Molly Make-Believe Part 3

"The pictures are not altogether satisfactory. It isn't a 'type' that I am looking for, but a definite likeness of 'Molly' herself. Kindly rectify the mistake without further delay! or REFUND THE MONEY."

Almost all the rest of the night he amused himself chuckling to think how the terrible threat about refunding the money would confuse and conquer the extravagant little Art Student.

But it was his own hands that did the nervous trembling when he opened the big express package that arrived the next evening, just as his tiresome porridge supper was finished.

"Ah, Sweetheart--" said the dainty note tucked inside the package--"Ah, Sweetheart, the little G.o.d of love be praised for one true lover--Yourself! So it is a picture of _me_ that you want? The _real me_! The _truly me_! No mere pink and white likeness? No actual proof even of 'seared and yellow age'? No curly-haired, coquettish attractiveness that the shampoo-lady and the photograph-man trapped me into for that one single second? No deceptive profile of the best side of my face--and I, perhaps, blind in the other eye? Not even a fair, honest, every-day portrait of my father's and mother's composite features--but a picture of _myself_!

Hooray for you! A picture, then, not of my physiognomy, but of my _personality_. Very well, sir. Here is the portrait--true to the life--in this great, clumsy, conglomerate package of articles that represent--perhaps--not even so much the prosy, literal things that I am, as the much more illuminating and significant things that _I would like to be_. It's what we would 'like to be' that really tells most about us, isn't it, Carl Stanton? The brown that I have to wear talks loudly enough, for instance, about the color of my complexion, but the forbidden pink that I most crave whispers infinitely more intimately concerning the color of my spirit. And as to my Face--_am I really obliged to have a face_? Oh, no--o!

'Songs without words' are surely the only songs in the world that are packed to the last lilting note with utterly limitless meanings. So in these 'letters without faces' I cast myself quite serenely upon the mercy of your imagination.

"What's that you say? That I've simply _got_ to have a face?

Oh, darn!--well, do your worst. Conjure up for me then, here and now, any sort of features whatsoever that please your fancy. Only, Man of Mine, just remember this in your imaginings: Gift me with Beauty if you like, or gift me with Brains, but do not make the crude masculine mistake of gifting me with both. Thought furrows faces you know, and after Adolescence only Inanity retains its heavenly smoothness. Beauty even at its worst is a gorgeously perfect, flower-sprinkled lawn over which the most ordinary, every-day errands of life cannot cross without scarring. And brains at their best are only a ploughed field teeming always and forever with the worries of incalculable harvests. Make me a little pretty, if you like, and a little wise, but not too much of either, if you value the verities of your Vision. There! I say: do your worst! Make me that face, and that face only, that you _need the most_ in all this big, lonesome world: food for your heart, or fragrance for your nostrils. Only, one face or another--I insist upon having _red hair_!

"MOLLY."

With his lower lip twisted oddly under the bite of his strong white teeth, Stanton began to unwrap the various packages that comprised the large bundle. If it was a "portrait" it certainly represented a puzzle-picture.

First there was a small, flat-footed scarlet slipper with a fluffy gold toe to it. Definitely feminine. Definitely small. So much for that! Then there was a sling-shot, ferociously stubby, and rather confusingly boyish. After that, round and flat and tantalizing as an empty plate, the phonograph disc of a totally unfamiliar song--"The Sea Gull's Cry": a clue surely to neither age nor s.e.x, but indicative possibly of musical preference or mere individual temperament. After that, a tiny geographical globe, with Kipling's phrase--

"For to admire an' for to see, For to be'old this world so wide-- It never done no good to me, But I can't drop it if I tried!"--

written slantingly in very black ink across both hemispheres. Then an empty purse--with a hole in it; a silver-embroidered gauntlet such as hors.e.m.e.n wear on the Mexican frontier; a white table-doily partly embroidered with silky blue forget-me-nots--the threaded needle still jabbed in the work--and the small thimble, Stanton could have sworn, still warm from the snuggle of somebody's finger. Last of all, a fat and formidable edition of Robert Browning's poems; a tiny black domino-mask, such as masqueraders wear, and a s.h.i.+mmering gilt picture frame inclosing a pert yet not irreverent handmade adaptation of a certain portion of St. Paul's epistle to the Corinthians:

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not a Sense of Humor, I am become as sounding bra.s.s, or a tinkling symbol. And though I have the gift of Prophecy--and all knowledge--so that I could remove Mountains, and have not a Sense of Humor, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my Goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not a Sense of Humor it profiteth me nothing.

