The Making of Mary | Page 5

school through the day."
At this juncture the subject under discussion broke into a beaming smile, showing all her fine teeth. Her cheek dimpled and reddened, and her blue eyes, full of fun, looked straight into mine. I became suddenly aware that I had forgotten to remove the tidy, and retired in confusion, but heard Belle's conclusion of the interview:
"Just wait a second till I give you a line to the matron of the House of Refuge. You can leave the girl there till we see what can be done for her. She'll be perfectly safe, and had better keep on going to school as usual."
* * * * *
A week afterward I asked my wife what had become of her latest prot��g��e.
"You mean Mary Mason? She's in the refuge yet, attending school, and we've settled that man's ice-cream saloon."
"How?"
"Boycotted him. We can't reach him any other way."
"That's rather hard on his wife, who seems to be a decent sort of party."
"The innocent often appear to suffer with and for the guilty, but if you understood the law of Karma you would know that all the evil that befalls us is really the result of some wrongdoing of our own in a previous incarnation. Mary Mason herself is an instance."
"What's the matter with her?"
"Poor girl! She's been knocked from pillar to post all her days. She hasn't an idea who her parents are, and there isn't a creature in the world she has any claim upon. She must have gone very far astray last time to have been brought into the world again with such disadvantages."
"It appears to me she has a great many advantages--lovely blue eyes, good teeth, the fashionable golden shade of hair, and the prettiest complexion I've seen for many a day."
"Don't be provoking, Dave! The poor little thing has the marks of some of her beatings on her yet. The Ferguson family were the first who ever treated her decently, or paid her any wages."
"Why did they drop her?"
"One of our Committee took it upon herself to write and ask them. They replied that the girl was of perfectly good character, so far as they knew, but she fell so ridiculously in love with Frank Ferguson, their eldest son, that she was making a nuisance of herself, and so they had to let her go."
I laughed.
"There are generally two sides to that kind of story."
"At the meeting of the trustees to-morrow it is to be decided what's to be done with her, because she says she doesn't want to go to school any more. She's never had much of a chance before to learn anything, and she's in a class with little bits of girls, and she doesn't like it--says she'd rather go to work to earn her own living."
Belle came home from that meeting with her face ablaze with righteous wrath. Her hands trembled so much over the teacups at our evening meal that even sixteen year old Watty, our eldest son, remarked it.
"What's the matter with mamma? Her trolley's off."
I knew there was trouble in the wind, so I fortified myself with a good supper and read my paper at the same time, to leave myself free for what was to follow. The children study their lessons in the back end of the nursery, and I therefore forbore to take up my usual position upon the sofa, but withdrew to the parlor with my pipe.
Presently my wife followed me, nearly walking over the furniture in her excitement.
"Go on, Belle; out with it!"
"You will listen, will you, seriously?"
"Certainly, mawm. I never had any sort of an objection to your making a scavenger barrel of me, so go ahead."
"Oh, these benevolent women, Dave! Any one of them alone is as good-hearted as can be, but lump them together on a committee, and they're as cold and cruel and grasping as the meanest business man you could name!"
"More so!" said I, approvingly, and for once Isabel did not resent the disparagement of her sex.
"The question arose, what was to be done about Mary Mason, and every one of them, David--every one of them, with young daughters of their own growing up at home, voted to let that girl go round this town selling a book."
"Was that what she wanted to do herself?"
"Yes; but think of them letting her do it! You know as well as I do what sort of a city this is, and whether it's safe for a lovely girl like that to go to men's offices, trying with her pretty looks and ways to wheedle them into subscribing for Stanley's 'Darkest Africa.' Oh, I was wild! I said to Mrs. Robinson: 'How would you like your Lulu to do it?' 'The cases are very different,' said she; 'my daughter has no need to earn her