"For several days it seemed as if she would not be able to get exactly what she wanted, but it was finally arranged, just at the last moment, after much trouble on her part. It"s perfectly grand, but I"ve sworn not to even hint at what it is. So expect me Christmas Eve with The Surprise. I"ll not write again in the meantime, as I am so very, very busy. Till then good-bye.
"Yours lovingly and joyfully, "JOYCE."
As Mrs. Ware looked up from her reading, everybody spoke at once. "It"s almost too good to be true," was Jack"s quick exclamation. "What do you suppose the surprise will be?" Norman"s eager question. While Mary, clasping her elbow with her hands, as if hugging herself in sheer ecstasy, cried, "Oh, I just _love_ to be knocked flat and have my breath taken away with unexpected news like that! It makes you tingle all over and at the same time have a queer die-away feeling too, like when you swoop down in a swing!"
Mrs. Ware took down the almanac hanging in the chimney corner, and began to turn the pages, looking for the one marked December.
"Oh, you needn"t count the days till Christmas," said Mary. "I"ve been marking them off my calendar every morning and can tell you to a dot.
Not that I had expected to take much interest in celebrating this year, but just from force of habit, I suppose. But now we"ll have to "put the big pot in the little one," as they say back in Kentucky, in honor of our being all together once more."
"All but Holland," corrected Mrs. Ware sadly, with the wistful look which always came into her eyes whenever his name was mentioned. "That"s the worst of giving up a boy to the Navy. One has to give him up so completely."
There was such a note of longing in her voice that Jack hastened to say, "But the worst of it is nearly over now, little mother. He"ll be home on his first furlough next summer."
"Yes, but the years will have made a man of him," answered Mrs. Ware.
"He"ll not be the same boy that left us, and he"ll be here such a short time that we"ll hardly have time to make his acquaintance."
"Oh, but think of when he gets to be a high and mighty Admiral,"
exclaimed Mary, comfortingly. "You"ll be so proud of him you"ll forget all about the separation. Between him and the Governor I don"t know what will happen to your pride. It will be so inflated."
Mary had laughingly called Jack the Governor ever since Mrs. Ware"s complacent remark that day on the train, that it would not surprise her to have such an honor come to her oldest son some day.
"And Joyce, don"t forget _her_," put in Norman, feeling in his pocket for a handful of nuts which he had carried away from the birthday feast.
"The way she"s started out she"ll have a place in your hall of fame, too. And me--don"t forget _this_ Abou Ben Adhem. Probably my name"ll lead all the rest. Where do _you_ expect to come in, Mary? What will _you_ do?"
As he spoke he placed a row of pecans under the rocker of his chair, and bore down on them until the sh.e.l.ls cracked. When he had picked out a handful of kernels, he popped them into his mouth all at once.
"We"ll write your name as the Great American Cormorant," laughed Mary, ignoring his question about herself. "You remember that verse, don"t you?
""C, my dear, is the Cormorant.
When he don"t eat more it"s because he can"t."
"Mamma, didn"t he eat anything at all at the Downs"? He"s been stuffing ever since he came back--cake and candy, and now those nuts. It"s positively disgraceful to carry food away in your pockets the way you do, Norman Ware."
"I always do when I go to Billy"s house," answered Norman, undisturbed by her criticism, and crashing his rocker down on a row of almonds. "And Billy always does the same here. We"re not company. We"re home folks at both places."
The sh.e.l.ls which he threw toward the fire missed their aim and fell on the hearth. Mary pointed significantly toward the turkey-wing, and he as significantly shrugged his shoulders, in token that he would not sweep up the mess he had made. They kept up a playful pantomime some time, while Jack and his mother went on discussing Joyce"s home-coming, before he finally obeyed her peremptory gesture. He thought she was in one of her jolliest moods, induced by the glorious news of the letter. But all the time she was silently repeating his question, "Where do _you_ expect to come in, Mary? What will _you_ do?"
Here she was, baffled again. The time she had spent in writing that letter, now tucked away under her belt, was wasted. It was out of the question to appeal to Cousin Kate now, just when she had done so much for another member of the family, and especially when she had sailed away to so vague a place as the south of France, by the doctor"s orders.
Even if Mary had her address, she felt it would be wrong to bother her with a request which would require any "pulling of strings." For that could not be done without letter writing, and in her state of health even that might be some tax on her strength, which she had no right to ask. Hope, that had soared so buoyantly an hour before, once more sank despairingly to earth. What was she to do? Which way could she turn next?
