Contrary Mary

"The train will be easier. And I'll telephone you when I get there."

She took chances on the telephoning--for had he called her up, he would

have found that she did not reach Rockville on Friday night, nor was

she expected by Elizabeth Dean until Saturday in time for lunch.

There was thus an evening and a night and the morning of the next day

in which Little-Lovely Leila was to be lost to the world.

She took the train for Rockville, but stopped at a station half-way

between that town and Washington, and there Barry met her. They had

dinner at the little station restaurant--a wonderful dinner of ham and

eggs and boiled potatoes, but the wonderfulness had nothing to do with

the food; it had to do rather with Little-Lovely Leila's shining eyes

and blushes, and Barry's abounding spirits. He was like a boy out of

school. He teased Leila and wrote poetry on the fly-specked dinner

card, reading it out loud to her, reveling in her lovely confusion.

When they finished, Leila telephoned to her father that she had arrived

at Rockville and was safe. If her voice wavered a little as she said

it, if her eyes filled at the trustfulness of his affectionate

response, these things were soon forgotten, as Barry caught up her

little bag, and they left the station, and started over the hills in

search of happiness.

The way was rather long, but they had thought it best to avoid trolley

or train or much-traveled roads, lest they be recognized. And so it

came about that they crossed fields, and slipped through the edges of

groves, and when the twilight fell Little-Lovely Leila danced along the

way, and Barry danced, too, until the moon came up round and gold above

the blackness of the distant hills.

Once they came to a stream that was like silver, and once they passed

through a ghostly orchard with budding branches, and once they came to

a farmhouse where a dog barked at them, and the dog and the orchard and

the budding trees and the stream all seemed to be saying: "You are running away---you are running away."

And now they had walked a mile, and there was yet another.

"But what's a mile?" said Barry, and Little-Lovely Leila laughed.

She wore a frock of pale yellow, with a thick warm coat of the same

fashionable color. Her hat was demurely tied under her little chin

with black velvet ribbons. She was like a primrose of the spring--and

Barry kissed her.

"May I tell Dad, when I get home to-morrow night?" she asked.