with
+re-enforcements from neighboring police stations, and then the crowd
+could not disperse quickly enough. It was a desperate sight--men
+knocking each other down in their haste to get away, and the women who
+had been spurring them on, now shrieking and groaning like maniacs. One
+of the poor creatures was hit on the ankle by a bullet, and her falling
+over into the gutter was too much for my virtuous resolution. Even if
+she is a dirty, howling Polack, a man does not enjoy seeing a woman
+knocked down, so I left my doorstep and went to help the lady up.
+Constitutionally I am not a brave man, but I forgot all about the flying
+bullets till one took me in the knee, and I toppled over, hitting my
+head against the curbstone as I did so. I must have been stunned, for
+when I opened my eyes again the street was empty, except for a
+thundering vehicle that was bearing straight down upon me.
+
+At first I thought it was a runaway, for the horse was foaming of mouth
+and bloodshot of eyeball; but no, there was a man, or fiend, with a
+similar wild gleam in his eye, urging the brute upon me, while he
+sounded a gong to keep everything out of his way. All this I saw in a
+flash, and in a flash too went through my mind the advice given by
+President Cleveland in his proclamation to non-combatants to keep out of
+harm's way.
+
+I rolled over on my side with the sickening certainty that the next
+instant the hoofs and the wheels would be upon me, but the horse pulled
+up on his haunches at my very feet, the rattle and clanging ceased, and
+a doctor in his shirt sleeves appeared as if by magic.
+
+It was an ambulance, of course.
+
+I fainted when they lifted me, and only came to myself in the
+hospital--Mary's hospital, and her ward. Every one in Chicago was
+crowded that week and the next, but--the ruling principle strong in
+death--I declined to be put away out of eyeshot and earshot into a
+private room.
+
+"D'ye want me to send word to Mis' Gemmell to come?" asked Mary, and I
+replied drowsily:
+
+"No, don't. She's better to keep out of harm's way. She would be sure to
+sympathize with the strikers."
+
+"But she'll wonder where you are."
+
+"She can't get here safely, as things are now, and the mails are all
+upset. Don't write. Send a telegram in my name. Date it Chicago, and
+tell her I'm detained, but that I'll go home Monday, sure."
+
+That same night I was off in a high fever. It was days and days before I
+came to myself, and then I was too weak to ask or to care how everything
+was going on at home. My whole interest in life was concentrated upon
+that hospital ward, and with half-closed eyes I lay there and took notes
+unconsciously.
+
+An ideal life it may seem to outsiders, but there is as much
+wire-pulling, as much jealousy and scandal within the walls of one of
+those big institutions, as anywhere else on this planet. It is an
+epitome of the world battle, and the strugglers meet in hand-to-hand
+conflict.
+
+Nurse Dean, the head of our ward, tall and angular in form, stern and
+cold in feature, was the dragon Belle had told me about, but she knew
+her business, and I, for one, preferred that she should regard me simply
+as a machine laid up for repairs. I did not even think her unduly severe
+upon Mary, after I heard her giving that damsel "Hail Columbia" for her
+carelessness in having administered the wrong medicine one whole
+forenoon to Number Nine--which was myself.
+
+If I had not made a feeble protest in her favor, "Nurse Gemmell" would
+have been discharged on the spot.
+
+I do not wish to leave the impression that Mary had not in her the
+making of a fairly good nurse. She was light of foot, as well as quick
+of hand, and I liked to have her do things for me; found her _aura_
+agreeable, as Belle would have expressed it. Like many half-educated
+people, she was very observant, but, so far as I could judge, she had
+one eye on her work and the other on the lookout for flirtations. I
+became quite interested in some of them.
+
+There was the German fiddler in the next bed to mine, who could not keep
+his eyes off Mary whenever she came into the ward, and once when Nurse
+Dean was off duty, and she brought out her silver-plated cornet to
+"toot" a little for him, he declared it was the most ravishing music he
+had ever heard in his life!
+
+I strongly suspected that the limp young artisan on the other side of me
+was perfectly well enough to be discharged, but he could not brace
+himself up to part from Mary. Then there was a young doctor whose face I
+dimly recognized, but it tired my poor head too much to try to think who
+he was. He and Mary had many a talk at my bedside about their own
+affairs. One evening I heard the unmistakable sound of a banjo, and
+managed to twist myself round far enough to see that this same doctor
+was playing an accompaniment to Mary's very fair imitation of a skirt
+dance out in the passage.
+
+The sight revived me so much that I laughed aloud, and Mary came hastily
+forward, blushing, with finger on her lip. The pink and white uniform
+did indeed become her wonderfully well, and I was not surprised to
+notice hearty admiration in the sleepy blue eyes of the young house
+surgeon. Where had I seen that "Burne Jones' head" before?
