Mary Ware in Texas

aditions that something tragic always happened to Gay's clothes at the last moment, to delay her departure. But she had scarcely seated herself and

been if Roberta hadn't come to the rescue. She brought me down in their carriage. It's Roberta

Post and has always been counted in everything there, since she was ol

Gay was stopping to apologize to an old lady whom she had bumped into, and did not hear the remark. The next moment they were outside and at th

between the two girls as they drove along towards Government Hill, had much the same feeling that a thir

ation. Before they had gone two blocks the weight of care and anxiety that had been resting on Mary's shoulders eve

es had been like a hard march through the sands. Now the sudden substitution of something fri

olo team. They got it up on short notice. Lieutenant Boglin told me about it when I invited him to come to dinner. He asked if he might take you, and I s

dismay that Roberta laughed, and Gay stopped the refusal that Mary

d didn't bring the proper clothes, but it is such an informal affair that it doesn't make any

y so excited over the prospect that her cheeks were growing re

th a little shiver of delight as the band began to play. The carriage had stopped

r and march right off to do something big and brave-'storm the heights,' or bleed and die for my country,

of the weekly routine of Post life, which familiarity made ordinary. They exchanged amused glances which Mary did not see, and made remarks an

e precision which makes a battalion move as one man; but to Mary every khaki coat in the regiment clothed a her

d transformed her into a little fire-ball of a patriot. Now as she saw for the first time these men who stood as the guardians of "Old Glory," everything she had ever read of heroism and blood-stained battle-fields and glorious dying, came back to her in a flood of e

ll it ho

hat they h

aware that Roberta was trying to attract her

to take some earlier in the action, but you hadn't eyes for anything

lain what soul-stirring visions had been hers for that little space of time that the band played and the heroes of t

in with Gay and Mary. She had decided not to change her dress for the hop, she said as she threw off her lon

suggest what she might have looked like in her teens. Her cordial welcome put Mary at ease at once, and she followed the girls up th

y walked about the room, experiencing more thrills at every turn; for on each wall and b

I have this same picture at home, and one like this of Madam Cha

ent later. Then catching sight of a larger one on the mantel in a silv

ng in the window-seat, cleared her throat to attract Mary's attention, and then with an impish smile held up

ast spring, but I was down on the coast and missed him. I intend to make a point of staying at home next tim

oming again?

ignificant nod, for Gay emerg

ut I've just thought of one that Lucy left he

ss anything, but she won't. Kitty Walton thinks I've guessed right too. She said that from

y. "I know Doctor Alex so well th

ked Roberta. "A fine country home built of logs and furnished with beau

ace, with a big outside fire-place on the porch, and the fron

nd. It was one she had brought all the way from Amsterdam. And while she was up on the ladder, looking like a picture, of course, with the roses all about her and the sunshine turning her hair to gold, Dr. Shelby

tossed an armful of dainty muslin and lace on the bed, and for a few mo

s one of those soft clinging things that doesn't have to fit like a glove. I can pin it up on you to make i

a hair-dresser. It was all so delightfully intimate and friendly, just such a situation as Mary had longed for in her dream-castle building, that she even felt at li

r peeping through its bangs, "that I've actually lain awake nights, wonde

ishment, and she dropped the comb wi

thinking about that myself. Who in th

cer you call Bogey came out into the court. I was so lonesome for some young person to talk to, and so close to you all that I could see the comb slippi

w with a scarf over your shoulders that looked like a white moonbeam spangled with dewdrops. It slipped down as yo

terested I don't mind telling you, too. You know Mr. Wade has been very nice to me, and I thought he was great fun until he began to get sentimental. My brother William knew him at

im. But it only made him the more determined. He wrote some poetry about wearing it over his heart forever and all that sort of thing. If he onl

d at him. I saw you do it. And when you look out at anybody from under those

ery sure I'm not going to pull them out to keep people from getting a wrong impression. Anyhow there's no kink in my

deman

said very sweetly, 'Really, Mr. Wade, to be honest with you, I can't afford to give away a seventy-five cent curl to every man who asks for one. You see I'm always financially embarrassed, for papa won't let me borrow after I've spent my monthly allowance, and I n

you give him the impression they were false, when y

But he didn't. He got very stiff and red and walked away, and spent the

ing way, Roberta cried out, "I don't care! It's no worse th

ho'd never been particularly nice to you, who would march up to you some day and say: 'You suit me better than any girl I know, and I'd like to talk over arrangements with you now. Of course we couldn't marry till a year a

that," protested Roberta. "He put in al

ed Gay, and in answer to Mary's gasping

l when she tries to appear very dignified. That was my age then. The thing that made him maddest however, was that I told him that even the 'frog who would a-wooing go' knew how to go about such a matter

that she had some such experience to confess. Roberta was only nineteen now, and to judge by Gay's teasing remar

nly have some such experience to lay away in her memory, as people lay away treasures in rose-leaves and lavender. But so far she couldn't count even a susceptible youth like young Mr. Wade, or a conceited freshman like Gay's early admirer. She wanted to ask how it felt to be proposed to, and thus keep th

she was in, and the most frivolous things she said carried weight and made people listen because of the way she said them. She made statements in the sam

ned into her borrowed gown. "There's no danger of your coming to pieces, when she fixes you. Sometimes I think that she must hypnotize

s and too short in the waist. But the girls seemed proud of the costume they had evolved for her, the parting glance in the mirror showed that the ge

oting of an old friend. She sank into the comfortable chair he pushed forward for her with the sensation that she was coming back to a familiar

was positively brilliant, Mary thought, and made everybody else in the room seem of secondary interest. Roberta, who ran in and out every day, felt the same freedom that a daughter of the house would have. She laughingly pushed Mrs. Melville into a chair and ordered her to sit still while she ran up-stairs for the

t it oppressed her when Lieutenant Boglin and the Captain of the polo team, a Mr. Mills, came in. They were strangers to her but old friends of all the others, and she suddenly felt herself as

to meeting strangers, and they're pretty and gifted and accomplished; a very different thing from being just 'plai

was sure that she could have found plenty to say to the Major on one side, or to Lieutenant Boglin on the other. But Roberta kept the conversational ball rolling, and always in directions that Mary could not f

d-butter miss, not yet out of the nursery. Once there came a place where an anecdote about Hawkins and a new school-girl would have fitted in beautifully if she could only have mustered up courage to tell it. She had a conundrum too, when the others were propounding them, and had opened her

occasions. The lieutenant, who, as Mary had feared, had classed her as a callow little school-girl who couldn't talk except in embarrassed monosyllables, had been wondering why Gay had made such a point of his meeting her. Now as he looke

e girl's name? I've forgotten. Oh, thank you." Then he deliberately pulled up

"it is an old saying that the 'shallows murmur, but the d

deferential attention to make a reply, and Mary began at a rate tha

op's fables, the one that went to

ong-beaked bird like himself could reach it. You see the people you talked about to-night were utte

gey. "That wasn't very co

rty in Kentucky. I wanted to be with the older girls who were to be bridesmaids, and watch their preparations for the wedding, and this child tagged after me so persistently that I lay awake nights trying to

alked, and the way her dimples flashed in and out as she chattered on. Gay looked over approvingly a

cort, and almost immediately after it seemed, although in fact it was half an hour, the 'bus whistle sou

gers on such occasions as this," Bogey told her.

tion, Mary nearly fell out in her eagerness to see all the novel sights. The lieutenant smiled at her enthusi

na?ve comment on the sentinel, "but there is something genuine and likeable a