Contrary Mary

And now Mary's head went up.

"I haven't decided, Porter." She was fighting for freedom.

"But Constance needs you, Mary--and you need her."

"Oh, no," Mary said, brokenly, "Constance doesn't need me. She has

Gordon and the baby. Nobody needs me--now."

Roger saw the quick blood flame in Porter's face. He felt it flame in

his own. And just for one fleeting moment, over the bowed head of the

girl, the challenging eyes of the two men met.

Aunt Frances, who came over with Grace in the afternoon, went home in a

high state of indignation.

"Why Patty Carew and Roger Poole should take possession of Mary in that

fashion," she said to her daughter at dinner, "is beyond me. They

don't belong there, and it would have been in better taste to leave at

such a time."

"Mary begged Cousin Patty to stay," Grace said, "and as for Roger

Poole, he has simply made Mary over. She has been like a stone image

until to-day."

"I don't see any difference," Aunt Frances said. "What do you mean,

Grace?"

"Oh, her eyes and the color in her cheeks, and the way she does her

hair."

"The way she does her hair?" Aunt Frances laid down her fork and

stared.

"Yes. Since the awful news came, Mary has seemed to lose interest in

everything. She adored Barry, and she's never going to get over

it--not entirely. I miss the old Mary." Grace stopped to steady her

voice. "But when I went up with her to her room to talk to her while

she dressed for dinner, she put up her hair in that pretty boyish way

that she used to wear it, and it was all for Roger Poole."

"Why not for Porter?"

"Because she hasn't cared how she looked, and Porter has been there

every day. He has been there too often."

"Do you think Roger will try to get her to marry him?"

"Who knows? He's dead in love with her. But he looks upon her as too

rare for the life he leads. That's the trouble with men. They are

afraid they can't make the right woman happy, so they ask the wrong

one. Now if we women could do the proposing----"

"Grace!"

"Don't look at me in that shocked way, mother. I am just voicing what

every woman knows--that the men who ask her aren't the ones she would

have picked out if she had had the choice. And Mary will wait and

weary, and Roger will worship and hang back, and in the meantime Porter

will demand and demand and demand--and in the end he'll probably get

what he wants."