The Making of Mary | Page 9

to a convent, and at the end of three months came back for her holidays to our summer cottage at Interlaken. Being so near the big lake does not agree with my mother, and she rarely spends more than a week with us there, but during July and August visits my married sister in town. The coast was clear for Belle and me to decide what progress had been made in the making of Mary, and we fancied we discovered a good deal.
"What have they done to you, those nuns, to tone you down so quickly, Mary?" I asked, as she sat beside me, swinging in a low rocker, and looking so pretty that I was quite proud of her as an ornament to our front veranda.
"I dunno," she said, "unless it was the exercise for sitting perfectly still on a row of chairs. A nun goes behind us and drops a big book or something, and any girl that jumps gets a bad mark."
"Capital!" I cried; "no wonder you have learned repose of manner."
Thus encouraged, the girl continued:
"Then we have little parties and receptions, and we have to converse with the nuns and with each other, and anybody that mentions one of the three D's gets a bad mark."
"The three D's?"
"Yes, sir--Dress, Disease, and Domestics."
"Hear this, Belle," I said, laughing, as my wife took the rocking chair on the other side of me; "fancy any collection of women being obliged to steer clear of the three D's!"
"You should ask Mary about her studies," was the severe reply. "We were much pleased with your letters."
"Yes, mawm; Sister Stella was always very good about that; helped me with the big words, and often wrote the whole thing out for me. Sometimes I had to copy it two or three times before I could please her."
Belle hastily changed the subject. "Let Mr. Gemmell hear that piece you recited to me this morning."
I am no judge of elocution, but the general effect of the young girl standing there in the arch of the veranda, a clematis-wreathed post on either side, and her face, with its delicate coloring, turned toward the golden twilight, was pleasing in the extreme.
"She'll maybe be famous some day," said Belle, when Mary had discreetly retired. "She is far quicker at learning verses off by heart than she is at reading them."
"Still, to be a successful elocutionist nowadays one has to be thoroughly well educated, and Mary is too late in beginning."
"You can't tell. She's got the appearance, and that's half the battle."
"With us, perhaps; but remember, we are not capable critics, even though one of us is a Theosophist."
"Laugh as you like, Dave. Theosophy satisfies me, because it explains some things in my own nature that I never could understand before."
"It may be that you are too soon satisfied. That's the way with all new movements--one story is good till another is told. Your great-granddaughter will smile at the credulity of your ideas on this very subject."
"She can smile, and so can you. We don't pretend to know everything; we only hope that we are on the right road to learn. I, for one, am thankful to think that there are wiser heads than mine puzzling over the problem of our psychic powers. I've always taken impressions from inanimate objects, and it has bothered me. Now I find my sensations analyzed and classified under the head of Psychometry, and it is a comfort to know that other people besides myself can discern an aura, and are foolishly wise enough to trust the impressions they receive in that way."
"But if I were you, I don't think I'd make a parlor entertainment out of the gift,--if it is a gift,--as I heard you did at the Wades' the other night."
"Who told you? What have you heard?"
"Newspaper men hear everything. You asked Mr. Saxon to hold his handkerchief pressed tightly in his hand for a few minutes, and then to give it to you. You shut your eyes as you held it, and received the impression of his 'aura,' or the atmosphere which surrounds him, or whatever you like to call it, and then the company asked you questions, and you gave him a great old character. He didn't like it a bit, nor did his wife, nor his mother-in-law. You'll make enemies for yourself if you don't watch out."
"It was wrong of me to exercise my powers just to gratify idle curiosity. No good Theosophist would approve of it."
"Say, rather, 'no sensible person would.' The Theosophists haven't a monopoly of common sense. To me they appear slightly deficient in that article, but I dare say they make up for it in uncommon sense."
"You speak more wisely than you know," said Belle solemnly. "If I hadn't taken in some of the Brotherhood