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Page 58
"Poor little Mary!" said Phil. "All this is nearly going to kill her.
She is so completely wrapped up in Jack, I am afraid that it will make
her bitter."
"Isn't it strange?" asked Betty. "I was wondering about that while we
were out at the Inn this evening. She was in such high spirits, that I
thought of that line from Moore:
"'The heart that is soonest awake to the flowers,
Is always the first to be touched by the thorns,'
and thought if she should take sorrow as intensely as she does her
pleasures, any great grief would overwhelm her."
They had been discussing the situation for more than an hour, when the
door from the bedroom opened, and Mary came out. Her eyes were red and
swollen as if she had been crying a week, but she was strangely calm and
self-possessed. She had rushed away from them an impetuous child in an
uncontrollable storm of grief. Now as she came in they all felt that
some great change had taken place in her, even before she spoke. She
seemed to have grown years older in that short time.
"I am going home to-morrow," she announced simply. "I would start
to-night if it wasn't too late to get the Washington train. I shall have
to go back there to pack up all my things."
"But, Mary," remonstrated Joyce, "mamma said not to. She said positively
we were to stay here and you were to make the most of what is left to
you of this year at school."
"I know," was the quiet answer. "I've thought it all over, and I've made
up my mind. Of course _you_ mustn't go back. For no matter if the
company does pay the expenses of Jack's illness and allows him a pension
or whatever it was mamma called it, for awhile, you couldn't make fifty
cents there where you could make fifty dollars here. So for all our
sakes you ought to stay. But as long as I can't finish my course, a few
weeks more or less can't make any difference to me. And I know very well
I am needed at home."
"But Jack--he'll be so disappointed if you don't get even one full
year," argued Joyce, who had never been accustomed to Mary's deciding
anything for herself. Even in the matter of hair-ribbons she had always
asked advice as to which to wear.
"Oh, I can make it all right with Jack," said Mary confidently. "I
wouldn't have one happy moment staying on at school knowing I was needed
at home. And I _am_ needed every hour, if for nothing more than to keep
them all cheered up. When I think of how busy Jack has always been, and
then those awful days and weeks and years ahead of him when he can't do
anything but lie and think and worry, I'm afraid he'll almost lose his
mind."
"If mamma only hadn't been so decided," was Joyce's dubious answer. "It
does seem that you are right, and yet--we've never gone ahead and done
things before without her consent. I wish we could talk it over with
her."
"Well, I don't," persisted Mary. "I'm going home and I'm perfectly sure
that down in her heart she'll be glad that I took matters in my own
hands and decided to come--for Jack's sake if nothing else."
"Then we'd better telegraph her to-night--"
"No," interrupted Mary, "not until I'm leaving Washington. Then it will
be too late for her to stop me."
"Oh, dear, I don't know what to do about it," sighed Joyce wearily,
passing her hand over her eyes.
"Just help me gather up my things," was the firm reply. The big bandbox
still stood open in the middle of the floor and the hat with its wreath
of white lilacs lay atop just as Mary had dropped it. She stooped to
pick it up with a pathetic little smile that hurt Phil worse than tears,
and stood looking down on it as if it were something infinitely dear.
"The last thing Jack ever gave me," she said as if speaking to herself.
"It doesn't seem possible that it was only this afternoon we bought it.
It seems months since then--my last happy day!"
Henrietta's latch-key sounded in the lock of the front door, and Phil
rose to go, knowing the situation would all have to be explained to her.
No, there was nothing he could do, they assured him. Nothing anybody
could do. And promising to come around before train-time next morning
he took his leave, heart-sick over the tragedy that had ruined Jack's
life, and would always shadow the little family that had grown as dear
to him as his own.
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