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Tothe 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 inLake 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 abeauty 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 mealsand 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 andabandonthat made every other girl in theroom 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 frombusiness 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, whosalted 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 tothe 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 knowwhat 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 theEchoone 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 thatway. 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 theEchoto 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 himindeed, 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 theEcho.
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 herwell," 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.
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Theself-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 shehad 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 ripplesto 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' MaryGemmell?"
"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 itsuits 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 notcontaminate 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 learnto 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 becomesdirrt!"—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 thatMiss 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 presentto 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, suggestivecrack, and she leaped intospace 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 abouthim." 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," Iheard 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.
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Thewinter 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 atableau vivantin 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 tobe 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.
"Mamma! 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 thatthe 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,papa," 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 muchwhen 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 toprepare 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 dowe 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 stylishlydressed, 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 herprotégéewas 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 hearmore 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'tlet 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!"
"Noladywould 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 wantedwith 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 letterhe 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!"