When bedtime came a little later, Mrs. Ware went in to Norman"s room to take some extra cover. Mary lingered to pin some newspapers around her potted plants and move them away from the windows. Jack, standing in front of the fireplace, winding the clock on the mantel, saw her slip a folded paper from under her belt, and toss it into the fire with such a tragic gesture, that he knew without telling that it was the letter on which she had worked so industriously. She saw that he understood and she was grateful that he said nothing.
While they were undressing, Mrs. Ware talked so happily of Joyce"s return, that Mary"s own glow of antic.i.p.ation came back. She was not jealous of her sister"s good fortune. She had never been that. She was wholly, generously glad for every good thing that had ever come into Joyce"s life, and she was so thrilled with the thought of her coming home that she was sure she should lie awake all night thinking about it.
But when she snuggled down under the warm covers, it was Norman"s question which kept her awake. "Where do _you_ expect to come in, Mary?
What are _you_ going to do?"
CHAPTER V
P STANDS FOR PINK
What happened in the Christmas holidays which followed is best told in the letter which Mary wrote to Phil Tremont on the last day of the old year.
"DEAR BEST MAN:" it began. "Mamma has asked me to write to you this time in her place, as she has succ.u.mbed to an attack of "reunionitis."
She doesn"t call it that, but we know well enough that it is nothing but the excitement and unexpectedness of having a whole family reunion which has frazzled her out so completely. She wrote you that Joyce was coming home, but none of us knew that Holland would be with her. _He_ was the surprise--Cousin Kate"s Christmas gift to the family. His furlough is not due till next summer, but she said by that time Joyce would be in Paris, and the chances are that if we didn"t get together now we might never again be able to; at least for years and years.
"Cousin Kate is such a solitary soul herself, no relatives nearer than cousins, that she has an immense amount of sentiment for family gatherings, and that is why she gave us such a happy one. She had to go to Washington to arrange it. She has a friend at court in the shape of a senator who was once an intimate school chum of the President"s. (We think he was one of her many bygone suitors. Isn"t that romantic?) Among them they managed to untie enough red tape to let Holland out.
"You can imagine our astonishment when he walked in. We almost swooned with joy, and I thought for a moment that mamma really was going to, the surprise was so great. You saw him just before you went to Mexico, so you know how big he has grown, and how impressively dignified he can be on occasion. And polite-- My! What a polish the Navy can give! He was so polite that I was awestruck at first, and it was two whole days before I felt familiar enough to dare to refer to the time that he dragged me down the hay-mow by my hair because I wouldn"t come any other way.
"It has been a wonderful week; yet, isn"t it queer, as I look back on it, there is nothing at all in it really worth putting into a letter. It is just that after the first strangeness wore off, we seemed to slip back into the dear old good times of the Wigwam days. You know better than any one else in the world what they were, for you shared them with us so often. You know how we have always enjoyed each other and what entertainment we found in our own conversation and jokes and disputes, so you"ll understand exactly what that week was to us, when I say that it was a slice out of the old days.
"It was better in some ways, however. The future is not such a distressingly unknown quant.i.ty as it was then. We don"t have to say, "Let X (a very slim X at that) equal Jack"s chances, and minus Y equal Joyce"s." If we could only determine the value of the chances of Mary, we"d soon know the "length of the whole fish." "Member how you moiled and toiled over that old fish problem in Ray"s Algebra, to help me to understand it?
"Well, I am the puzzling element in the Ware family"s equation. It"s our problem to find the extent of my resources. I was dreadfully discouraged before Christmas, when every application I sent out was turned down. It seemed to me that if I had one more disappointment I couldn"t possibly bear it. But Joyce has almost persuaded me to give up the quest for awhile, at least until spring. I am a year younger than she was when she went away from home, and she thinks that I owe it to mamma to stay with her till I am out of my teens. Mamma hasn"t been very well lately.
Sometimes I think I could have a very pleasant winter here after all, if I"d just make up my mind to settle down and forget my ambitions.
There are mild social possibilities in two of the new families who moved here last fall, and Pink Upham does everything he can think of to make it pleasant. We are going skating to-night, and have a big bonfire on the bank.
To-morrow, being New Year"s Day, consequently a holiday for him, we are to have a long sleigh-ride over to Hemlock Ridge. The ladies of some lodge in the settlement over there are to serve a turkey dinner in the school-house.
"I have begun this letter backwards. What I set out to do, first and foremost, was to thank you for the lovely book which you sent with your Yuletide greeting. I read over half of it aloud last night after our Christmas guests departed, and was glad that we had such an interesting story. It kept us from getting doleful.
