Contrary Mary

When Roger Poole came a week later to the big house on the hill, it was

on a rainy day. He carried his own bag, and was let in at the lower

door by Susan Jenks.

Her smiling brown face gave him at once a sense of homeyness. She led

the way through the wide hall and up the front stairs, crisp and

competent in her big white apron and black gown.

As he followed her, Roger was aware that the house had lost its

effulgence. The flowers were gone, and the radiance, and the stairs

that the silken ladies had once ascended showed, at closer range,

certain signs of shabbiness. The carpet was old and mended. There was

a chilliness about the atmosphere, as if the fire, too, needed mending.

But when Susan Jenks opened the door of the Tower Room, he was met by

warmth and brightness. Here was the light of leaping flames and of a

low-shaded lamp. On the table beside the lamp was a pot of pink

hyacinths, and their fragrance made the air sweet. The inner room was

no longer a rosy bower, but a man's retreat, with its substantial

furniture, its simplicity, its absence of non-essentials. In this room

Roger set down his bag, and Susan Jenks, hanging big towels and little

ones in the bathroom, drawing the curtains, and coaxing the fire,

flitted cozily back and forth for a few minutes and then withdrew.

It was then that Roger surveyed his domain. He was monarch of all of

it. The big chair was his to rest in, the fire was his, the low lamp,

all the old friends in the bookcases!

He went again into the inner room. The glass candlesticks were gone

and the photographs in their silver and ivory frames, but over the

mantel there was a Corot print with forest vistas, and another above

his little bedside table. On the table was a small electric lamp with

a green shade, a new magazine, and a little old bulging Bible with a

limp leather binding.

As he stood looking down at the little table, he was thrilled by the

sense of safety after a storm. Outside was the world with its harsh

judgments. Outside was the rain and the beating wind. Within were

these signs of a heart-warming hospitality. Here was no bleak

cleanliness, no perfunctory arrangement, but a place prepared as for an

honored guest.

Down-stairs Mary was explaining to Aunt Isabelle. "I'll have Susan

Jenks take some coffee to him. He's to get his dinners in town, and

Susan will serve his breakfast in his room. But I thought the coffee

to-night after the rain--might be comfortable."