The Making of Mary Part 11

"Not very much. He was to have taken me up in the balloon yesterday, but the cyclone burst it."

"We're going home now, and I think you'd better say 'Good-night' to Mr.

Tom Axworthy and come with us."

After waiting two hours and a half for standing room on a suburban train, we reached the hotel at an early hour on July the 5th, dusty, smoke-stained, and powder-scented, like veterans from a field of battle.

That was not by any means the last of Mr. Tom Axworthy. During the remainder of our stay in Chicago it was he quite as frequently as his more mature and eligible cousin who exchanged a lingering farewell with Mary at the ladies' entrance to our hotel, and a great fear arose in the heart of Belle that the young woman was fooling away her time with this impecunious boy, instead of making the most of her opportunities to come to a satisfactory understanding with his cousin. Every morning did she gaze pathetically into my face, saying:

"I do hope Axworthy will propose to-day!" and once she added:

"I cannot face another winter in the same house with that girl and your mother. Grandma has taken it into her head that Mary is my pet lamb, the idol of my heart, for whom she, and you too, have been set aside. She doesn't see that it worries me half to death to have Mary tagging round after me the whole time, and overrunning the house with her beaux.

Neither of our own girls is old enough yet, thank goodness, to consider herself my companion and equal, to wear my gloves, my boots, my best hairpins, and to use my favorite perfume; to come and plant herself down beside me whenever I'm talking confidentially to anyone, to be determined to have her finger into every pie, to know what I'm reading or thinking about. She'll insist on knowing my dreams next!"

"Perhaps you mesmerize her."

"If I did, I'd make her keep away from me! I could stand it all better if I thought she really cared a straw for me, but I have the feeling that she regards me merely as a basis for supplies."

"We can only trust, then, that the basis may be speedily transferred to Axworthy!"

On our return from the World's Fair, the family stopped off at Interlaken, but I had to go on into town to the _Echo_ office. To my surprise, Mary joined me at my solitary dinner at the "House of the Seven Gables," where Margaret, as usual, was in charge, and she remained there for the rest of the week.

"Where's Mary?" was Belle's greeting, when I joined her on Sat.u.r.day.

"She's in town."

"Why didn't you bring her out with you?"

"Didn't know you wanted her. She said she'd like to stay in Lake City over Sunday, to take the Communion."

"Take the Communion indeed! She wants to be left there alone with Margaret, so that she'll have a chance to flirt with every man in town.

I thought you had more sense, David."

I pulled my soft felt hat further over my diminished head.

"Did she get any letters?"

"One or two."

"Wretch! I told her to come out here with you to-night for certain."

Monday morning, mother, who had been spending the summer with my married sister in Lake City, came out to stay for a week with us at Interlaken.

She could hardly wait till the youngsters were out of hearing to pour her story into my ears. I had to take back to town the train by which she had come out, but she made the most of her time.

"There's been great doin's in yer hoose in yer absence. Marg'et 's been tellin' yer sister's servant a' aboot Mary's luv affairs. Mary tell't her 'at Eesabelle bade her write Willum Axworthy an' spier his intentions; that if she didna, Mrs. Davvit said she'd d'it hersel'. An'

a' the time she's correspondin' wi' a yunger ane, an Axworthy tae, 'at she tells Marg'et she likes a hape better. Yer sister's sair affronted to think o' the w'y the fem'ly name's bein' cairted thro' the mire."

Belle came out on the veranda, her broad hat in her hand, ready to walk down to the train with me.

"So Axworthy didn't propose at the Fair?" said I, when we were out of earshot of the cottage.

"No; and I think it's a crying shame, too, after the way he appropriated the girl all last winter, and in Chicago too."

"A great relief to you! Well, I guess the whole town knows by this time that you made Mary write and ask his intentions."

"This is too much! Has your mother----"

"Mary's been making a _confidante_ of Margaret, that's all. That inestimable domestic is so much one of ourselves, it was hard for the unsophisticated mind to know exactly where to draw the line."

"I hope she has drawn the line at showing Margaret his reply. I haven't seen that myself."

"What can you expect it to be? If he had wanted to marry the girl there was nothing to prevent him asking her, and if he did not, no letter of yours would make him want to."

"She wrote it herself, and all she said was that she would like to know definitely how she stood with him. I did nothing but correct the spelling."

"Better if you had written in your own name, and without her knowledge.

No daughter of the house would ever have been put in such a position. So far as I can judge, Mary and Mr. Will Axworthy are quits. If he has had a good time in her society, she has had an equally good time in his, and he does not enjoy her letters so much as he did her propinquity."

"He's a cold-hearted, cowardly----"

"Tut! tut! my dear!"

By this time we were on the platform, and the engine was backing its one car down to receive me and the other unhappy toilers compelled to go away and leave that sapphire-blue lake behind.

"Don't you think, Isabel, that it's about time you quit trying to play Providence and gave G.o.d a chance?"

"Dave! you're blasphemous!"

"No, I'm not. I only wish to remark that in your schemes for the welfare of one particular person, you are apt to overlook the comfort and happiness of everyone else concerned. That's the worst of not being omniscient. You're only an amateur sort of a deity after all."

"Send that girl out here by the very next train." And I obeyed.

CHAPTER VII.

ANOTHER week of night work, and then the sunniest of Sundays on the sh.o.r.e of old Lake Michigan.

I noticed that Mary was in deep disgrace with my wife, who would hardly speak to her, and I judged therefore that Mr. Will Axworthy had not been brought to time.

I am not a venturesome boatman, and generally confine my aquatic outings to the smaller lake, but that Sat.u.r.day night there was not a breath of wind, and the water was placidity personified, so I drifted in my small skiff through the channel that connects the smaller with the larger body of water. On the sandy point jutting out at the mouth, upon an old stump, sat a solitary maiden, the picture of woe.

"h.e.l.lo, Mary!" said I, ignoring the tears; "want to go for a boat ride?"

"I don't care if I do," she replied, seating herself in the stern, which I turned toward her.

Silently I pulled out into the big lake, where the copper-colored sun going down in a haze near the horizon bade us beware of a hot day on the morrow. Out of the lake to the right rose the full moon, failing as yet to make her gentle influence felt against the radiant glow the sun was leaving behind him.