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The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware by Annie Fellows Johnston

A >> Annie Fellows Johnston >> The Little Colonel\'s Chum: Mary Ware




Seeing how she had aroused such a love for nature study in the boys, he
felt that she might do the same for Marion. It was really a marvel, Mrs.
Levering insisted, how she had bewitched both her Carl and Tommy Seldon.
They were in a fair way to become as great cranks as the old professor
himself. Now this was the proposition he wanted to make. That Mary
should take the place of teachers and text-books, for awhile, and devote
herself to the task of making Marion forget herself and her imaginary
grievances; to interest her in wood-lore to the extent of making her
willing to spend much time out of doors, and to imbue her if possible
with some of the cheerful philosophy that made the entire Ware family
such delightful companions.

"Of course," explained Mrs. Levering, "he understands that one could
never be adequately repaid for such a service. It would be worth more
than any course at college or any fortune, to Marion, if she could be
changed from a listless, unhappy girl to one like yourself. She will tax
your ingenuity and require infinite tact and patience, but he feels that
you can do more for her than any older person, because she needs
healthy, young companionship more than anything else in the world. If
you will devote your mornings to her, trying to attain the result he
wants in any way you see fit, he will gladly pay you anything in reason.
Just let me take back word that you will consider his offer and he will
be over here post-haste to make terms with you."

Mary looked inquiringly across at her mother, too bewildered by this
sudden prospect of such good fortune, to answer for herself, but Mrs.
Ware consented immediately. "I think it a very fortunate arrangement for
both girls. There is no one near Mary's age in Lone-Rock, and I have
been dreading the winter for her on that account. I am sure she can make
a real friend and companion out of Marion, and I can say this for my
little girl, it will never be dull for anybody who follows her trail
through life."

Mrs. Levering rose to go. "Then it's as good as settled. I'm sure the
poor old professor will feel that you've taken a great burden off his
shoulders, and that this will be the most profitable year's education
that Marion will ever have."

Hardly had their visitor departed, when Mrs. Ware was seized around the
waist by a young cyclone that waltzed her through the kitchen, down the
garden walk and out to the shade of the tree where Jack sat reading in
his wheeled chair. "Tell him, mamma," Mary demanded, breathless and
panting. "I'm too happy for words. Then call in the neighbours, and sing
the Doxology!"

Later, as she and Jack sat discussing the situation with a zest which
left no phase of it untouched, he said teasingly, "You needn't be
pluming yourself complacently over all those compliments. Do you realize
when all's said and done, they've asked nothing more of you than simply
to put on cap and bells and play the jester awhile for that girl's
benefit?"

"I don't care," retorted Mary. "I'm not proud, and I can stand the
motley as long as it brings in the ducats. It isn't the career I had
planned, but--"

She broke off abruptly, and began hunting for her spool of thread which
had rolled off into the grass. When she found it she stitched away in
silence as if she had forgotten her unfinished sentence.

"What career _did_ you have planned, little sister?" asked Jack, gently,
when the silence had lasted a long time. She looked up with a start as
if her thoughts had been far away, then said with a deprecatory smile,
"I hardly know myself, Jack. I don't mind confessing to you, though I
couldn't to any one else, it was so big I couldn't see the top of it."

With her eyes bent on her sewing she told him about the Voice and the
Vision that had come to her when she looked up at Edryn's Window for the
first time, and how she had been wondering ever since what great duty it
was with which she was to keep tryst some day.

"I can always tell _you_ things without fear of being laughed at," she
ended, "so I don't mind saying that I believed at the time, it really
was the King's Call, and that some great destiny, oh far greater than
Joyce's or Betty's awaited me. It seemed so real I don't see how I could
have been mistaken, and yet--now--it _does_ seem foolish for me to
aspire so high. Doesn't it?"

There was a little break in her voice although she ended with a laugh.
Jack watched the brown head bent over her sewing for several minutes
before he replied. Then he said in a grave kind tone that Mary always
liked, because it seemed so intimate and as if he regarded her as his
own age, "Since I've been hurt, I've done a lot of thinking, and I've
come to the conclusion that the highest thing a man can aspire to, and
the blessedest, is 'to ease the burden of the world.' Either consciously
or unconsciously that is what every artist does who paints a
master-piece. He helps us bear our troubles by making us forget them--at
least, as long as the uplift and the inspiration stay with us. Every
author and musician whose work lives, does the same. Every inventor who
creates something to make toil easier, and life happier, eases that
burden to a degree.