"A sense of Humor suffereth long, and is kind. A Sense of Humor envieth not. A Sense of Humor vaunteth not itself--is not puffed up. Doth not behave itself Unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil--Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. A Sense of Humor never faileth. But whether there be unpleasant prophecies they shall fail, whether there be scolding tongues they shall cease, whether there be unfortunate knowledge it shall vanish away. When I was a fault-finding child I spake as a fault-finding child, I understood as a fault-finding child,--but when I became a woman I put away fault-finding things.

"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three. _But the greatest of these is a sense of humor!_"

With a little chuckle of amus.e.m.e.nt not altogether devoid of a very definite consciousness of being _teased_, Stanton spread all the articles out on the bed-spread before him and tried to piece them together like the fragments of any other jig-saw puzzle. Was the young lady as intellectual as the Robert Browning poems suggested, or did she mean simply to imply that she _wished_ she were? And did the tom-boyish sling-shot fit by any possible chance with the dainty, feminine sc.r.a.p of domestic embroidery? And was the empty purse supposed to be especially significant of an inordinate fondness for phonograph music--or what?

Pondering, puzzling, fretting, fussing, he dozed off to sleep at last before he even knew that it was almost morning. And when he finally woke again he found the Doctor laughing at him because he lay holding a scarlet slipper in his hand.

IV

The next night, very, very late, in a furious riot of wind and snow and sleet, a clerk from the drug-store just around the corner appeared with a perfectly huge hot-water bottle fairly sizzling and bubbling with warmth and relief for aching rheumatic backs.

"Well, where in thunder--?" groaned Stanton out of his cold and pain and misery.

"Search me!" said the drug clerk. "The order and the money for it came in the last mail this evening. 'Kindly deliver largest-sized hot-water bottle, boiling hot, to Mr. Carl Stanton,... 11.30 to-night.'"

"OO-w!" gasped Stanton. "O-u-c-h! G-e-e!" then, "Oh, I wish I could purr!" as he settled cautiously back at last to toast his pains against the blessed, scorching heat. "Most girls," he reasoned with surprising interest, "would have sent ice cold violets shrouded in tissue paper. Now, how does this special girl know--Oh, Ouch! O-u-c-h!

O-u-c-h--i--t--y!" he crooned himself to sleep.

The next night just at supper-time a much-freckled messenger-boy appeared dragging an exceedingly obstreperous fox-terrier on the end of a dangerously frayed leash. Planting himself firmly on the rug in the middle of the room, with the faintest gleam of saucy pink tongue showing between his teeth, the little beast sat and defied the entire situation. Nothing apparently but the correspondence concerning the situation was actually transferable from the freckled messenger boy to Stanton himself.

"Oh, dear Lad," said the tiny note, "I forgot to tell you my real name, didn't I!--Well, my last name and the dog's first name are just the same. Funny, isn't it? (You'll find it in the back of almost any dictionary.)

"With love,

"MOLLY.

"P. S. Just turn the puppy out in the morning and he'll go home all right of his own accord."

With his own pink tongue showing just a trifle between his teeth, Stanton lay for a moment and watched the dog on the rug. c.o.c.king his small, keen, white head from one tippy angle to another, the little terrier returned the stare with an expression that was altogether and unmistakably mirthful. "Oh, it's a jolly little beggar, isn't it?"

said Stanton. "Come here, sir!" Only a suddenly pointed ear acknowledged the summons. The dog himself did not budge. "Come here, I say!" Stanton repeated with harsh peremptoriness. Palpably the little dog winked at him. Then in succession the little dog dodged adroitly a knife, a spoon, a copy of Browning's poems, and several other sizable articles from the table close to Stanton's elbow.

Nothing but the dictionary seemed too big to throw. Finally with a grin that could not be disguised even from the dog, Stanton began to rummage with eye and hand through the intricate back pages of the dictionary.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A much-freckled messenger-boy appeared dragging an exceedingly obstreperous fox-terrier]

"You silly little fool," he said. "Won't you mind unless you are spoken to by name?"