+
+"You don't seem to remember me, Mr. Gemmell," said the owner of it,
+holding out his hand. "My name's Flaker. I was at Interlaken summer
+before last."
+
+"You're a full-fledged M. D. now?"
+
+"Oh, yes, but I'm taking a year's practice in here, before I set up for
+myself."
+
+Shades of the hotel matrons! They would probably say, if they heard
+this, that Mary had been sent here on purpose to catch him.
+
+Poor Mary! She had her own row to hoe. She came to me in tears one
+evening because Nurse Dean had been after her that whole day about one
+thing or another.
+
+"I am never particular 'nough to please her. If it wasn't for Dr. Flaker
+I wouldn't stay here another day."
+
+"You like him pretty well, eh?"
+
+"Well enough, an' he's all broke up on me; says he was at Interlaken
+too, on'y he couldn't say anythin', 'cause he wasn't of age. His folks
+are awful high-toned."
+
+"They'll have their discipline," thought I.
+
+"By the way, Mary, how long is it since I was brought here?"
+
+"Two weeks to-day."
+
+I sprang almost out of bed in my surprise. "Why didn't you tell me? Has
+no word been sent to Lake City?"
+
+"None since that first telegram. I don't write very often now to your
+wife, but when I did, I never said nothin' 'tall about your bein' here,
+'cause you told me not to."
+
+"And haven't you had an answer?"
+
+"There's a letter lyin' there from Mis' Gemmell to you. I don't know how
+she could have found out your address. Nurse Dean said I wasn't to give
+it to you if you was a bit feverish."
+
+"Fetch it this minute, Mary, or I'll get up and walk the floor," and the
+girl brought me this remarkable document. It had neither beginning nor
+end, but rushed to the point at once.
+
+"I know all! You have laughed at my occult tendencies, sneered at my
+Theosophy, but I can now, alas! give you convincing proof of the
+penetrative power of the one, the sustaining power of the other. I
+became so nervous at your continued silence and absence that I did what
+I had promised you not to do--went out in my astral to hunt for you--and
+I found you! Would to God I had never tried! It is not my health that
+is ruined, but my heart and my happiness. To make assurance doubly sure,
+I psychometrized the only letter I have received from Mary in weeks. She
+was cunning enough not to mention your name, but the unspoken testimony
+was the same. To think that you of all men--but I do not blame you! I
+have gone down to the _Echo_ office, my heart bursting with despair, and
+have told lies to account for your absence, to keep things moving until
+you see fit to send your own explanation. I have thrown dust too in the
+eyes of the family, till you tell me your will concerning them. No, I
+dare not blame you! Did not I myself thrust the girl into your life--and
+the best of us are but human. It is Karma! I have deserved this blow for
+some previous sin of my own, and I bow my head to the stroke. Your own
+harvest will be just as certain, however long delayed. O David, David!
+I can look back now and see the very beginning of your interest in
+Mary--but that it should end in this--that you should fly from me to
+her----'"
+
+Having read so far, I burst into hysterical laughter, and it took Mary
+and her lover and Nurse Dean, and how many more I know not, to hold me
+in bed. Of course I had a relapse, and my life was despaired of, but I
+would not, in my sensible moments, allow Mary to write to, or send for
+Isabel. I pictured the streets still full of rioting strikers, and the
+mails and trains still disorganized. In waking and in delirium alike,
+"Keep her out of harm's way!" I cried, "I'll go home to-morrow, sure,"
+but it was a long to-morrow that saw me on the boat bound for Lake City.
+
+Mary wanted to accompany me, for I was still very weak, and had to walk
+with a stick on account of my knee, but I said brusquely, "You stay
+where you are, and keep an eye on Dr. Flaker, or you'll maybe get left
+again."
+
+"No fear of that!" she said, holding up her left hand to show me a broad
+gold band with five diamonds in it, adorning her third finger.
+
+"We'll be married as soon as his year is out, for he has plenty of
+money."
+
+The stones in her ring caught the evening sunlight as she stood on the
+wharf waving her handkerchief to me, while the boat moved slowly out,
+and I lay in a steamer chair on the hurricane deck, prepared to enjoy a
+smoke and a gossip with my old friend, the captain.
+
+I wished her well with all my heart, but I sincerely hoped that I had
+seen the last of Mary.
