Mary Minds Her Business | Page 3

look of melancholy in his eyes and a way of sighing to himself as though asking a question, and then answering it with a muffled "Yes... Yes..." This may have been partly due to the past and partly due to the future, for the son whom he had brought home with him began to worry him--a handsome young rascal who simply didn't have the truth in him at times, and who was buying presents for girls almost before he was out of short trousers.
His name was Paul--"Paul Vionel Olgavitch Spencer," he sometimes proudly recited it, and whenever we heard of that we thought of his mother.
The older Paul grew, the handsomer he grew. And the handsomer he grew, the wilder he became and the less the truth was in him. At times he would go all right for a while, although he was always too fond of the river for his aunts' peace of mind.
At a bend below the dam he had found a sheltered basin, covered with grass and edged with trees. And there he liked to lie, staring up into the sky and dreaming those dreams of youth and adventure which are the heritage of us all.
Or else he would sit and watch the river, although he couldn't do it long, for its swift movement seemed to fascinate him and excite him, and to arouse in him the desire to follow it--to follow it wherever it went. These were his quieter moods.
Ordinarily there was something gipsy-like, something Neck-or-Nothing about him. A craving for excitement seemed to burn under him like a fire. The full progression of correction marched upon him and failed to make impression: arguments, orders, warnings, threats, threshings and the stoppage of funds: none of these seemed to improve him in the least.
Josiah's two sisters did their best, but they could do nothing, either.
"I wouldn't whip him again, Josiah," said Miss Cordelia one night, timidly laying her hand upon her brother's arm. "He'll be all right when he's a little older.... You know, dear ... you were rather wild, yourself ... when you were young.... Patty and I were only saying this morning that if he takes after you, there's really nothing to worry about--"
"He's God's own punishment," said Josiah, looking up wildly. "I know--things I can't tell you. You remember what I say: that boy will disgrace us all...."
He did.
One morning he suddenly and simply vanished with the factory pay-roll and one of the office stenographers.
In the next twelve months Josiah seemed to age at least twelve years--his cousin Stanley watching him closely the while--and then one day came the news that Paul Spencer had shot and killed a man, while attempting to hold him up, somewhere in British Columbia.
If you could have seen Josiah Spencer that day you might have thought that the bullet had grazed his own poor heart.
"It's God's punishment," he said over and over. "For seven generations there has been a Spencer & Son--a trust that was left to me by my father that I should pass it on to my son. And what have I done...!"
Whereupon he made a gesture that wasn't far from despair--and in that gesture, such as only those can make who know in their hearts that they have shot the albatross, this preface brings itself to a close and at last my story begins.

CHAPTER I
"Patty," said Miss Cordelia one morning, "have you noticed Josiah lately?"
"Yes," nodded Miss Patricia, her eyes a little brighter than they should have been.
"Do you know," continued the other, her voice dropping to a whisper, "I'm afraid--if he keeps on--the way he is--"
"Oh, no, Cordelia! You know as well as I do--there has never been anything like that in our family."
Nevertheless the two sisters looked at each other with awe-stricken eyes, and then their arms went around each other and they eased their hearts in the immemorial manner.
"You know, he worries because we are the last of the Spencers," said Cordelia, "and the family dies with us. Even if you or I had children, I don't think he would take it so hard--"
A wistful look passed over their faces, such as you might expect to see on those who had repented too late and stood looking through St. Peter's gate at scenes in which they knew they could never take a part.
"But I am forty-eight," sighed Cordelia.
"And I--I am fifty--"
The two sisters had been writing when this conversation started. They were busy on a new generation of the Spencer-Spicer genealogy, and if you have ever engaged on a task like that, you will know the correspondence it requires. But now for a time their pens were forgotten and they sat looking at each other over the gatelegged table which served as desk. They were still both remarkably good-looking, though marked with that