"By the way, the heroine is called Bonnie, after the song, _Bonnie Eloise_. And Joyce said that Eugenia told her that there is an American girl visiting the doctor"s family near your construction camp, whom you refer to in your letters as Bonnie Eloise. Eugenia says that she plays the guitar and sings duets with you, and is altogether charming. Is Eloise her real name, or do you call her that because she is bonny like the girl in the book? And does she sing as well as Lloyd Sherman? Do tell us about her the next time you write! Your sayings and doings would interest us even if we were looping the loop socially in gay Gotham and dwelt continually "in the midst of alarms." But in the Selkirkian stillness of these solitudes our interest in our friends deepens into something amazing.
"Mamma says to tell you that we all spoke of you and quoted you many times this week, and wished daily that you were with us. She sends her love and will write as soon as she is able.
With all good wishes for your New Year from each of us, Yours, downcast but still inflexible,
"MARY."
Phil answered this letter the day it was received, replying to her question about Eloise in a joking postscript, as if wishing to convey the impression that his interest in her was less than Mary"s.
"I forgot to say that Eloise is a name I have bestowed upon the young lady who is visiting the Whites, in exchange for the compliment of her having given my name to her dog. He is a lank, sneaking greyhound which never leaves her side, and was called merely Senor, when she brought him to Mexico. Now she has added Tremonti to his t.i.tle. She herself is baptized Eliza. She is a pretty, kittenish little thing, deathly afraid of c.o.c.k-roaches and caterpillars, devoted to frills and fetching furbelows, and fond of taking picturesque poses in the moonlight with the slinky greyhound. No, her voice is not to be compared to the Little Colonel"s, but it is sweet and sympathetic, very effective in ballads and simple things. We sing together whenever I happen to drop in at the doctor"s, which is several times a week, and I am indebted to her for many pleasant hours, which are doubly appreciated in this desert waste of a place.
"Now will you answer a few questions for me?
Who is this Pink Upham who is "doing everything to make the winter pleasant" for you? What is his age, his business and his ultimate aim in life? Is he the only available escort to all the social functions of Lone-Rock? You never mention any other. Don"t forget what I told you when I said good-bye in Bauer, and _don"t forget what you promised me then_."
Mary was in the kitchen when that letter was brought in to her. She had just slipped a pan of gingersnaps into the oven, and was rolling out the remainder of the dough to fill another pan. Not even stopping to wipe her floury hands, she walked over to the window, tore open the envelope and began to read. When she came to the end of the postscript she stood gazing out of the window at the back fence, half buried in the drifted snow. What she saw was not the old fence, however. She was gazing back into a sunny April morning in the hills of Texas. She was standing by a kitchen window there, also, but that one was open, and looked out upon a meadow of blue-bonnets, as blue as the sea. And outside, looking in at her, with his arms crossed on the window-sill, was Phil. There was no need for him to write in that postscript, "Don"t forget what I told you when I said good-bye in Bauer." She had recalled it so many times in the nine months that had pa.s.sed since then, that she could repeat every word.
It still seemed just as remarkable now as it had then that he should have asked her to promise to let him know if anybody ever came along trying to persuade her "to join him on a new trail," or that he should have said that he wanted "a hand in choosing the right man," and above all that he should have added solemnly, "I have never yet seen anybody whom I considered good enough for little Mary Ware."
If Mary could have known what picture rose up before Phil"s eyes as he wrote that postscript, she would have been unspeakably happy. She had so many mortifying remembrances of times when he had caught her looking her very worst, when he had come upon her just emerging from some accident that had left her drenched or smoked or bedraggled, mud-spattered, ink-stained or dust-covered. Holland"s recent reminiscences had deepened her impression that she must have been in a wrecked condition half her time, for he had kept the family laughing all one evening, recalling various plights he had rescued her from.
It would have been most soul-satisfying to her could she have known that Phil thought of her oftenest as he had last seen her, standing at the gate in a white and pink dress, fresh as a spring blossom, her sweet sincere eyes looking gravely into his as he insisted on a promise, but her dear little mouth smiling mischievously as she vowed, "I"ll keep my word. Honest, I will!"
As she recalled that promise now, her face dimpled again as it had then over the absurdity of such a thing. "The idea of Phil"s thinking that Pink Upham is anybody to be considered seriously!" she exclaimed, as she recalled his uncouth laugh, his barbaric taste in dress, his provincial little habits and mannerisms, which in the parlance of the Warwick Hall girls, would have stamped him "dead common" according to their standards. She was still looking dreamily out into the snowy yard when Mrs. Ware came to the door to inquire with an anxious sniff,