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Page 44
Hastily thanking him, Mary listened a moment for coming footsteps, then
called up Oatley Crest. To her disappointment a maid answered her. The
family had all gone to take dinner with the James Oatleys, and would not
be home until late at night. No, she did not know where the place
was--some twenty miles away she thought. They had gone in a touring-car.
Baffled in her pursuit, Mary turned away, perplexed and anxious. She had
forgotten to ask the name of the bank. But the glimpse she caught of
her worried face in a mirror in the hall made her pause to smooth the
pucker out of it.
"It is foolish of me to let it spoil my Christmas day like this," she
reasoned with herself. "If I can't keep inflexible any better than this
I don't deserve to have fortune change in my favour."
So armed with the good vicar's philosophy, she went down to the group in
the library. Almost immediately she had her reward.
"Well, what did _you_ think of the offertory, Miss Mary?" asked Stuart,
who had just come in, and was listening to the account that the girls
were giving Eugenia of the morning's music. "Your sister thinks the
soloist had the voice of an angel."
"I'll have to confess that I didn't pay as much attention to that as I
did to the first solos," said Mary honestly. "I was so busy staring at
the fat man who took up the collection in our aisle. He had at least
four chins and was so bald and shiny he fascinated me. His poor head
looked so bare and chilly I really think that must have been what made
me sneeze--just pure sympathy."
"Oh, you mean Oatley," laughed Stuart. "He considers himself the biggest
pillar in St. Boniface, if not its chief corner-stone. Awfully pompous
and important, isn't he? But they couldn't get along without him very
well. He is a joke at the bank, where he is a sort of fifth wheel. They
made a place for him there, because he married the president's daughter,
and it was necessary for him to draw a salary."
One question more and Mary breathed easier. She had learned the name of
the bank, and early in the morning she intended to start out to find it.
With that matter settled it was easy for her to throw herself into the
full enjoyment of all that followed. The Christmas dinner was served in
the middle of the day instead of at night, and the afternoon flew by so
fast that Eugenia protested against their going when the time came,
saying that she had had no visit at all. Joyce explained that she had
promised Mrs. Boyd to help with an entertainment that night for a free
kindergarten over on the East Side, and that she must get to work again
early in the morning to fill an order for some menu cards she had
promised to have ready for the twenty-seventh.
Betty, also, had promised to go back. Mrs. Boyd was sure she would find
material and local colour for several stories, and she felt that it was
an opportunity that she could not afford to miss.
"Then Mary must stay with me," declared Eugenia, and Mary found it hard
to refuse her hospitable insistence. Had it not been for the lost
shilling she would have stayed gladly, and once, she was almost on the
verge of confessing the real reason to Eugenia.
"I don't see why I should mind her knowing how much I think of it," she
mused. "But I don't want anybody to know. They'd remember about its
being a 'Philip and Mary shilling,' and they'd smile at each other
behind my back as if they thought I attached some importance to it on
that account."
To the delight of each of the girls, the invitation which they felt
obliged to decline was changed to one for the week-end, so when they
waved good-bye from the sleigh on their way to the station, it was with
the prospect of a speedy return.
"'And they had feasting and merry-making for seventy days and seventy
nights,'" quoted Mary, as the train drew into the city. "I used to
wonder how they stood it for such a long stretch, but I know now. We
have been celebrating ever since the mock Christmas tree at Warwick
Hall--ages ago it seems--but there has been such constant change and
variety that my interest is just as keen as when I started."
Mrs. Boyd and Lucy were at the flat waiting for them when they arrived,
and after a light supper, eaten picnic fashion around the chafing-dish,
they started off for the novel experience of a Christmas night among the
children of the slums. Betty did find the material which Mrs. Boyd had
promised, and came home so eager to begin writing the tale, that she was
impatient for morning to arrive. Joyce found suggestions for two
pictures for a child's story which she had to illustrate the following
week, and Mary came home a bundle of tingling sympathies and burning
desires to sacrifice her life to some charitable work for neglected
children.
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