+
+Judging the family to be at Interlaken as usual, I took the first train
+down there, and toiled in the sun from the depot up to the cottages, by
+way of the hill, which I had never considered steep before, to find my
+own house deserted, windows and doors boarded up, veranda unswept,
+hammocks removed. I would not give any of the neighbors the satisfaction
+of knowing I was surprised and disappointed, so I kept out of sight till
+they had all been to the hotel for dinner and dispersed. Then I went in
+for mine, and after it returned to the beach near the station, lay down
+on the sand, and waited for the next train.
+
+There was not one back to town until late in the afternoon, and the
+evening being cloudy, it was quite dark by the time I left the electric
+car at the corner of our street. Even that little bit of a walk
+exhausted me, and I had to rest on my stick every few minutes, but what
+a relief it was to see, gleaming cheerfully as ever, the windows of the
+House of the Seven Gables.
+
+I leaned against our iron railing for a minute or two to collect myself
+before making my appearance, and highly necessary was it for me to do
+so, because the attitude of the two ladies upon the veranda struck me
+dumb with amazement, and their conversation completely floored me. That
+sandy-haired little woman in the low rocker must be my mother, but could
+that regal figure on the edge of the veranda, with her head in my
+mother's lap, possibly be my wife? The light from the nursery window
+showed them to me distinctly, but I kept back in the shadow and listened
+to the voices.
+
+"My puir lamb! Ye've grat eneugh! Gang awa' tae yer bed; ye're sair
+forfoughten."
+
+As she stroked the wavy gray hair of the head on her knee, her tone
+changed.
+
+"I canna thole to think 'at son o' mine has brocht a' this trouble upon
+ye."
+
+"Not a word against him, mother! He's the best man that ever lived, and
+I didn't appreciate him, that's all. I can never think of him but as my
+dear, old, solid, yours-to-count-on Dave Gemmell. He was the silent
+partner, unpopular, getting no praise, paying all bills, backing me up
+in every fad, whether his judgment approved or not. He was just the
+square foundation I could lean away out on--could dance jigs on if I
+wanted to. Now that he is dead--or dead to me--I can only hope that he
+is happy. Oh! if I had but listened to you, mother, had never brought
+that girl into the house. My own vineyard have I not kept."
+
+"Let by-ganes be by-ganes--but I wad jest like to hae Davvit by the
+lug."
+
+"Lug along, mother! Here I am!" I managed to shout, and then I hung
+over that fence and laughed till my specs dropped off in the grass, and
+my stick fell away from me. I could not move without it, so I had to
+wait till the two women took pity on me and released me from my
+impalement.
+
+Between them they got me into the house and on to my old sofa, and
+listened to what I had to say.
+
+"I was share there must be some mistak'," said my mother, her
+self-respect restored, but, when I saw how affectionately her hand
+rested on the bowed head of her weeping daughter-in-law, I did not
+regret the bullet in my knee.
+
+"We'll put it all down to your Theosophy, Belle--a collection of
+half-truths, more dangerous than lies, when you shove them too far."
+
+"Don't let us talk about that now, David. It breaks my heart to see you
+so thin. Your clothes are just hanging on you. Oh! if I had only known
+the true state of the case and been there to nurse you!"
+
+"Mary has been very good to me, I assure you."
+
+"I don't want to think about that girl any more. I'm glad she's all
+right, but I hope never to lay eyes on her again."
+
+"Oh, yes, she's all right, and when she marries Dr. Flaker she won't
+want to '_pa_pa' and '_mam_ma' us, though she may condescend to
+patronize us a little."
+
+"I'll be gled o' the day she draps the name o' Gemmell!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My wife is still a theosophist. If it pleases her to think that she has
+ascertained the nature and method of existence, I have nothing to say.
+Sometimes I even look with envy upon her cheerful attitude toward the
+approach of old age, her conviction that we are to have another
+chance--many more chances--to do and to be that which we have failed in
+doing and being, _this time_.
+
+To judge of a tree by its fruits, there is, of course, no doubt that
+Isabel, because of, or in spite of her Theosophy, has been
+
+THE MAKING OF MARY.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+
+NURSE DEAN walked through the Pest House, adjoining the great hospital,
+with the independent mien of the woman who is confident that her skirt
+clears the ground. Her keen, light-colored eyes took in at a glance the
+condition of every patient, the occupation of every nurse.
+
+There had been a smallpox epidemic in Chicago, and three of the nurses
+in ---- Hospital had taken the disease, two of them lightly, one very
+heavily; but all were now convalescent. The two had gone home to their
+friends to recruit, but the third lay in an invalid chair in a darkened
+room, looking as if the desire of life had left her. Nurse Dean came in
+with a cheery smile, put on just outside the door, and proceeded to
+bathe the girl's eyes with warm water.
