Kate Langley Bosher

“ They love you, mein Fraulein. They love you because you have not them forgot, and because you do not forget when you, too, were little and unloved and nobody cared. Love it a great thing is."
Mary Cary sat upright and her clear laughter broke the stillness of the soft night air. "Did you talk to that little Minna Haskins, Hedwig, or hear her talk? Her imagination is worse than mine ever was, but memory is her specialty. There's nothing she doesn't remember. She's only eight, but she goes back to the prehistoric without a blink. ”

“ Nothing is so beautiful as youth, and she had much more than youth. The gods had been good to her up to then, and then they taunted her, made spring in her heart love for one only—love that must be crushed and killed, for the man who alone could inspire it wore the hated blue, was there to fight against her people, and never must she marry him, she told herself. On a visit North she had met him, and it was a whim of fate that he should be captain of one of the companies taking possession of Yorkburg, with headquarters in the Roy house, next to her own. ”

“ Who would believe Gibbie Gault had a tear duct!" She shook her head. "Gibbie Gault has everything every other woman has, and if she chooses to hide a hungry heart under a sharp tongue whose business is it? People may talk about her as much as they please, but they sha'n't feel sorry for her!" She threw her handkerchief on the table. "What idiots we are to go masquerading through life! All playing a part—all! Pretending not to care when we do care. Pretending we do when we don't. What a shabby little sham most of this thing called life is! ”

“ For half a moment Mary Cary leaned against the library table, her hands behind her clasping it with an intensity of which she was not conscious, and for a moment more words would not come. Slowly the hot color died out of her face and her lips quivered.
"No," she said, presently. "No. I can't say anything. When we feel much we can say little, and I couldn't tell you how you have—have humbled me; but I do thank you for your kind, kind words. It is not I you should thank, however. I have done so little. I could have done nothing had it not been for Yorkburg's friend. ”

“ And who isn't glad to be living when every single tree is dressed in green and gold, or brown and tan, or yellow and red, and the sun is just laughing at you, and dancing for joy? It's such a nice world, Peggy, this world is, if we'll just keep our eyes open to the pretty things in it, and our hearts to its good things. Of course we have to see the ugly ones; if we didn't we might bump into them, and get hurt or soiled or something. But seeing and keeping on looking are very different things. Wait a minute, Peggy! ”

“ Miss Gibbie sat down in the big chair Mary Cary had pushed for her near the fire, and spread out the full folds of her black silk skirt with deliberate precision. "How do you know what I want people to do? My dear Miss Cary, only dead people don't talk. What we say and what we do, what we wear and where we go, is cause for comment in exact proportion to what we do not say and what we do not do, what we do not wear and where we do not go, with those people who do us the honor of spending their time in discussing us. ”

“ The mills and factories have brought new people, some of the old ones have died, the little ones grown up, several have married and gone away to live, but it is the same sunshiny little place, and I love it. In the months spent with Miss Gibbie, waiting for Tree Hill to be made ready to live in, there was the restless feeling that belongs to temporary arrangement, but now I am home; here to live and work, and the only shadow is that the big and little Aldens are not here, too. ”

“ He smiled. "I'd take Mary any way I could get her. Oh, I used to have theories of my own about such things, but love knocks theories into nothingness. It makes us do things we never thought we would, doesn't it?"
Miss Gibbie turned her head away from his understanding eyes, and tapped the porch impatiently with her foot.
"It makes fools of most people. But as long as we've mentioned it we might as well have this out, Mary doesn't want to marry anybody. She is happy, and you are not to be coming down here trying to make her change her mind, trying to take her away!" ”

“ Some hours later Peggy was gone, and before the crackling logs on the andirons in the library Mary Cary, on her knees, held out her hands to their blaze and nodded to the dancing flames.
"It's so nice to have you, Fire. I love you! You are so warm and cheerful and such good company. And you're such a good thing to dream in and see pictures in and tell fairy tales to. You tell fairy tales yourself. You can be very nice, Fire—but oh, your ashes!" ”

“ No wizard works such enigmatical changes as that master of human destinies called Love. Lives are glorified or ruined by it, and no man or woman experiences it who is not more or less, in the process of experiencing, some sort of a fool. They play with happiness as though it were a toy, and learn too late they've thrown away the only thing worth having in life. By-the-way, speaking of happiness, has this Mr. Horatio Fielding gone yet?"
Mary Cary drew the big wing chair closer to the fire and sat upon its arm, one slippered foot on the fender. ”

“ It takes little to give some people pleasure. Parties and picnics and teas, and even dinners, with the wrong sort of mixtures, are the breath of life to certain types. But I am like you, I don't like Mrs. Deford. She is a friend of mother's and visits her at the blink of an eye. I always have business out of the city when she is at the house. She puts her head on the side when she talks. I can stand almost any kind of woman but that kind. She's got a tongue, too, like Mrs. McDougal's friend, one that tells all it knows and makes up what it doesn't. ”

“ Last year the rate of interest on all taxable property was one dollar and twenty-five cents per one hundred dollars. This year, Mr. Councilmen, if you really love Yorkburg, you will raise it to one dollar and thirty-five cents.
"Oh, I know," She laughed and lifted her hand as if to stop the unspoken protest of certain stirrings. "I know the name of taxes isn't truly pleasant to any one. But I have with me a list of taxpayers who agree to the increase asked for, and if you would like to see it, there is no objection to your doing so." ”

“ Miss Gibbie sat upright. "I thought you were one myself. Your unremitting attendance upon Lily was carrying my suggestions rather far. In matters of compromise a man is a master. He'd fall in love with anything if there was nothing else to fall in love with. Mary has been something of a trail, and how did I know your vanity had not surrendered to the soothing balm of adoration? A bit of encouragement and Lily would have swung incense. She's that kind. Many a man marries a woman because of her admiration for him. Many a woman marries her husband because no to her man asked her. ”

