The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor Part 3

Not more than half awake, Mary had forgotten the elaborate way in which she had tied up her face, and catching sight in the mirror of an awful spook gliding toward her, she stepped back, almost frozen with terror.

Never had she imagined such a hideous ghost, white as flour, with one round eye higher than the other, and a dreadful slit of a mouth, all askew.

She was too frightened to utter a sound, but the pitcher fell to the floor with a crash, and as the cold water splashed over her feet she bounded back into bed and pulled the cover over her head. Instantly, as her hand came in contact with the mask on her face, she realized that it was only her own reflection in the gla.s.s which had frightened her, but the shock was so great she could not stop trembling.

Wakened by the sound of the breaking pitcher and Mary's wild plunge back into bed, Joyce sat up in alarm, but in response to her whisper Mary explained in m.u.f.fled tones from under the bedclothes that she had simply gotten up for a drink of water and dropped the pitcher. All the rest of the night her sleep was fitful and uneasy, for toward morning her face began to burn as if it were on fire. She tore off the mask and used it to wipe away what remained of the ointment. Most of it had been absorbed, however, and the skin was broken out in little red blisters.

Maybe in her zeal she had used too much of the magical cosmetic, or maybe her face, already made tender by various applications, resented the vigorous rubbings she gave it. At any rate she had cause to be frightened when she saw herself in the mirror. As she lifted the pitcher from the wash-stand, she happened to glance at the proverb calendar hanging over the towel-rack, and saw the verse for the day. It was "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

The big red letters stood out accusingly.

"Oh dear," she thought, as she plunged her burning face into the bowl of cold water, "if I hadn't had so much miserable pride, I wouldn't have destroyed what little complexion I had left. Like as not the skin will all peel off now, and I'll look like a half-scaled fish for weeks."

She was so irritable later, when Joyce exclaimed over her blotched and mottled appearance, that Mrs. Ware decided she must be coming down with some kind of rash. It was only to prevent her mother sending for a doctor, that Mary finally confessed with tears what she had done.

"Why didn't you ask somebody?" said Joyce trying not to let her voice betray the laughter which was choking her, for Mary showed a grief too deep to ridicule.

"I--I was ashamed to," she confessed, "and I wanted to surprise you all.

The advertis.e.m.e.nt said g-grow b-beautiful while you sleep, and now--oh, it's _spoiled_ me!" she wailed. "And I can't go to the house-party--"

"Yes, you can, goosey," said Joyce, consolingly. "Mamma has Grandma Ware's old receipt for rose balm, that will soon heal those blisters.

You would have saved yourself a good deal of trouble and suffering if you had gone to her in the first place."

"Well, don't I know that?" blazed Mary, angrily. Then hiding her face in her arms she began to sob. "You don't know what it is to be uh-ugly like me! I heard mamma say that I was as brown as a squaw, and I couldn't bear to think of Lloyd and Betty and everybody at The Locusts seeing me that way. _That's_ why I did it!"

"You are not ugly, Mary Ware," insisted Joyce, in a most reproving big-sisterly voice. "Everybody can't be a raving, tearing beauty, and anybody with as bright and attractive a little face as yours ought to be satisfied to let well enough alone."

"That's all right for _you_" replied Mary, bitterly. "But you aren't fat, with a turned-up nose and just a little thin straight pigtail of hair. You're pretty, and an artist, and you're going to be somebody some day. But I'm just plain 'little Mary,' with no talents or _anything_!"

Choking with tears, she rushed out of the room, and took refuge in the swing down by the beehives. For once the "School of the Bees" failed to whisper a comforting lesson. This was a trouble which she could not seal up in its cell, and for many days it poisoned all life's honey.

Presently she slipped back into the house for a pencil and box of paper, and sitting on the swing with her geography on her knees for a writing-table, she poured out her troubles in a letter to Jack. It was only a few hundred miles to the mines, and she could be sure of a sympathetic answer before the blisters were healed on her face, or the hurt had faded out of her sensitive little heart.