+
+"When are you coming out to help me, Mary? I'm sure the light wouldn't
+hurt you now. I'm having too much night work, those other nurses being
+gone. I thought you might begin to ease me a little with the smallpox
+patients through the day."
+
+"I don't know as I care to go on with the business," replied Mary,
+sometime called Mason.
+
+"Nonsense! You're low-spirited just now because you're not quite better,
+but wait till you're on your feet and going around the wards again.
+There's nothing like work of this sort to make a person forget
+herself."
+
+Nurse Dean's strong but gentle hands began to rub with oil the patient's
+neck and shoulders.
+
+"I wish I could forget myself and everybody else too. I wish I had died
+of the smallpox. There aint anybody that cares whether I live or die."
+
+"Hush! Mary, you forget Dr. Flaker."
+
+"Aint it just him I'm thinkin' about? He came in to see me to-day for
+the first time. He hates smallpox, and he smelt so of iodoform he nearly
+made me sick. About all he had to say was that it was very foolish of me
+to meddle with the clothes of them patients, and he could hardly believe
+I was so crazy's not to be vaccinated when the other nurses were. Just
+as if it wasn't him that admired my lovely arms. Look at them now!"
+
+"They won't be so bad when all these scales are off. There! Doesn't
+that feel better?"
+
+"It feels all right enough, but you know I'll be a sight to be seen the
+rest of my days. I was glad the room was dark, so's Flaker couldn't get
+a good look at me. He'll know soon enough--and hate the sight of me. He
+was always so proud of my 'pearance."
+
+"But I'm sure he likes you for something else too, Mary."
+
+"I don't care whether he does or not, he's got to marry me just the
+same. I aint goin' to be left again," and the girl tried to make a
+blazing diamond ring keep in place upon her thin finger.
+
+"You love him very much?"
+
+"Don't know as I do--no more than lots of other fellows; but I won't
+have any more chances now. I didn't ask to be born into this world, and
+somebody in it owes me a living."
+
+"See here, Mary!" said the nurse, in a suddenly energetic tone that
+made the girl look up at her with startled eyes. "You know, as well as I
+do, that you can't make that man marry you. Why not give him back his
+ring of your own free will?"
+
+"Why should I? You think I aint in love?"
+
+"Love? You don't know what the word means in any but its very lowest
+sense. Suppose you stop loving men, and take to loving women and
+children; you'll find them much more grateful, I can tell you."
+
+Mary closed her eyes, but there were no eyelashes to keep the tears from
+trickling out upon the scarred face.
+
+"My dear child!" said Nurse Dean, in a voice hardly recognizable, it was
+so sympathetic, "you've been fighting for yourself ever since you can
+remember, and you haven't made much of it, have you?"
+
+The girl's lips shaped an inaudible "No."
+
+"Wouldn't it be a good idea, then, to try a little fighting for other
+people?"
+
+"I haven't any folks."
+
+"Your 'folks' are whoever you can help in any way. What have you done
+yet to deserve a foothold on this earth? Instead of seeing how much you
+can get out of everybody, turn round and see how much you can do for
+them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a long silence. When Nurse Dean thought her charge was falling
+asleep, she placed a shawl carefully over her, but Mary, without opening
+her eyes, drew something from her left hand to her right.
+
+"You can give him back his ring," she said.
+
+Nurse Dean closed the door softly behind her, and then paused for a
+moment to wipe an impertinent tear from her cold gray eye.
+
+"I shouldn't be at all surprised if the smallpox were just The Making of
+Mary."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+THE "UNKNOWN" LIBRARY
+OF
+CHOICE ORIGINAL FICTION.
+
+
+The volumes are long and narrow, just the right shape to slip into the
+pocket, and are bound in flexible cloth and ornamented with a chaste
+design. The type is large and the margin generous.
+
+Price, per volume, 50 cents.
+
+1. Mademoiselle Ixe. By Lanoe Falconer.
+
+2. The Story of Eleanor Lambert. By Magdalen Brooke.
+
+3. A Mystery of the Campagna, and A Shadow on the Wave. By Von Degen.
+
+4. The Friend of Death. Adapted from the Spanish by Mary J. Serrano.
+
+5. Philippa; or, Under a Cloud. By Ella.
+
+6. The Hotel D'Angleterre, and Other Stories. By Lanoe Falconer.
+
+7. Amaryllis. By Georgios Drosines.
+
+8. Some Emotions and a Moral. By John Oliver Hobbes.
+
+9. European Relations. By Talmage Dalin.
+
+10. John Sherman, and Dhoya. By Ganconagh.