“ Men love to pursue. Something still to be won, something that may be lost, is something he should never forget. Neither should she. I did say just now a man could stand a full amount of praise. I've known good husbands made of mighty unpromising material. A woman of tact and judgment can do much with little. I've seen them do it."
She leaned back in her chair, and in her keen gray eyes was a gleam of the gay twinkle of her youth.
"It isn't bad judgment to make a man believe he is something. He is by nature inclined to it, and a little encouragement is good for most people. ”

“ John's hands, too, seemed again to hold hers as he asked for the promised blessing, and when he bent and kissed her she had laughed lightly lest her heart give sign of its twisting, shivering hurt.
Suddenly her face fell forward in her hands. "So many lonely people in the world," she said, under her breath, "so many people in Lonely Land! Nobody to wait for when the day is done. Nobody to go to when darkness falls!" ”

“ A woman's heart never ceases to long for the love that makes her first in life, and after a while Mary will know her arms were meant to hold children of her own."
For a moment there was silence, and then Miss Gibbie spoke again.
"Let her alone, John. Let her find for herself that the best community mother should be the woman who has borne children and knows the depths of human experience are needed to reach its heights. She has her own ideas of service; so have I. Mine are that most people you try to help are piggy and grunt if you happen to step on their toes. ”

“ The moon, coming out of its hiding place, for a moment poised clear and cool in a trough of gray banked by curling clouds of black, sent a thread of pale light upon the golden dragons on the coat, flashed on the slippers, and was lost in the darkness under which it darted. Miss Gibbie, watching, nodded toward it, and tapped the stool on which her feet rested with the tip of her toes.
"The moon is like one's self," she said. "Go where you will you can't get rid of it. ”

“ Here, Hedwig, take my hat and bring me some iced tea—and next time your Fraulein hides in the orchard you can find her and not send me there."
Blowing somewhat from her walk, Miss Gibbie dropped in a chair in the hall, unfastened the strings of her broad-brimmed hat and handed it to Hedwig. Spreading out her ample skirts, she pulled off her white cotton gloves, opened the bag hanging from her waist, took from it a handkerchief of finest thread, and with it wiped her face. After a moment she glanced around. "A house knows when it is occupied. Sleeping here has given things a different air." ”

“ The gavel again sounded. "The meeting will come to order!"
Mr. Chinn, in his long frock-coat and white string tie, stood a moment surveying with mournful eye the crowded room, and in his voice as he repeated "The meeting will come to order!" was the assurance that all flesh is as grass, and though in a field it may flourish it will finally be cut down.
But not yet could the meeting come to order. As Mr. Simson, the clerk, stood up and began to call the roll there was the shuffle of many feet in the hall and the men near the door parted to make way for late but determined arrivals. ”

“ For you there's but one woman in the world, but a woman is the strangest thing God's made yet, and there are no rules by which to understand her. And you don't understand Mary. Until she does what it is in her heart to do here—gets rid of some of the regulations that use to enrage her as a child, starts flowers where are weeds, and opens eyes that are shut—she couldn't be happy. ”

“ Miss Gibbie took up the tea-caddy. "Do you think you've accomplished great things by coming? Judging by your manner of late, not to mention your looks, you haven't been drunk with happiness since you reached this town of historic importance and modern inconsequence. But of course—" she tilted the spout of the kettle into the teapot—"my suggestion that you stay where you belong was a mere woman's, and you saw fit to ignore it. Men like to bring blessings on their head—and my friend John Maxwell is most verily a man." ”

“ President, members of the Yorkburg Council, fellow-citizens, and ladies"—again he bowed profoundly—"a distinguished honor has been bestowed upon me to-night, and as long as life shall last I will look back upon this occasion as the proudest moment of my life. We have met to-night not only to do our plain duty as citizens of a noble town, but to look with far-seeing eyes into that great future which stretches endlessly and forever on, and which can be made as beautiful as—er, as—er the New Jerusalem or—er, or—er Richmond or New York. ”

“ And the pity is there are many like you!
"'Cui-bono-itis.' That's what you had, Gibbie Gault—'cui-bono-itis.' Bad thing! Almost as hard on the people about you as the 'ego-itis' of to-day. Pity people can't die of their own diseases instead of killing other people with them. Great pity!"
The moon was gone. Only in faint lines of light was the blackness of the sky broken, and as she looked out over the trees in the garden below, and down the street, asleep and still, the scene changed, and no longer was she in Yorkburg, but in the little village of Chenonceaux, at the Inn of Le Bon Laboureur. ”

“ We must show the watching world that we citizens of old Yorkburg"—his right hand made a wide inclusive sweep—"we citizens are awake, are up and looking around. We are no longer dead poor. Money is nine-tenths of much in life, but the other tenth is a busting big part. It's made of sense and hustle, and it's up to us to prove it! We've been excusin' of ourselves by saying poverty has paralyzed us, and we couldn't do this and we couldn't do that, because we didn't have the cash. ”

“ She sighed queerly and changed the left foot on the fender to the right, and again tapped the arms of her chair with the tips of her delicately pointed fingers. "What a silly, sensitive little thing this self-love, this pride of ours, is! And it's Mary's hardiest sin. She wouldn't let the angels of heaven take her up to-day and put her down to-morrow, and while she laughs at much in life, there are certain things she doesn't smile at. A friend who fails in her eyes isn't even in a class with toads. She has an idea that John is no longer the friend of old. ”