Mary Minds Her Business Part 20

"Anyway I enclose the card and rates and references of the school. You see they give the consuls' names.

"If you decide yes, you want your granddaughter to have a chance, write a letter to the name and address below. That's me. Then write the school, sending check for one year and say it is for the daughter of the name and address below. That is the name I am known by here.

"I'm sorry for everything, but of course it's too late now. The truest thing in the world is this: As you make your bed, so you've got to lie in it. I made mine wrong, but you couldn't help it. I wouldn't bother you now except for Rosa's sake.

"Your prodigal son who is eating husks now,

"PAUL."

Mary looked at the photograph--a pretty child with her hair over her shoulders and a smile in her eyes.

"You poor little thing," she breathed, "and to think you're my niece--and I'm your aunt ... Aunt Mary," she thoughtfully repeated, and for the first time she realized that youth is not eternal and that years go swiftly by.

"Life's the strangest thing," she thought. "It's only a sort of an accident that I'm not in her place, and she's not in mine.... Perhaps I sha'n't have any children of my own--ever--" she dreamed, "and if I don't--it will be nice to think that I did something--for this one--"

For a moment the chill of caution went over her.

"Suppose it isn't really Paul," she thought. "Suppose--it's some sharper.

Perhaps that's why dad never wrote him--"

But an instinct, deeper than anything which the mind can express, told her that the letter rang true and had no false metal in it.

"Or suppose," she thought, "if he knows dad is dead--suppose he turns up and makes trouble for everybody--"

Wally's story returned to her memory. "There was an accident out West--somebody killed. Anyhow he was blamed for it--so he could never come back or they'd get him--"

"That agrees with his living under this Russian name," nodded Mary.

"Anyhow, I'm sure there's nothing to fear in doing a good action--for a child like this--"

She propped the picture on her desk and after a great deal of dipping her pen in the ink, she finally began--

"Dear Sir:

"I have opened your letter to my father, Josiah Spencer. He has been dead three years. I am his daughter.

"It doesn't seem right that such a nice girl as Rosa shouldn't have every chance to grow up good and happy. So I am writing the school you mentioned, and sending them the money as you suggest.

"She will probably need some clothes, as they always look at a girl's clothes so when she goes to school. I therefore enclose something for that.

"Trusting that everything will turn out well, I am

"Yours sincerely,

"MARY SPENCER.

"P.S. I would like Rosa to write and tell me how she gets on at school."

She wrote the school next and when that was done she sat back in her chair and looked out of the window at the birds and the flowers and the bees that flew among the flowers.

"What a queer thing it is--love, or whatever they call it," she thought.

"The things it has done to people--right in this house! I guess it's like fire--a good servant but a bad master--"

She thought of what it had done to Josiah--and to Josiah's son. She thought of what it had done to Ma'm Maynard, what it was doing to Helen, how it had left Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Patty untouched.

"It's like some sort of a fever," she told herself. "You never know whether you're going to catch it or not--or when you're going to catch, it--or what it's going to do to you--"

She walked to the window and rather unsteadily her hand arose to her breast.

"I wonder if I shall ever catch it...." she thought. "I wonder what it will do to me...!"

CHAPTER XXI

Archey Forbes came back in the beginning of May and the first call he made was to the house on the hill. He had brought with him a collection of souvenirs--a trench-made ring, shrapnel fragments of curious shapes, the inevitable helmet and a sword handle with a piece of wire attached.

"It was part of our work once," he said, "to find b.o.o.by traps and make them harmless. This was in a barn, looking as though some one had tried to hide his sword in the hay. It looked funny to me, so I went at it easy and found the wire connected to a fuse. There was enough explosive to blow up the barn and everybody around there, but it wouldn't blow up a hill of bears when we got through with it."

He coloured a little through his bronze. "I thought you might like these things," he awkwardly continued.

"Like them? I'd love them!" said Mary, her eyes sparkling.

"I brought them for you."

They were both silent for a time, looking at the souvenirs, but presently their glances met and they smiled at each other.

"Of course you're going back to the factory," she said; and when he hesitated she continued, "I shall rely on you to let me know how things are going on."

Again he coloured a little beneath his bronze and Mary found herself watching it with an indefinable feeling of satisfaction. And after he was gone and she was carrying the souvenirs to the den, she also found herself singing a few broken bars from the Blue Danube.

"Is that you singing!" shouted Helen from the library.

"Trying to."

Helen came hurrying as though to see a miracle, for Mary couldn't sing.

"Oh--oh!" she said, her eyes falling on the helmet. "Who sent it? Wally Cabot?"

"No; Archey Forbes brought it."

"Oh-ho!" said Helen again. "Now I see-ee-ee!"

But if she did, she saw more than Mary.

"Perhaps she thinks I'm in love with him," she thought, and though the reflection brought a pleasant sense of disturbance with it, it wasn't long before she was shaking her head.

"I don't know what it is," she decided at last, "but I'm sure I'm not in love with him."