Contrary Mary

It is all like a play passing in front of me. There are charming

English people--charming Americans and some uncharming ones. Oh, why

don't we, who began in such simplicity, try to remain a simple people?

It just seems to me sometimes as if everybody on board is trying to

show off. The rich ones are trying to display their money, and the

intellectual ones their brains. Is there any real difference between

the new-rich and the new-cultured, Roger Poole? One tells about her

three motor cars, and the other tells about her three degrees. It is

all tiresome. The world is a place to have things and to know things,

but if the having them and knowing them makes them so important that

you have to talk about them all the time there's something wrong.

That's the charm of Grace. She has money and position--and I've told

you how she simply carried off all the honors at college; she paints

wonderfully, and her opinions are all worth listening to. But she

doesn't throw her knowledge at you. She is interested in people, and

puts books where they belong. She is really the only one whom I

welcome without any misgivings, except darling Aunt Isabelle. The

others when they come to talk to me, are either too sad or too

energetic.

Doesn't all that sound as if I were a selfish little pig? Well, some

day I shall enjoy them all--but now--my heart is crying--and Leila,

with her little white face, hurts. Mrs. Barry Ballard! Shall I ever

get used to hearing her called that? It seems to set her apart from

little Leila Dick, so that when I hear people speak to her, I am always

startled and surprised.

And now--what are you doing? Are you still planting little gardens,

and talking to your boy--talking to your sad people? Cousin Patty has

told me of your letter to your bishop, who was so kind during

your--trouble--and of his answer--and of your hope that some day you

may have a little church in the sand-hills, and preach instead of teach.

Surely that would make all of your dreams come true, all of our

dreams, for I have dreamed too--that this might come.

Sometimes as I lie here, I shut my eyes, and I seem to see you in that

circle of young pines, and I pretend that I am listening; that you are

saying things to me, as you say them to those poor people in the

pines--and now and then I can make myself believe that you have really

spoken, that your voice has reached across the miles. And so I have

your little sermons all to myself--out here at sea, with all the blue

distance between us--but I listen, listen--just the same.