Contrary Mary
xed Institution and is Met by Flaming Arguments;
r the New Year. But before she
ything to you abo
t Por
ng him. Anybody can see that he's
dy. She's an independent little creature
any future for Barry, unless he marries Leila. If he were not so irrespon
her mending, and Aunt Fra
. He's-- Did you notice on Christmas Day, I
es had seen things which Mary had thought were hidden. She had not nee
r lips. She would not tell Frances
deprecatingly, "and I am sorry that Ge
trong but himself. I wish he had some of Porter Bigelow's steadi
in time
might have been rich when he died, if he hadn't been such a dream
ore. They had been shopping, and had lunched together at a popular tea room. It was while they sat in t
Constance is s
Mary responded; "
mple and marry Porter Bigelo
Porter, Aunt Frances. I d
ette, "If you don't marry," she de
t under
on. And the house is rapidly losing its value. The neighborhood isn't what it was when your father bought it, and you can't rent rooms when nobody wants to come out here to live.
Frances, a woman hasn't any right to marry just because she thinks it is her best chance. She has
dame opposite her, "but as I said before, if
met it defiantly. "If the worst co
Aunt Frances told her coldly; "don't be sill
the two ate their salad with diminished appet
th just the difference between the ideals of twenty years ago and to-day. You haven't either of you an idea of the world as
e's voice which amazed Aunt Frances. "She'll make things come right
o bend for hours over a yellow pad on which she made queer hieroglyphics. And it was throug
ne morning, haggard a
rison. What, after all, were those thousands who wended their way every morning to th
tenographer who sat next to him. "Miss Terr
sprinkle of gray in her hair. But she was well-groomed and ni
d, snapping a rubber ba
ays at t
t nine hundred, and now I
ays in t
een here as long as I, and some of them much longer. There's Maj
as if you were s
ation. "It really isn't bad for a woman. There aren
He waked every morning with the day's routine facing him-knowing that not once in the eight hours w
t to the diversions of a prisoner in his cell. And, when he ate lunch with a group of fellow clerks in
ually ate, inexpensively, he entered a luxurious up-town hotel. There he read the pa
his own kind and class. Musketeers of modernity, they found their adventures on the cit
y. "Here's Whittington," he said. "You ought to hear his poem, fel
looseness of his phrasing, the flush on his cheeks were
erry's car to the Country Club, and you can give it
h, well, if you don't want to, you needn't," he
until he was lost in the crowd, then
t of pink hyacinths. She sat up, yawned, and welcomed him with a little coaxing note. When he had set
was roused an hour later
to find Mary o
lle is at the opera with some old friends. Barry expected to be here with me, but he hasn't com
, but he saw that
t. But I seemed suddenly to have a sort of nervous panic, and I tho
going to give me an evening with
r. Poole, I wonder if you can tell me-about the examination
se they require sp
enough, but I wonder if
red. "
o hampering sometimes-they'd all object-except Aunt Isabelle, but
s Terry and her machine-made personality. What had this girl with the fai
. "A woman's place is in the home-it
t a man to fight a
ays be some one
But what if I don't care to
o be other things,
for e
ov
. I want a man to say to me, 'Come, let us fight the battle together.
anguage, yet there was that
men enough in the world to take care of
t I let Barry take care of me, or Constance-and go on
t you to know that there'll be a live-h
and she couldn't love again. And if she had had an absorbing occupati
nd think of it," she ended, "right here in our gard
, then Mary said: "So that's why I'm trying to learn something-that will have
d he set himse
, "to acquire speed, is to
oes sometimes, b
t. I should
mind? Could we pra
dship in which he served
ed his eyes, the slim white figure in the bi
d by, until with a s
what is kee
. "I saw him down-town. I think he was on his way to t
fri
lled one of
hate Jerry Tuckerman, and Barry promis
it, but he saw that she was st
ing? And what a brave little thing she
the Country Club-I might be able
f you
even while they spoke of him, Bar
n the stairs, and a voice was singing-a strang
a slender shrinking figure; was coming with her brother up the lower flight. Bar
e threshold of the boy's room. The door opened and shut, and she was alon
her sides, then turned and laid her face against th