|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 79
"So I don't think you were mistaken about that call. Your achievement
_may_ be greater than the other girls, even here in Lone-Rock, as much
bigger and better, as a whole life is bigger and better than a few books
and pictures. You've begun on me, and you'll have Marion to try your
hand on next. No telling where you will stop. You may be the Apostle of
Cheerfulness to the entire far West before you are done. Who knows?"
Although the last words were spoken lightly, Mary felt the seriousness
underlying them, and looked up, her face shining, as if some mystery had
suddenly been made clear to her.
"Oh, Jack!" she cried. "You don't know how easy that makes every thing.
I've looked at life at Lone-Rock as something to be endured merely as a
stepping stone to better things. But if you think that this is the
beginning of my real tryst, I can answer the call in such a different
spirit. By the winged spur of our ancestors," she cried, gaily waving,
the ruffle she was hemming, "I'll be 'Ready, aye ready' for whatever
comes."
Jack did not go back to the office the first of September. It was the
middle of the month before he made the attempt. Norman wheeled him over
on his way to school, and Mary, standing in the door to watch them
start, felt the tears spring to her eyes as she compared this pitiful
going to the buoyant stride with which he used to start to work. Still,
he was so much better than they had dared to hope he would be, that when
she went back to her room she picked up a red pencil and marked the date
on her calendar with a star.
Then she remembered that this was the day the girls would be trooping
back to Warwick Hall, and she recalled the opening day the year before,
when she had been among them. She wondered who was taking possession of
her room, and if the new girls would be as devoted to Betty as the old
ones were. She could picture them all, driving up the avenue, singing as
they came; then Hawkins's imposing reception and Madam Chartley's
greeting. How she longed to be in the bustle of unpacking, and to make
the rounds of all her favourite haunts by the river and in the beautiful
old garden! Dorene and Cornie wouldn't be there. They were graduated and
gone. But Elsie and A.O. and Margaret Elwood and Betty--as she named
them over such a homesick pang seized her, that it seemed as if she
could not bear the thought of never going back.
The thought of all she was missing, drove her as it used to do, to her
shadow-chum for sympathy, and Lloyd was in her thoughts all day.
Somehow, when Huldah came back from the grocery, bringing her a letter
from Lloyd, she was not at all surprised, although it was the first one
she had received from her since she left school, except a little note of
sympathy right after Jack's accident.
The surprise came when she opened the letter. She read it over and over,
and then, because Jack was at the office and her mother at a
neighbour's, she turned to her long-neglected journal for a confidante.
She had to hunt through all the drawers of her desk for it, it had been
hidden away so long. She felt that the news in the letter was worthy a
place in her good times book, for it recorded Lloyd's happiness, which
was as dear to her as her own.
"Oh, little Red Book," she wrote, "what an amazing secret I am going to
give you to hold! _Lloyd is engaged, and not to Phil!_ She has been
engaged since last June to Rob Moore. It is not to be announced formally
until Christmas, and they are not to be married for a long time, but
Eugenia knows, and Joyce, and her very most intimate friends. She wanted
me to know, and to hear it from herself, because she felt that no one
could wish her joy more sincerely than her '_little chum_.' I am so glad
she really called me that, after all my months of make believe.
"But it was the surprise of my life to find that Rob is The Prince and
not Phil. Poor Phil! I am sure he was disappointed, and somehow I keep
thinking of that more than of Lloyd's happiness. I don't see how she
_could_ prefer anybody else to the Best Man."
Here she paused, and began fingering the unwritten leaves of the diary,
wondering if the time would ever come when they would hold the record of
other engagements. Nearly a third of the pages were still blank. How
many nice things she could think of that she would like to be able to
write thereon. Maybe they would hold the date of a visit to Oaklea some
day, to _Mrs. Rob Moore_. How odd that sounded. Or what was more
probable, since he had already mentioned it in his letters to Jack, a
visit from Phil, if he went back to California with his father and Elsie
on their return.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|