Mary Wollaston

Mary Wollaston

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mary Wollaston, by Henry Kitchell
Webster This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Mary Wollaston
Author: Henry Kitchell Webster
Release Date: February 19, 2004 [EBook #11161]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY
WOLLASTON ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Mary Meehan and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

MARY WOLLASTON
BY HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER
1920

CONTENTS
I THE CIRCASSIAN GRAND
II SEA DRIFT
III THE PEACE BASIS
IV THE PICTURE PUZZLE
V JOHN MAKES A POINT OF IT

VI STRINGENDO
VII NO THOROUGHFARE
VIII THE DUMB PRINCESS
IX IN HARNESS
X AN INTERVENTION
XI NOT COLLECTABLE
XII HICKORY HILL
XIII LOW HANGS THE MOON
XIV A CLAIRVOYANT INTERVAL
XV THE END OF IT
XVI FULL MEASURE
XVII THE WAYFARER
XVIII A CASE OF NECESSITY
XIX THE DRAMATIST
XX TWO WOMEN AND JOHN
XXI THE SUBSTITUTE
XXII THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE
XXIII THE TERROR
XXIV THE WHOLE STORY
XXV DAYBREAK
XXVI JOHN ARRIVES
XXVII SETTLING PAULA
XXVIII THE KALEIDOSCOPE

MARY WOLLASTON

CHAPTER I
THE CIRCASSIAN GRAND
Miss Lucile Wollaston was set to exude sympathy, like an aphid
waiting for an overworked ant to come down to breakfast. But there
was no sympathizing with the man who came in from a doctor's
all-night vigil like a boy from a ball-game, gave her a hard brisk kiss on
the cheek-bone, and then, before taking his place at the table, unfolded
the morning paper for a glance at the head-lines.

If there was something rigorous about the way she lighted the alcohol
lamp under the silver urn and rang for Nathaniel, the old colored butler,
it was from a determination not to let this younger brother of hers put
her into a flurry again as he so often did. A very much younger brother
indeed, he seemed when this mood was on him.
Miss Wollaston was born on the election day that made James
Buchanan president of the United States and Doctor John within a few
days of Appomattox. But one would have said, looking at them here at
the breakfast table on a morning in March in the year 1919, that there
was a good deal more than those ten years between them. He folded his
paper and sat down when the butler suggestively pulled out his chair
for him and his manner became, for the moment, absent, as his eye fell
upon a letter beside his plate addressed in his daughter, Mary's,
handwriting.
"I want a big platter of ham and eggs, Nat, sliced thick. And a few of
Lucartha's wheat cakes." He made some sort of good-humored, half
articulate acknowledgment of the old servitor's pleasure in getting such
an order, but one might have seen that his mind was a little out of focus,
for it was not exactly dealing with the letter either. He sliced it open
with a table knife with the precise movement one would have expected
from a surgeon and disengaged it in the same neat way from its
envelope. But he read it as if he weren't very sharply aware of what,
particularly, it had to say and he laid it beside his plate again without
any comment.
"Did you have any sleep last night, at all?" Miss Wollaston asked.
It brought him back like a flash. "Not a wink," he said jovially.
This was a challenge and the look that went with it, one of clear boyish
mischief, was one that none of John Wollaston's other intimates--and
among these I include his beautiful young wife and his two grown-up
children by an earlier marriage--ever saw. It was a special thing for this
sister who had been a stately young lady of twenty when he was a bad
little boy of ten. She had watched him, admiring yet rather aghast, ever
since then.

To the world at large his social charm lay in--or was at least inseparable
from--his really exquisite manners, his considerateness, the touch of
old-fashioned punctilio there was about him. His first wife would have
agreed with her successor about his possession of this quality though
they would have appraised it rather differently. Only this elderly
unmarried sister of his felt the fascination of the horrible about him.
This was to some extent inherent in his profession. He had a reputation
that was growing to amount to fame as a specialist in the very wide
field of gynecology, obstetrics and abdominal surgery. The words
themselves made Miss Wollaston shudder.
When he replied to her question, whether or not he