CHAPTER IV.

MARY'S "PROMISED LAND"

It was a hot, tiresome journey back to Kentucky. Joyce, worn out with all the hurried preparations of packing her mother and Norman off to the mines, closing the Wigwam for the summer, and putting her own things in order for a long absence, was glad to lean back in her seat with closed eyes, and take no notice of her surroundings. But Mary travelled in the same energetic way in which she killed snakes. Nothing escaped her.

Every pa.s.senger in the car, every sight along the way was an object of interest. She sat up straight and eager, scarcely batting an eyelash, for fear of missing something.

To her great relief the peeling process had been a short one, and thanks to the rose balm, not a trace of a blister was left on her smooth skin to remind her of her foolish little attempt to beautify herself in secret. The first day she made no acquaintances, for she admired the reserved way in which her pretty nineteen-year-old sister travelled, and tried to imitate her, but after one day of elegant composure she longed for a chance to drop into easy sociability with some of her neighbors.

They no longer seemed like strangers after she had travelled in their company for twenty-four hours.

So she seized the first social opportunity which came to her next morning. A middle-aged woman, who was taking up all the available s.p.a.ce in the dressing-room, grudgingly moved over a few inches when Mary tried to squeeze in to wash her face. Any one but Mary would have regarded her as a most unpromising companion, when she answered her question with a grumbling "Yes, been on two days, and got two more to go." The tone was as ungracious as if she had said, "Mind your own business."

The train was pa.s.sing over a section of rough road just then, and they swayed against each other several times, with polite apologies on Mary's part. Then as the woman finished skewering her hair into a tight knot she relaxed into friendliness far enough to ask, "Going far yourself?"

"Yes, indeed!" answered Mary, cheerfully, reaching for a towel. "Going to the Promised Land."

The car gave a sudden lurch, and the woman dropped her comb, as she was sent toppling against Mary so forcibly that she pinned her to the wall a moment.

"My!" she exclaimed as she regained her balance. "You don't mean clear to Palestine!"

"No'm; our promised land is Kentucky," Mary hastened to explain. "Mamma used to live there, and she's told us so much about the beautiful times that she used to have in Lloydsboro Valley that it's been the dream of our life to go there. Since we've been wandering around in the desert, sort of camping out the way the old Israelites did, we've got into the way of calling that our promised land."

"Well, I wouldn't count too much on it," advised the woman, sourly.

"They say distance lends enchantment, and things hardly ever turn out as nice as you think they're going to."

"They do at our house," persisted Mary, with unfailing cheerfulness.

"They generally turn out nicer."

Evidently her companion felt the worse for a night in a sleeper and had not yet been set to rights with the world by her morning cup of coffee, for she answered as if Mary's rose-colored view of life so early in the day irritated her.

"Well, maybe your folks are an exception to the rule," she said, sharply, "but I know how it is with the world in general. Even old Moses himself didn't have his journey turn out the way he expected to. He looked forward to _his_ promised land for forty years, and then didn't get to put foot on it."

"But he got to go to heaven instead," persisted Mary, triumphantly, "and that's the best thing that could happen to anybody, especially if you're one hundred and twenty years old."

There was no answer to this statement, and another pa.s.senger appearing at the dressing-room door just then, the woman remarked something about two being company and three a crowd, and squeezed past Mary to let the newcomer take her place.

"_She_ was more crowd than company," remarked Mary confidentially to the last arrival. "She took up most as much room as two people, and it's awful the way she looks on the dark side of things."

There was an amused twinkle in the newcomer's eyes. She was a much younger woman than the one whose place she had taken, and evidently it was no trial for her to be sociable before breakfast. In a few minutes she knew all about the promised land to which the little pilgrim was journeying, and showed such friendly interest in the wedding and the other delights in store for her that Mary lingered over her toilet as long as possible, in order to prolong the pleasure of having such an attentive audience.

