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The yellow walls of the rectory gleamed through the trees at the north end of the little hamlet, reminding her of Jack's laughing wish to know what Mrs. Rochester was like.
"It's as little as I can do to go and find out for him," she thought, "even if he did ask it in a joke. I ought to be willing to do anything in the world he expresses a wish for, poor boy. There's little enough here to amuse him."
A few minutes later, in her travelling suit and hat, with Mrs. Rochester's basket on her arm, she interrupted the reading on the gallery.
"I'm going to see your motherly friend," she announced "to find out if she is gray-haired and double-chinned. Maybe I'll tell her how you described her."
"Don't you dare," warned Jack, laughingly. "I'll get even with you if you do."
"You've already done that on a dozen old scores," answered Mary gaily. "Good-bye, my friends and kinsmen dear! As the story books say, 'we shall see what we shall see.'"
What she saw when she rang the bell at the rectory was the exact opposite of the motherly creature whom Jack had pictured; for Mrs. Rochester, who came to the door herself, was tall and slim and very young, with the delicate, spirituelle kind of beauty that had always been plump little Mary's greatest admiration and desire. One part of Jack's guess was correct, however. She wore a big checked apron, for she was making cake, and she invited Mary into the dining-room where the materials were all spread out on the table.
With the girlish cordiality that had won her so many friends even in unsociable Bauer, she made Mary feel so much at home, that in a few moments she was insisting on helping with the cake. It seemed a matter of course that Mrs. Rochester should hand her the egg-beater, and before the eggs were whipped into a stiff white mountain of snow, they were exchanging experiences like old friends. Mrs. Rochester had found Bauer a lonely place too, at first.
"Jack says there was some great mix-up made when I alighted on this planet," said Mary. "I should have dropped down some place where 'the breaking waves dashed high on a stern and rock-bound coast.' He says I wasn't meant for a quiet fish-pond existence."
"I know," laughed her hostess. "You feel as if you were bound into the wrong book. You'd be perfectly satisfied to find yourself in one of Scott's novels, in a jumble of knights and tourneys and border wars, but you would be bored beyond endurance to have to be one of the characters in Jane Austen's stories."
"Oh, you do know," cried Mary eagerly, emphasizing her pleasure with a harder bang of the egg-beater. "You understand exactly. There's nothing tamer than Miss Austen's stories. Why, there's pages and pages taken up with just discussing the weather and each other's health; and they do such trivial, inane things and go around and around in such a deadly monotonous circle that sometimes I've been so out of patience with them that I wanted to throw the book into a corner."
"But you never did throw it down," answered Mrs. Rochester, "you read on to the end and in spite of yourself you were interested in those same commonplace happenings and conversations, just as readers before you have been interested in them and always will be as long as those books live. And I'll tell you why. You read them to the end because they are true pictures of the lives of average people. The majority of us have to put up with the humdrum, no matter how much we long for the heroic, and it's a good thing to read such books as 'Emma' and 'Pride and Prejudice' every now and then, as a sort of spirit-level. We're more satisfied to amble along the road if everybody else drives a slow nag too."
"I'm not," declared Mary. "I want to whizz past everything in sight that is poky and slow. I know it would be lots easier for me if I could only make up my mind to the fact that nothing exciting and important is ever going to happen to me, but I can't break myself of the habit of expecting it. I've felt that way as far back as I can remember. I'm always looking for something grand and unexpected, and every morning when I wake up it gives me a sort of thrill to think, maybe it will come to-day."
"Well, if you're going to stay in Bauer for awhile you certainly do need another dose of 'Emma,'" answered Mrs. Rochester, nodding to the shelves in the adjoining library, where stood a well thumbed edition of Miss Austen's works. "Take her home with you, and any of the books you think your brother would like. We are glad to make our library a circulating one."
Mary's face showed her pleasure quite as much as her words, as she left her seat by the table to slip into the great book-lined room and glance around it.
"You've made up for one of my disappointments," she called back. "I had counted so much on having the library in San Antonio to draw on this winter, and this is even better, for I'm sure that they haven't all these rare old prints and first editions that I see here."
Her five minutes' call stretched into an hour, when she found that Mrs. Rochester had been brought up in Washington and had spent her school days there. Then it stretched into two, for some one drove in from the country with a carriage load of autumn leaves, and Mary stayed to help arrange them in the little church for the Thanksgiving service next day. It was nearly noon when she finally started home with several books under her arm, her usual hopefulness and buoyancy of spirits quite restored.
"Mamma and I can't both be away from Jack at the same time," she said in response to Mrs. Rochester's invitation to attend the service next day. "I want her to come. I've already had my share of Thanksgiving. I've been thankful every minute while I've been here that I discovered you. It's been a beautiful morning."
"Come over often," urged Mrs. Rochester cordially. "I can always find something for you to do, and I'd love to have you come."
Mary's wave of the hand as she turned to latch the gate at the end of the walk was answered by a flutter of Mrs. Rochester's apron in the doorway, and each went her way smiling over the recollection of the other.
"She's a diverting little piece," Mrs. Rochester reported to her husband at noon. "I laughed all the time she was here."
"She's a darling," Mary reported at home, and quoted her at intervals for several days.
"She's promised to take me with her sometime when she drives out to call at the ranches. Nearly all the members of St. Boniface are out-of-town people, so they'll probably not call on us she says. But she's coming as soon as she can get around to it. I saw our name on a list she has hanging beside her calendar. But there's nearly a week full of things for her to do before she gets to us. I wish that I had a list of duties and engagements that would keep me going every minute, the way she has to go."
"You can easily fill out a list that will keep you busy for awhile," answered her mother. "While you were gone Jack and I got to discussing dates, and it was somewhat of a shock to find that Christmas will be here so soon. One forgets the calendar in this summer-like climate. Whatever we send to Holland and Joyce must be started from here in less than three weeks, and as our gifts must be all home-made we cannot afford to lose any time in beginning."
The problem of Christmas giving had always been a knotty one in the Ware household, but it was especially hard this year. Mary spent nearly all afternoon making her list of names with the accompanying list of gifts that seemed suitable for each one. There were so many to whom she longed to send little remembrances that the length of it was appalling. Then she revised it, putting in one column such people as Madam Chartley and Mrs. Lee, to whom she decided to write letters the gayest, brightest greetings she could think of. Still there were a goodly number left to provide with gifts, no matter how simple, and she was busy till bed-time measuring and figuring over the amount of material she would need for each, and how much it would cost. It had been decided that she should go to San Antonio for a day to attend to the family shopping.