"So I don't think you were mistaken about that call. Your achievement
_may_ be greater than the other girls, even here in Lone-Rock, as much
bigger and better, as a whole life is bigger and better than a few books
and pictures. You've begun on me, and you'll have Marion to try your
hand on next. No telling where you will stop. You may be the Apostle of
Cheerfulness to the entire far West before you are done. Who knows?"

Although the last words were spoken lightly, Mary felt the seriousness
underlying them, and looked up, her face shining, as if some mystery had
suddenly been made clear to her.

"Oh, Jack!" she cried. "You don't know how easy that makes every thing.
I've looked at life at Lone-Rock as something to be endured merely as a
stepping stone to better things. But if you think that this is the
beginning of my real tryst, I can answer the call in such a different
spirit. By the winged spur of our ancestors," she cried, gaily waving,
the ruffle she was hemming, "I'll be 'Ready, aye ready' for whatever
comes."

Jack did not go back to the office the first of September. It was the
middle of the month before he made the attempt. Norman wheeled him over
on his way to school, and Mary, standing in the door to watch them
start, felt the tears spring to her eyes as she compared this pitiful
going to the buoyant stride with which he used to start to work. Still,
he was so much better than they had dared to hope he would be, that when
she went back to her room she picked up a red pencil and marked the date
on her calendar with a star.

Then she remembered that this was the day the girls would be trooping
back to Warwick Hall, and she recalled the opening day the year before,
when she had been among them. She wondered who was taking possession of
her room, and if the new girls would be as devoted to Betty as the old
ones were. She could picture them all, driving up the avenue, singing as
they came; then Hawkins's imposing reception and Madam Chartley's
greeting. How she longed to be in the bustle of unpacking, and to make
the rounds of all her favourite haunts by the river and in the beautiful
old garden! Dorene and Cornie wouldn't be there. They were graduated and
gone. But Elsie and A.O. and Margaret Elwood and Betty--as she named
them over such a homesick pang seized her, that it seemed as if she
could not bear the thought of never going back.

The thought of all she was missing, drove her as it used to do, to her
shadow-chum for sympathy, and Lloyd was in her thoughts all day.
Somehow, when Huldah came back from the grocery, bringing her a letter
from Lloyd, she was not at all surprised, although it was the first one
she had received from her since she left school, except a little note of
sympathy right after Jack's accident.

The surprise came when she opened the letter. She read it over and over,
and then, because Jack was at the office and her mother at a
neighbour's, she turned to her long-neglected journal for a confidante.
She had to hunt through all the drawers of her desk for it, it had been
hidden away so long. She felt that the news in the letter was worthy a
place in her good times book, for it recorded Lloyd's happiness, which
was as dear to her as her own.

"Oh, little Red Book," she wrote, "what an amazing secret I am going to
give you to hold! _Lloyd is engaged, and not to Phil!_ She has been
engaged since last June to Rob Moore. It is not to be announced formally
until Christmas, and they are not to be married for a long time, but
Eugenia knows, and Joyce, and her very most intimate friends. She wanted
me to know, and to hear it from herself, because she felt that no one
could wish her joy more sincerely than her '_little chum_.' I am so glad
she really called me that, after all my months of make believe.

"But it was the surprise of my life to find that Rob is The Prince and
not Phil. Poor Phil! I am sure he was disappointed, and somehow I keep
thinking of that more than of Lloyd's happiness. I don't see how she
_could_ prefer anybody else to the Best Man."

Here she paused, and began fingering the unwritten leaves of the diary,
wondering if the time would ever come when they would hold the record of
other engagements. Nearly a third of the pages were still blank. How
many nice things she could think of that she would like to be able to
write thereon. Maybe they would hold the date of a visit to Oaklea some
day, to _Mrs. Rob Moore_. How odd that sounded. Or what was more
probable, since he had already mentioned it in his letters to Jack, a
visit from Phil, if he went back to California with his father and Elsie
on their return.

And maybe, it might hold the news of Joyce's engagement, some day, or
Betty's, and maybe--some far, far-off day, it might hold her own! That
seemed a very unlikely thing just now. Princes were an unknown quantity
in Lone-Rock. And yet--she looked dreamily away across the hills--there
were the words of that song:

"And if he come not by the road, and come not by the hill,
And come not by the far seaway, yet come he surely will.
Close all the roads of all the world, love's road is open still."

Seizing her pen, she wrote just below her last entry, "It is five months
since that dismal day on the train, when I closed the record in this
book, as I thought, forever, and wrote after the last of my good times,
_The End_. But it wasn't that at all, and now, no matter how dark the
outlook may be after this, I shall _never_ believe that I have reached
the end to happiness."


THE END.

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