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Page 18
Mary had already on a previous occasion looked in vain for the name of
Ware, and when she failed to find it, consoled herself with the thought
that for three hundred years it had been handed down with honour in the
annals of New England. Staunch patriots the Wares had been in the old
colony days, sturdy and stern of conscience, and Mary had been taught to
believe that their struggle to wrest a living from the rocky hills
while they built up a state was as worthy of honour as any knightly deed
of the Round Table. She was prouder of those early ancestors who delved
and spun and toiled with their hands at yeoman tasks, than the later
ones, who were ministers and judges and college professors.
Until now she had never attached any importance to the fact that a
branch of her mother's family had been a titled one, because she was
such a patriotic little American, and because so many years had elapsed
since that particular branch had severed its connection with the family
in the old world. But now Mary felt a peculiar thrill of satisfaction
when she found the name in the peerage and realized that some of the
blue blood which had inspired those great-great-grandfathers to knightly
deeds was coursing through her own veins. The crest was a winged spur,
with the motto, "Ready, aye ready."
"Maybe that is the reason the 'King's call' has come to me as it did to
Edryn," she mused, her chin in her hand and her eyes gazing dreamily out
of the window. Then she forgot all about her quest for the literature
references, for in her revery she was listening to the Voices again, and
seeing herself in a dimly foreshadowed future, the centre of an
acclaiming crowd. What great part she was to play she did not know, but
when the time should come for the fulfilment of her high destiny, she
would rise to meet it like the winged spur, crying "Ready, aye ready,"
as all those brave ancestors had done. It was in the blood to respond
thus.
The hunter's horn on the terrace outside, sounding the call to
recreation, roused her from her day-dreams, and she came to herself with
a start. But before she hurried away to the office where the mail was
being distributed, she made a quick survey of the H's. To her surprise
the name of Hurst was not among them. She fairly ran down the stairs to
report her discovery to Elise.
When the invitations for the evening were all distributed Mary went up
stairs wailing out her consternation to A.O. She was to be escorted by
Jane Ridgeway, the most dignified senior in the school.
"She's the kind that knows such an awful lot, and you have to be on your
p's and q's with her every single minute. Cornie says her father is in
the Cabinet, and her mother is a shining intellectual light. And now
that I've been warned beforehand, I'll not be able to utter a syllable
of sense; I know that I'll just gibber."
When she went to her room to dress for the occasion that night there
was a great hunch of hot-house roses waiting for her with Jane's card.
She knew from the other girls' description of this opening festivity
that the seniors spared no expense on this occasion, but it rather
overawed her to receive such an extravagant offering. She looked across
at the modest bunch of white and purple violets which had come from the
Warwick Hall conservatory for Ethelinda, and wondered if there had not
been some mistake. Then to her surprise, Ethelinda, who had noticed her
glance, spoke to her.
"Sweet, aren't they! Miss Berkeley sent them, or rather Lady Evelyn, I
should say. She is to be my escort to-night."
It was Mary's besetting sin to put people right whom, she thought were
mistaken, so she answered hastily, "Oh, no! You oughtn't to call her
Lady Evelyn. She doesn't like it. She wants to be just like the other
girls as long as she is in an American school."
Ethelinda drew herself up with a stare, and asked in a patronizing tone
that nettled Mary:
"May I ask how _you_ happen to know so much about her?"
Equally lofty in her manner, and in a tone comically like Ethelinda's,
Mary answered, "You may. Miss Lewis gave me that bit of information,
and for the rest I looked her up in Burke's Peerage. She comes of a very
illustrious and noble family, so of course she feels perfectly sure of
her position, and doesn't have to draw the lines about herself to
preserve her dignity as some people do. Cornie Dean was telling me about
a girl who was in the school last year who made such a fuss about her
pedigree that she couldn't be friends with more than three of the girls.
The rest weren't high enough caste for her. She sported a crest and all
that, and they found out that she hadn't a particle of right to it. Her
father had struck it rich in some lumber deal, and _bought_ a gallery of
ancestral portraits, and paid a man a small fortune to fix him up a coat
of arms. She had no end of money, but she wasn't the real thing, and
Cornie says that paste diamonds won't go down with _this_ school. They
can spot them every time."
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