Mary-Gusta | Page 6

know. Ah hum! Poor Marcellus! Here's the first break in the
old firm, Shadrach."
"Yup. You and me are all that's left of Hall and Company. That is--"
He stopped short just in time and roared a "Git dap" at the horse. He

had been on the point of saying something which would have been far
more disastrous than his reference to the troubles following marriage.
Zoeth was apparently not curious. To his friend's great relief he did not
wait for the sentence to be finished, nor did he ask embarrassing
questions. Instead he said:
"I wonder what's goin' to become of that child, Mary Lathrop's girl.
Who do you suppose likely will take charge of her?"
"I don't know. I've been wonderin' that myself, Zoeth."
"Kind of a cute little thing, she was, too, as I recollect her. I presume
likely she's grown up consid'ble since. You remember how she set and
looked at us that last time we was over to see Marcellus, Shadrach?"
"Remember? How she looked at ME, you mean! Shall I ever forget it?
I'd just had my hair cut by that new barber, Sim Ellis, that lived here
'long about then, and I told him to cut off the ends. He thought I meant
the other ends, I cal'late, for I went to sleep in the chair, same as I
generally do, and when I woke up my head looked like the main truck
of the old Faraway. All it needed was to have the bald place gilded. I
give you my word that if I hadn't been born with my ears set wing and
wing like a schooner runnin' afore the wind I'd have been smothered
when I put my hat on--nothin' but them ears kept it propped up off my
nose. YOU remember that haircut, Zoeth. Well, all the time you and me
was in Marcellus's settin'-room that stepchild of his just set and looked
at my head. Never took her eyes off it. If she'd said anything 'twouldn't
have been so bad; but she didn't--just looked. I could feel my bald spot
reddenin' up till I swan to man I thought it must be breakin' out in
blisters. 'Never see anybody that looked just like me, did you, Sis?' I
says to her, when I couldn't stand it any longer. 'No, sir,' she says,
solemn as an owl. She was right out and honest, I'll say that for her.
That's the only time Marcellus laughed while we was inside that house.
I didn't blame him much. Ho, ho! Well, he ain't laughin' now and
neither are we--or we hadn't ought to be. Neither is the child, I cal'late,
poor thing. I wonder what will become of her."
And meanwhile the child herself was vaguely, and in childish fashion,

wondering that very thing. She was in the carriage room of the barn
belonging to the Hall estate--if the few acres of land and the buildings
owned by the late Marcellus may be called an estate-- curled up on the
back seat of the old surrey which had been used so little since the death
of her mother, Augusta Hall, four years before. The surrey was
shrouded from top to floor with a dust cover of unbleached muslin
through which the sunshine from the carriage room windows filtered in
a mysterious, softened twilight. The covered surrey was a favorite
retreat of Mary-'Gusta's. She had discovered it herself--which made it
doubly alluring, of course--and she seldom invited her juvenile friends
to share its curtained privacy with her. It was her playhouse, her tent,
and her enchanted castle, much too sacred to be made common
property. Here she came on rainy Saturdays and on many days not
rainy when other children, those possessing brothers or sisters, played
out of doors. She liked to play by herself, to invent plays all her own,
and these other children--"normal children," their parents called
them--were much too likely to laugh instead of solemnly making
believe as she did. Mary-'Gusta was not a normal child; she was "that
queer Lathrop young-one"--had heard herself so described more than
once. She did not like the phrase; "queer" was not so bad--perhaps she
was queer--but she had an instinctive repugnance to being called a
young-one. Birds and rabbits had young-ones and she was neither
feathered nor furred.
So very few of the neighborhood children were invited to the shaded
interior of the old surrey. Her dolls--all five of them--spent a good deal
of time there and David, the tortoise-shell cat, came often, usually
under compulsion. When David had kittens, which interesting domestic
event took place pretty frequently, he--or she-- positively refused to be
an occupant of that surrey, growling and scratching in a decidedly
ungentlemanly--or unladylike--manner. Twice Mary-'Gusta had
attempted to make David more complacent