Contrary Mary

"Then I must fold my hands?"

"Yes. As things are now--I should wait."

He did not explain, and she did not ask, for what she should wait. It

was as if they both realized that the test would come, and that it

would come in time.

And it did come.

It was while Leila was on a trip to the Maine coast with her father.

July was waning, and already an August sultriness was in the air.

Those who were left in town were the workers--every one who could get

away was gone. Mary, with the care of her house on her hands, refused

Aunt Frances' invitation for a month by the sea, and Aunt Isabelle

declined to leave her.

"I like it better here, even with the heat," she told her niece, "than

running around Bar Harbor with Frances and Grace."

Barry wrote voluminous letters to Leila, and received in return her

dear childish scrawls. But the strain of her absence began to tell on

him. He began to feel the pull toward old pleasures and distractions.

Then one day Jerry Tuckerman arrived on the scene. The next night, he

and Barry and the other radiant musketeers motored over to Baltimore by

moonlight. Barry did not come home the next day, nor the next, nor the

next. Mary grew white and tense, and manufactured excuses which did

not deceive Aunt Isabelle. Neither of the tired pale women spoke to

each other of their vigils. Neither of them spoke of the anxiety which

consumed them.

Then one night, after a message had come from the office, asking for an

explanation of Barry's absence; after she had called up the Country

Club; after she had called up Jerry Tuckerman and had received an

evasive answer; after she had exhausted all other resources, Mary

climbed the steps to the Tower Rooms.

And there, sitting stiff and straight in a high-backed chair, with her

throat dry, her pulses throbbing, she laid the case before Roger Poole.

"There is no one else--I can speak to--about it. But Barry's been away

for nearly a week from the office and from home--and nobody knows where

he is. And it isn't the first time. It began before father died, and

it nearly broke his heart. You see, he had a brother--whose life was

ruined because of this. And Constance and I have done everything.

There will be months when he is all right. And then there'll be a

week--away. And after it, he is dreadfully depressed, and I'm afraid."

She was shivering, though the night was hot.