Johnston Annie Fellows - Mary Ware in Texas стр 11.

"Mrs. Barnaby had stopped at the rectory on her way home to tell them about our coming to town, and Mrs. Rochester thought that we were all here, and that we would be so busy getting settled that we wouldn't have much time to cook things for an invalid, and she had sent the most tempting basketful of good things you ever saw. There was orange gelatine and charlotte russe, and some delicious nut sandwiches. The rector had walked all the way up here and carried the basket himself. You know I've always stood in awe of clergymen. At first this one seemed fully as dignified and reverend as all the others, and I nearly fell off my perch with embarrassment when he looked up and saw me hanging there like a monkey on a stick. But the next moment we both laughed, and he seemed almost as young and boyish as Jack.

"I scuttled down in a hurry, I assure you. He only stayed a minute, just long enough to deliver the basket and his wife's message, but you've no idea how that little incident changed the whole atmosphere. I'd been looking down the white road that leads from our place into the town, thinking how lonely and foreign everything was, and how hard it would be to live all winter in a place where nobody wanted to be neighborly, and where the only people we knew were slightly old like the Barnabys or awfully old like the Metzes, and then Mr. Rochester appeared, young and so nice-looking and with a jolly twinkle in his eyes that makes you forget the clerical cut of his clothes.

"His wife must be young, too, or she couldn't be married to him, and she must be dear or she wouldn't have sent such a dainty, altogether charming basket with her message of greeting. You've no idea how their cordial welcome changed everything. Now as I look through the open door at the same road leading to the town, it doesn't look lonely and foreign any more. It makes me think of a verse that dear old Grandmother Ware taught me once. You remember how she used to take us up in her lap and make us spell the words out to her from her big Bible with the terrible pictures. 'The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth!'

"Well, grandmother's verse is coming true. It was all so crooked and uncertain and rough yesterday. But now everything is being smoothed out for us so beautifully. I have just looked out to see if Norman is coming. I can hear him whistling away down the road.

"I wish you, with your artist's eye for effect, could see the little town now, spread out below the hills in the twilight, with the windmills silhouetted against the sky. At one end is the little stone belfry of St. Peter's, at the other the square gray tower of the Academy of the Holy Angels; and just between, swinging low over the hills in the faint afterglow, the pale golden crescent of the new moon. After all, it's a good old world, Joyce, and I 'feel it in my bones' that little old Bauer is going to bring us some great good that shall make us thankful always for having come. In some way, I am sure, all our 'rough ways shall be made smooth.'"

CHAPTER IV

MARY FINDS GAY

The day before Thanksgiving saw the Ware family fully settled in their new home. The trunks had been unpacked and their contents disposed of to make the little cottage look as homelike as possible. Even the preparations for their Thanksgiving dinner were all made. They had been simplified by Mrs. Barnaby's gift of a jar of mince-meat, and the plump hen, which was to take the place of a turkey, had been bought already dressed.

Now at only nine o'clock the morning work was all done, and Mrs. Ware sat sewing on the south gallery where Jack had wheeled himself into the sunshine. Mary came and stood in the doorway.

"Things stay so clean here," she grumbled in a laughing way. "I could do everything there is to be done with one hand and not half try, and when you all help we get through so fast it makes me dizzy. Then there's nothing left to do but sit in the sun and wait till time to get the next meal ready. I wish I hadn't been in such a hurry to put everything in order. I wouldn't be so restless and idle now. It makes me fidgety to have nothing to do."

"Take the basket and dishes back to the rectory," suggested Mrs. Ware, after Jack had proposed several occupations to no purpose.

"But I've never met Mrs. Rochester yet," objected Mary, "and it would be sort of awkward, going in and introducing myself."

"No more awkward than it was for Mr. Rochester to come here and introduce himself," said Jack. "You can tell her for me that that charlotte russe was perfection."

"I wonder what she is like," mused Mary, half persuaded to go and see. "If I thought she'd be approachable and easy to talk to but "

"Oh, you know she's all right," urged Jack, "or she never would have been so good to a family of strangers. I'll bet she's a dear, motherly old soul, in a checked apron, with gray hair and a double chin."

"Why, she couldn't be!" cried Mary. "Not and be Mr. Rochester's wife. He doesn't look much older than you do, and for all he's so dignified there's something so boyish and likable about him that I felt chummy with him right away."

"Well, the things she cooked tasted as if she were the kind of woman I said," persisted Jack, "and I shall keep on thinking of her as that kind until it's proved that my guess is wrong. I should think that anybody with as much curiosity as you have would go just to satisfy it."

"You mean you want yours satisfied," retorted Mary. "Well, she'll do it herself in a few days. She sent word that she'd call soon, so I believe that I'll wait."

Coming out she stood leaning idly against one of the gallery posts, a restless, dissatisfied little figure. Then she strolled out to the front gate and stood there awhile, looking down the deserted road. Jack's gaze followed her sympathetically, and he said to his mother in a low tone, "Poor little kid, it's going to be a dull winter for her I'm afraid. She was never cut out for solitude. She'd 'rather dwell in the midst of alarms,' and this place isn't much more diverting than a country graveyard."

Mrs. Ware's glance followed his, then she replied confidently as she looked down to thread her needle, "Oh, she'll soon adjust herself. She'll find something that will not only keep her busy but will amuse all the rest of us."

Jack picked up the magazine from which he had been reading aloud the evening before and resumed the story, but he was conscious all the time of the little figure at the gate, and saw her without seeming to notice when she slipped around the corner of the house presently to the back yard. Then he looked up with a smile when he heard the creaking of the windmill crank at the back of the house.

"She's stopping the wheel," said Mrs. Ware, "so that she can climb to the top of the tower again. It seems to have some sort of fascination for her."

Jack went on with his story, and Mary, perched on her watch-tower, clung to the bar above and looked down over the town. The currents of air were stronger up at the height to which she had climbed. Down below scarcely a breath was stirring, but here a fresh breeze blew the hair into her eyes and began to blow the discontent out of her mind. Her wish that Jack could see the view was followed instantly by the thought that he could never, never have any other outlook than the one the wheeled chair afforded.

"It's wicked of me to be discontented one single minute," she thought remorsefully. "There I was fussing right before him about having nothing to do, when he'd give worlds just to be foot loose to climb up here and walk about the place. And he was so dear and considerate, never once reminded me how much harder it is for him than me, and that he has nothing else to look forward to as long as he lives."