The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware Part 12

"I believe she could find some occupation on the top of a church steeple," thought Joyce, recalling some of the things with which she had seen Mary amuse herself. There was the time in Plainsville when a burned foot kept her captive in the house, and she couldn't go to the neighbours. Always an indefatigable visitor, she amused herself with a pile of magazines, visiting in imagination each person and place pictured in the ill.u.s.trations, and on the advertising pages. She played with the breakfast-food children, talked to the smiling tooth-powder ladies, and invented histories for the people who were so particular about their brands of soap and hosiery.

There was always something her busy fingers could turn to when tired of household tasks; bead-work and basket-weaving, embroidery, knitting, even strange feats of upholstering, and any repair work that called for a vigorous use of hammer and saw and paint-brush. A girl who could sit by the hour watching ants and spiders and bees, who could quote poems by the yard, who loved to write letters and could lose herself to the world any time in a new book, was not a difficult guest to entertain. She could easily find amus.e.m.e.nt for herself even in the top flat of a New York apartment house. So Joyce went on with her painting with a care-free mind.

Meanwhile Mary was slipping into her travelling suit, hurrying on hat and gloves and furs, and with her heart beating loud at her own daring, boldly stepping out into the strange streets by herself. It was easy to find the corner where they had taken the car the night before. Only one block to the right and then one down towards a certain building whose mammoth sign served her as a landmark. But the night before she had not noticed that the track turned and twisted many times before it reached the corner where they changed for the East Side car, and she had not noticed how long it took to travel the distance. Rigid with anxiety lest she should pa.s.s the place she kept a sharp look-out, till she began to fear that she must have already done so, and finally mustered up courage to tell the conductor the name of the bank at which she wished to stop.

"Quarter of an hour away, Miss," he answered shortly. So she relaxed her tension a trifle, but not her vigilance. There were a thousand things to look at, but she dared not become too interested, for fear the conductor should forget her destination, and she should pa.s.s it.

At last she spied the grim forbidding building for which she was watching, and almost the next instant was going up the steps, just three minutes before the clock inside pointed to the hour of opening. She could not see the time, however, as the heavy iron doors were closed, and the moments before they were swung open seemed endless. It seemed to her that people stared at her curiously, and her face grew redder than even the cold wind warranted. Then she heard the porter inside shoot the bolts back and turn the key, and as the door swung open she darted past him so suddenly that he fell back with a startled exclamation.

In her confusion all she saw was the teller's window, with a shrewd-eyed man behind its bars, looking at her so keenly that she was covered with confusion, and forgot the name of the man she wanted to see.

[Ill.u.s.tration : "ALL SHE SAW WAS THE TELLER'S WINDOW, WITH A SHREWD-EYED MAN BEHIND ITS BARS"]

"I--I--think it is Wheatley," she stammered. "Any way he is awfully fat, and has two double chins, and married the president's daughter, and he takes up the collection at St. Boniface."

The man's mouth twitched under his bristling moustache, but he only said politely, "You probably mean Mr. Oatley. He's just come in." Then to Mary's horror, the man she had described rose from a desk somewhere behind the teller, and came forward pompously. It seemed to Mary that she stood there a week, explaining and explaining as one runs in a nightmare without making any progress, about dropping the wrong coin in the St. Boniface collection; an old family heirloom, something she would not have parted with for a fortune; then about telephoning to the rectory and to Oatley Crest. The perspiration was standing out on her forehead when she finished.

But in a moment the ordeal was over. A clerk was at that instant in the act of counting the money which Mr. Oatley had brought in to deposit.

The shilling rolled out from among the quarters, and as she hurriedly repeated the date and inscription to prove her story, the coin was pa.s.sed back to her with a polite bow.

She looked into her purse for the quarter which she had started to put into the collection, then remembered that she had loaned it to Joyce for car-fare the night before. There was a dollar in the middle compartment, and eager to get away, she plumped it down on the marble slab, saying hastily, "That's for the plate--what I should have put in instead of the shilling, and I can never begin to tell you how grateful I am to get this back."

In too great haste to see the amused glances that followed her, she hurried out to the corner to wait for a home-going car. While she stood there she opened her purse again for one more look at the rescued shilling. Then she gave a gasp. When she left the house the purse had held a nickel and a dollar. She had spent the nickel for car fare and left the dollar at the bank. Nothing was in it now but the shilling, and that was not a coin of the realm, even had she been willing to spend it.

