Part 21 (2/2)

”To make herself an honor.” The words repeated themselves again and again, as she rapidly outlined an arrow-head on the tiny moccasin in amber and blue. Suddenly she threw down the needle and the bit of kid and sprang to her feet. ”_I'll do it!_” she said aloud.

As she took a step forward, all a-tingle with a new ambition and a firm resolve, she came face to face with her reflection in one of the polished gla.s.s doors of the bookcase. The intent eagerness of its gaze seemed to challenge her. She lifted her head as if the victory were already won, and confronted the reflection squarely. ”I'll do it!” she said, solemnly to the resolute eyes in the gla.s.s door. ”You see if I don't!”

Only that morning she had given a complacent glance to the long shelves of fiction, with which she expected to while away the rest of the summer. There would be other pleasant things, she knew, drives with Mrs.

Sherman, long tramps with the girls, and many good times with Elise Walton; but there would still be left hours and hours for her to spend in the library, going from one to another of the famous novelists, like a bee in a flower garden.

”With the proper direction in her reading,” the old Colonel had said, and Mary knew without telling that she would not find the proper beginning among the books of fiction. Instinctively she felt she must turn to the volumes telling of real people and real achievements.

Biographies, journals, lives, and letters of women who had been, as the Colonel said, an honor to their s.e.x and the most interesting of their generation. She wished that she dared ask him to choose the first book for her, but she hadn't the courage to venture that far. So she chose at random.

”Lives of Famous Women” was the volume that happened to attract her first, a collection of short sketches. She took it from the shelf and glanced through it, scanning a page here and there, for she was a rapid reader. Then, finding that it bade fair to be entertaining, down she dropped on the rug, and began at the preface. Lunch stopped her for awhile, but, thoroughly interested, she carried the book up to her room and immediately began to read again.

When she went down to the porch before dinner that evening, she did not say to herself in so many words that maybe the Colonel would notice what she was reading, but it was with the hope that he would that she carried the book with her. He did notice, and commended her for it, but threw her into a flutter of confusion by asking her what similarity she had noticed in the lives of those women she was reading about.

It mortified her to be obliged to confess that she had not discovered any, and she thought, as she nervously fingered the pages and looked down at her toes, ”That's what I got for trying to appear smarter than I really am.”

”This is what I meant,” he began, in his didactic way. ”Each of them made a specialty of some one thing, and devoted all her energies to accomplis.h.i.+ng that purpose, whether it was the establis.h.i.+ng of a salon, the discovery of a star, or the founding of a college. They hit the bull's-eye, because they aimed at no other spot on the target. I have no patience with this modern way of a girl's taking up a dozen fads at a time. It makes her a jack-at-all-trades and a master of none.”

The Colonel was growing eloquent on one of his favorite topics now, and presently Mary found him giving her the very guidance she had longed for. He was helping her to a choice. By the time dinner was announced, he had awakened two ambitions within her, although he was not conscious of the fact himself. One was to study the strange insect life of the desert, in which she was already deeply interested, to unlock its treasures, unearth its secrets, and add to the knowledge the world had already ama.s.sed, until she should become a recognized authority on the subject. The other was to prove by her own achievements the truth of something which the Colonel quoted from Emerson. It flattered her that he should quote Emerson to her, a mere child, as if she were one of his peers, and she wished that Joyce could have been there to hear it.

This was the sentence: ”_If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten track to his door_.”

Mary did not yet know whether the desert would yield her the material for a book or a mouse-trap, but she determined that no matter what she undertook, she would force the world to ”make a beaten track to her door.” The first step was to find out how much had already been discovered by the great naturalists who had gone before her, in order that she might take a step beyond them. With that in view, she plunged into the course of study that the Colonel outlined for her with the same energy and dogged determination which made her a successful killer of snakes.

Lloyd came upon her the third morning after the breaking up of the house-party, sitting in the middle of the library floor, surrounded by encyclopaedias and natural histories. She was verifying in the books all that she had learned by herself in the desert of the habits of trap-door spiders, and she was so absorbed in her task that she did not look up.

Lloyd slipped out of the room without disturbing her, wis.h.i.+ng she could plunge into some study as absorbing,--something that would take her mind from the thoughts which had nagged her like a persistent mosquito for the last few days. She knew that she had done nothing to give Bernice just cause for taking offence, and it hurt her to be misunderstood.

”If it were anything else,” she mused, as she strolled up and down under the locusts, ”I could go to her and explain. But explanation is impossible in a case of this kind. It would sound too conceited for anything for me to tell her what I know to be the truth about Malcolm's attentions to her, and as for the othah--” she shrugged her shoulders.

”It would be hopeless to try that. Oh, if I could only talk it ovah with mothah or Papa Jack!” she sighed.

But they had gone away immediately after the house-party, for a week's outing in the Tennessee mountains. She could have gone to her grandfather for advice on most questions, but this was too intangible for her to explain to him. Betty, too, was as much puzzled as herself.

”I declare,” she said, when appealed to, ”I don't know what to tell you, Lloyd. It's going to be such a dull summer with everybody gone, and Alex Shelby is so nice in every way, it does seem unfair for you to have to put such a desirable companions.h.i.+p from you just on account of another girl's jealousy. On the other hand, Bernice is an old playmate, and you can't very well ignore the claims of such a long-time friends.h.i.+p. She has misjudged and misrepresented you, and the opportunity is yours, if you will take it, to show her how mistaken she is in your character.”

Now, as Lloyd reached the end of the avenue and stopped in front of the gate, her face brightened. Katie Mallard was hurrying down the railroad track, waving her parasol to attract her attention.

”I can't come in,” she called, as she came within speaking distance.

”I'm out delivering the most informal of invitations to the most informal of garden-parties to-morrow afternoon. I want you and Betty to help receive.”

”Who else is going to help?” asked Lloyd, when she had cordially accepted the invitation for herself and Betty.

”n.o.body. I had intended to have Bernice Howe, and went up there awhile ago to ask her. She said maybe she'd come, but she certainly wouldn't help receive if you were going to. She's dreadfully down on you, Lloyd.”

”Yes, I know it. I've heard some of the catty things she said about my breaking up the friends.h.i.+p between her and Malcolm. It's simply absurd, and it makes me so boiling mad every time I think about it that I feel like a smouldering volcano. There aren't any words strong enough to relieve my mind. I'd like to thundah and lighten at her.”

”Yes, it is absurd,” agreed Katie. ”I told her so too. I told her that Malcolm always had thought more of you than any girl in the Valley, and always would. And she said, well, you had no 'auld lang syne' claim on Alex, and that if he once got started to going to Locust you'd soon have him under your thumb as you do every one else, and that would be the end of the affair for her.”

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