"Aaron--Abidel--Abel--Abiathar--" he began to read out with petulant curiosity, "Baldwin--Barachias--Bruno (Oh, hang!) Cadwallader--Caesar--Caleb (What nonsense!) Ephraim--Erasmus (How could a girl be named anything like that!) Gabriel--Gerard--Gershom (Imagine whistling a dog to the name of Gershom!) Hannibal--Hezekiah--Hosea (Oh, h.e.l.l!)" Stolidly with unheedful, drooping ears the little fox-terrier resumed his seat on the rug.

"Ichabod--Jabez--Joab," Stanton's voice persisted, experimentally. By nine o'clock, in all possible variations of accent and intonation, he had quite completely exhausted the alphabetical list as far as "K." and the little dog was blinking himself to sleep on the far side of the room. Something about the dog's nodding contentment started Stanton's mouth to yawning and for almost an hour he lay in the lovely, restful consciousness of being at least half asleep. But at ten o'clock he roused up sharply and resumed the task at hand, which seemed suddenly to have a.s.sumed really vital importance. "Laban--Lorenzo--Marcellus," he began again in a loud, clear, compelling voice. "Meredith--" (Did the little dog stir? Did he sit up?) "Meredith? Meredith?" The little dog barked. Something in Stanton's brain flashed. "It is 'Merry' for the dog?" he quizzed. "Here, MERRY!" In another instant the little creature had leaped upon the foot of his bed, and was talking away at a great rate with all sorts of ecstatic grunts and growls.

Stanton's hand went out almost shyly to the dog's head. "So it's 'Molly Meredith'," he mused. But after all there was no reason to be shy about it.

It was the _dog's_ head he was stroking.

Tied to the little dog's collar when he went home the next morning was a tiny, inconspicuous tag that said "That was easy! The pup's name--and yours--is 'Meredith.' Funny name for a dog but nice for a girl."

The Serial-Letter Co.'s answers were always prompt, even though perplexing.

"DEAR LAD," came this special answer. "You are quite right about the dog. And I compliment you heartily on your shrewdness. But I must confess,--even though it makes you very angry with me, that I have deceived you absolutely concerning my own name. Will you forgive me utterly if I hereby promise never to deceive you again? Why what could I possibly, possibly do with a great solemn name like 'Meredith'? My truly name, Sir, my really, truly, honest-injun name is 'Molly Make-Believe'. Don't you know the funny little old song about 'Molly Make-Believe'? Oh, surely you do:

"'Molly, Molly Make-Believe, Keep to your play if you would not grieve!

For Molly-Mine here's a hint for you, Things that are true are apt to be blue!'

"Now you remember it, don't you? Then there's something about

"'Molly, Molly Make-a-Smile, Wear it, swear it all the while.

Long as your lips are framed for a joke, Who can prove that your heart is broke?'

"Don't you love that 'is broke'! Then there's the last verse--my favorite:

"'Molly, Molly Make-a-Beau, Make him of mist or make him of snow, Long as your DREAM stays fine and fair, _Molly, Molly what do you care!_'"

"Well, I'll wager that her name _is_ 'Meredith' just the same," vowed Stanton, "and she's probably madder than scat to think that I hit it right."

Whether the daily overtures from the Serial-Letter Co. proved to be dogs or love-letters or hot-water bottles or funny old songs, it was reasonably evident that something unique was practically guaranteed to happen every single, individual night of the six weeks' subscription contract. Like a youngster's joyous dream of chronic Christmas Eves, this realization alone was enough to put an absurdly delicious thrill of expectancy into any invalid's otherwise prosy thoughts.

Yet the next bit of attention from the Serial-Letter Co. did not please Stanton one half as much as it embarra.s.sed him.

Wandering socially into the room from his own apartments below, a young lawyer friend of Stanton's had only just seated himself on the foot of Stanton's bed when an expressman also arrived with two large pasteboard hat-boxes which he straightway dumped on the bed between the two men with the laconic message that he would call for them again in the morning.

"Heaven preserve me!" gasped Stanton. "What is this?"

Fearsomely out of the smaller of the two boxes he lifted with much rustling snarl of tissue paper a woman's brown fur-hat,--very soft, very fluffy, inordinately jaunty with a blush-pink rose nestling deep in the fur. Out of the other box, twice as large, twice as rustly, flaunted a green velvet cavalier's hat, with a green ostrich feather as long as a man's arm drooping languidly off the brim.