She would have to walk home.

"Now I _am_ in for an adventure," she groaned, looking helplessly around at the hundreds of strange faces sweeping past her. "It's like 'water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.' People, people everywhere, and not a soul that I dare speak to."

Knowing that she could never find her way home should she undertake to walk all those miles, and that she would attract unpleasant attention if she stood there much longer, she started to stroll on, trying to decide what to do next. One block, two blocks and nearly three were pa.s.sed, and she had reached no decision, when she came upon a motherly-looking woman and two half-grown girls, who had stopped in front of a window to look at a display of hats, marked down to half price. Mary stopped too. Not that she was interested in hats, but because she felt a sense of protection in their company.

"No, mamma," one of the girls was saying, "I'm _sure_ we'll find something at Wanamaker's that will suit us better, and it's only a few blocks farther. Let's go there."

Wanamaker's had a familiar sound to Mary. The place where she had lunched only two days before would seem like home after these bewildering stranger-filled streets. So when the bargain-hunting trio started in that direction, she followed in their wake. They paused often to look in at the windows, and each time Mary paused too, as far from them as possible, since she did not want to call attention to the fact that she was following them.

The last of these stops was before a window which looked so familiar that Mary glanced up to see the name of the firm. Then she felt that she had indeed reached a well-known haven, for the name was the same that was woven in gold thread in the tiny silk tag inside her furs. It was the place where Joyce had brought her to select her Christmas present, and there inside the window was the pleasant saleswoman who had sold them to her. She had been so nice and friendly and seemed to take such an interest in pleasing them that Joyce had spoken of it afterward.

Then the woman recognized her--looked from the furs to the eager little face above them and smiled. It seemed incredible to Mary that she should have been remembered out of all the hundreds of customers who must pa.s.s through the shop every day, but she did not know that the sight of her delight over her gift had been the one bright spot in the saleswoman's tiresome day.

Instantly her mind was made up, and darting into the shop in her impetuous way, she told her predicament to the amused woman, and asked permission to telephone to her sister.

Joyce, painting away with rapid strokes, in a hurry to finish the stent she had set for herself, looked up a trifle impatiently at the ringing of the telephone bell. Her first impulse was to call Mary to answer it, but reflecting that probably the call would require her personal attention sooner or later, laid down her brush and went to answer it herself. She could hardly credit the evidence of her own ears when a meek little voice called imploringly, "Oh, Joyce, could you come and get me? I'm at the furrier's where you bought my Christmas present, and I haven't a cent in my pocket and don't know the way home."

"What under the canopy!" gasped Joyce, startled out of her self-possession. All morning she had been so sure that Mary was in the next room that it was positively uncanny to hear her voice coming from so far away.

"I've never known anything so spooky," she called. "I can't be sure its you."

"Well, I wish it wasn't," came the almost tearful reply. "I'm awfully sorry to interfere with your work, and you needn't stop till you get through. They'll let me wait here until noon. I've got a comfortable seat where I can peep out at the people on the street, and I don't feel lost now that you know where I am." Then with a little giggle, "I'm like the Irishman's tea-kettle that he dropped overboard. It wasn't lost because he knew where it was--in the bottom of the sea."

"Well, you're Mary, all right," laughed Joyce. "That speech certainly proves it. Don't worry, I'll get you home as soon as possible."

"Telephones are wonderful things," confided Mary to the saleswoman.

"They are as good as genii in a bottle for getting you out of trouble. I should think the man who invented them would feel so much like a wizard, that he'd be sort of afraid of himself."

The woman answered pleasantly, and would, gladly have continued the conversation, but was called away just then to a customer. Hidden from view of the street by a large dummy lady in a sealskin coat and fur-trimmed skirt, Mary peeped out from behind it at the panorama rolling past the window. At first she was intensely interested in the endless stream of strange faces, but when an hour had slipped by and still they came, always strange, always different, a sense of littleness and loneliness seized her, that amounted almost to panic. She longed to get away from this great myriad-footed monster of a city, back to something small and familiar and quiet; to neighbourly greetings and friendly faces. The loneliness caused by the strange crowds depressed her. It was like a dull ache.