+
+11. Through the Red-Litten Windows, and The Old River House. By Theodor
+Hertz-Garten.
+
+12. Back from the Dead. A Story of the Stage. By Saqui Smith.
+
+13. In Tent and Bungalow. By "An Idle Exile."
+
+14. The Sinner's Comedy. By John Oliver Hobbes.
+
+15. The Wee Widow's Cruise in Quiet Waters. By "An Idle Exile."
+
+16. A New England Cactus, and Other Tales. By Frank Pope Humphrey.
+
+17. Green Tea. A Love Story. By V. Schallenberger.
+
+18. A Splendid Cousin. By Mrs. Andrew Dean.
+
+19. Gentleman Upcott's Daughter. By Tom Cobbleigh.
+
+20. At the Threshold. By Laura Dearborn.
+
+21. Her Heart was True. By "An Idle Exile."
+
+22. The Last King of Yewle. By P. L. McDermott.
+
+23. A Study in Temptations. By John Oliver Hobbes.
+
+24. The Palimpsest. By Gilbert Augustin Thierry.
+
+25. Squire Hellman, and Other Stories. By Juhani Aho.
+
+26. A Father of Six. By N. E. Potapeeko.
+
+27. The Two Countesses. By Marie Ebner von Eschenbach.
+
+28. God's Will, and Other Stories. By Ilse Frapan. Translated by Helen
+A. MacDonald.
+
+29. Her Provincial Cousin. By Edith Elmer Wood.
+
+30. My Two Wives. By One of their Husbands.
+
+31. Young Sam and Sabina. By Tom Cobbleigh.
+
+32. Chaperoned. By Albert Ulmann.
+
+33. Wanted, a Copyist. By W. N. Brearley.
+
+34. A Bundle of Life. By John Oliver Hobbes.
+
+35. The Lone Inn. By Fergus Hume.
+
+36. "Go Forth and Find." By Thomas H. Brainerd.
+
+37. The Beautiful Soul. By Florence Marryat.
+
+38. Dr. Endicott's Experiment. By Adeline Sergeant.
+
+
+THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO.,
+31 East 17th Street (Union Square),
+NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+
+W. C. HUDSON'S
+_Interesting Books._
+
+
+Jack Gordon, Knight-Errant, Gotham, 1883.
+12mo, Cloth, 75 cents; Paper, 50 cents.
+
+     "A capital piece of work."--_Pittsburg Dispatch._
+
+
+On the Rack.
+12mo, Cloth, 75 cents; Paper, 50 cents.
+
+     "A story of unusual power."--_Boston Post._
+
+
+The Diamond Button.
+_A Tale from the Diary of a Lawyer and the Note-book of a Reporter._
+12mo, Cloth, 75 cents; Paper, 50 cents.
+
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+
+The Dugdale Millions
+12mo, Cloth, 75 cents; Paper, 50 cents.
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+     and the strong interest of the reader is not allowed to flag
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+12mo, Cloth, 75 cents; Paper, 50 cents.
+
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+     Plaindealer._
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+12mo, Cloth, 75 cents; Paper, 50 cents.
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+     "The story contains not a single dull page."--_Ohio State
+     Journal._
+
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+Should She Have Left Him?
+12mo, Cloth, 75 cents; Paper, 50 cents.
+
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+     the author supplies incidents, generally unexpected, too, and
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+
+
+THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO.
+31 EAST 17TH ST. (UNION SQUARE),
+NEW YORK.
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+
+
+W. CLARK RUSSELL'S
+POPULAR SEA STORIES.
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+THE EMIGRANT SHIP.
+1 Vol., 12mo, Extra Cloth, $1.00.
+Paper Binding, 50 Cents.
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+     "No better sea story has been written."--_Phila. Bulletin._
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+
+LIST, YE LANDSMEN!
+1 Vol., 12mo, Extra Cloth, $1.00.
+Paper Binding, 50 Cents.
+
+     "A stirring romance."--_Rochester Herald._
+
+     "Next to a genuine sea voyage."--_Boston Journal._
+
+
+ROMANCE OF A TRANSPORT.
+1 Vol., 12mo, Cloth, $1.00.
+
+     "One of his best."--_Brooklyn Citizen._
+
+     "Who has ever begun one of Clark Russell's tales and neglected
+     to finish it?"--_Phila. Item._
+
+
+THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO.,
+31 East 17th Street (Union Square),
+NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+Two minor changes were made during the transcription of this book:
+
+    * "the malone" was changed to "them alone"
+    * two instances of "Gemmel" were changed to "Gemmell"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Making of Mary, by Jean Forsyth
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