But she found others just as attentive before the day was over. The grateful mother whose baby she played with, welcomed her advances as she would have welcomed suns.h.i.+ne on a rainy day. The tired tourists who yawned over their time-tables, found her enthusiastic interest in everybody the most refres.h.i.+ng thing they had met in their travels. By night she was on speaking terms with nearly everybody in the car, and at last, when the long journey was done, a host of good wishes and good-byes followed her all down the aisle, as her new-made friends watched her departure, when the train slowed into the Union Depot in Louisville. She little dreamed what an apostle of good cheer she had been on her journey, or how long her eager little face and odd remarks would be remembered by her fellow pa.s.sengers.

All she thought of as the train stopped was that at last she had reached her promised land.

Those of the pa.s.sengers who had thrust their heads out of the windows, saw a tall, broad-shouldered young man come hurrying along toward the girls, and heard Joyce exclaim in surprise, "Why, Rob Moore! Who ever dreamed of seeing _you_ here? I thought you were in college?"

"So I was till day before yesterday," he answered, as they shook hands like the best of old friends. "But grandfather was so ill they telegraphed for me, and I got leave of absence for the rest of the term.

We were desperately alarmed about him, but 'all's well that ends well,'

He is out of danger now, and it gave me this chance of coming to meet you."

Mary, standing at one side, watched in admiring silence the easy grace of his greeting and the masterful way in which he took possession of Joyce's suit-case and trunk checks. When he turned to her to acknowledge his introduction as respectfully as if she had been forty instead of fourteen, her admiration shot up like mercury in a thermometer. She had felt all along that she knew Rob Moore intimately, having heard so much of his past escapades from Joyce and Lloyd. It was Rob who had given Joyce the little fox terrier, Bob, which had been such a joy to the whole family. It was Rob who had shared all the interesting life at The Locusts which she had heard pictured so vividly that she had long felt that she even knew exactly how he looked. It was somewhat of a shock to find him grown up into this dignified young fellow, broad of shoulders and over six feet tall.

As he led the way out to the street and hailed a pa.s.sing car, he explained why Lloyd had not come in to meet them, adding, "Your train was two hours late, so I telephoned out to Mrs. Sherman that we would have lunch in town. I'll take you around to Benedict's."

Mary had never eaten in a restaurant before, so it was with an inward dread that she might betray the fact that she followed Joyce and Rob to a side-table spread for three. In her anxiety to do the right thing she watched her sister like a hawk, copying every motion, till they were safely launched on the first course of their lunch. Then she relaxed her watchfulness long enough to take a full breath and look at some of the people to whom Rob had bowed as they entered.

She wanted to ask the name of the lady in black at the opposite table.

The little girl with her attracted her interest so that she could hardly eat. She was about her own age and she had such lovely long curls and such big dark eyes. To Mary, whose besetting sin was a love of pretty clothes, the picture hat the other girl wore was irresistible. She could not keep her admiring glances away from it, and she wished with all her heart she had one like it. Presently Joyce noticed it too, and asked the very question Mary had been longing to ask.

"That is Mrs. Walton, the General's wife, you know," answered Rob, "and her youngest daughter, Elise. You'll probably see all three of the girls while you're at The Locusts, for they're living in the Valley now and are great friends of Lloyd and Betty."

"Oh, I know all about them," answered Joyce, "for Allison and Kitty go to Warwick Hall, and Lloyd and Betty fill their letters with their sayings and doings." Mary stole another glance at the lady in black. So this was an aunt of the two little knights of Kentucky, and the mother of the "Little Captain," whose name had been in all the papers as the youngest commissioned officer in the entire army. She would have something to tell Holland in her next letter. He had always been so interested in everything pertaining to Ra.n.a.ld Walton, and had envied him his military career until he himself had an opportunity to go into the navy.

Presently Mrs. Walton finished her lunch, and on her way out stopped at their table to shake hands with Rob.