The moments dragged on. She had no way to judge how long she waited, but the hour seemed at least two. Then suddenly, through the ma.s.s of people came a well-known figure with a firm, athletic tread. A man, who even in this crowd of well-dressed cosmopolitans attracted a second look.

"Oh, it's Phil!" she exclaimed aloud, her face brightening as if the sun had suddenly burst out on a cloudy day. She wondered if she dared do such a thing as to tap on the window to attract his attention. She would not have hesitated in Plainsville or Phoenix, but here everything was so different. Somebody else might look and Phil never turn his head.

While she waited, half-rising from her chair, he stopped, looked up at the sign, and then came directly towards the door. Wondering at the strange coincidence that should bring him into the one shop in all New York in which she happened to be sitting, she started up, thinking to surprise him. Then the surprise was hers, for she saw that he was in search of _her_. With a word to the obsequious salesman who met him, he came directly towards her hiding-place behind the dummy in sealskin. His face lighted with a merry smile that was good to see as he crossed over to her with outstretched hand, saying laughingly:

"The lost is found! Well, young lady, this is a pretty performance! What do you mean by shocking your fond relatives and friends almost into catalepsy? I happened to drop in at the studio just as Joyce got your message, and she and Betty were at their wits' end to account for your disappearance."

"Oh, I'm so _glad_ to see you," answered Mary. "You can't imagine! I'm even as glad as I was that time you happened along when the Indian chased me." She ignored his question as entirely as if he had not asked it.

He asked it again when they were presently seated on a homeward bound car. "What I want to know is, what made you wander from your own fireside?"

Mary felt her cheeks burn. She was prepared to make a full confession to the girls, but not for worlds would she make it to him. Quickly turning her back on him as if to look at something that had attracted her attention in the street, she groped frantically around in her mind for an answer. He leaned forward, peering around till he could see her face, and repeated the question.

"Oh," she answered indifferently, bending slightly to examine the toe of her shoe with a little frown, as if it interested her more than the question. "I just went out into the wide world to seek my fortune. You know I never had a chance before."

"And did you find it?"

She laughed. "Well, some people might not think so, but I'm satisfied."

"Did you have any adventures?" he persisted.

"Yes, heaps and heaps, but I'm saving them to go in my memoirs, so you needn't ask what they were."

"Lost on Broadway, or Arizona Mary's Mystery!" exclaimed Phil. "I shall never rest easy until I unearth it."

"Then you'll have a long spell of uneasiness," was the grim reply.

"Horses couldn't drag it from me."

He had begun his questioning merely in a spirit of banter, but as she stubbornly persisted in her refusals, he began to think that she really had had some ridiculous adventure, and was determined to find out what it was. So he set traps for her, and cross-questioned her, secretly amused at the quick-witted way in which she continually baffled him.

"I see that you are sadly changed," he said finally, with a shake of the head. "The little Mary I used to know would have given the whole thing away by this time--would have blurted out the truth before she knew what she was doing. She was too honest and straight-forward to evade a question. But you've grown as worldly-wise as an old trout--won't bite at any kind of bait. Never mind, though, I'll get you yet."

Thus put on her guard, Mary refused to tell even the girls what had possessed her to take secret leave that morning, but as she pa.s.sed Joyce in the hall she whispered imploringly, "_Please_ don't ask me to tell now. It isn't much, but I don't want to tell while he's in the house. He has been teasing me so."

"I'd stay to lunch if anybody would ask me three times," announced Phil, presently. "I have to have my welcome a.s.sured."

"I'll ask you if Mary is willing," said Joyce, who had gone back to her work. "She has promised to be chef to-day."

Mary regarded him doubtfully, as if weighing the matter, then said, "I'm willing if he'll promise not to mention what happened this morning another single time. And he can order any two dishes in the cook-book that can be prepared in an hour, and I'll make them; that is, of course, if the materials are in the house."

"Then I choose doughnuts," was the ready answer. "Doughnuts with holes in them and sugar sprinkled over the top, and light as a feather; the kind you used to keep in a yellow bowl with a white stripe around it, on the middle shelf in the Wigwam pantry. Gee! But they were good! I've never come across any like them since except in my dreams. And for the second choice--let me see!" He pursed up his lips reflectively. "I believe I'd like that to be a surprise, so Mistress-Mary-quite-contrary, you may choose that yourself."

"All right," she a.s.sented. "But if it is to be a surprise I must have a clear coast till everything is ready."