Contrary Mary

"But Mary, dear, you will marry--there's Porter."

"Constance, I couldn't think of marriage that way--as a chance to be

taken care of. Oh, Con, I want to wait--for love."

"Dearest, of course. But you can live with us. Gordon would never

consent to your working--he thinks it is dreadful for a woman to have

to fight the world."

Mary shook her head. "No, it wouldn't be fair to you. It is never

fair for an outsider to intrude upon the happiness of a home. If your

duet is ever to be a trio, it must not be with my big blundering voice,

which could make only a discord, but a little piping one."

She looked up to meet Constance's shy, self-conscious eyes.

Mary flew to her, and knelt beside the couch. "Darling, darling?"

And now the list was forgotten and Susan Jenks coming up for it was

made a party to that tremulous secret, and the fate of the dinner was

threatened until Mary, coming back to realities, kissed her sister and

went to her desk, and held herself sternly to the five following

courses of the family dinner which was to please the palates of those

fresh from Paris and London and from castles by the sea; and which was

to test to the utmost the measure of Susan's culinary skill.

At dinner the next night, Gordon Richardson looked often and intently

at Roger Poole, and when, under the warmth of the September moon, the

men drifted out into the garden to smoke, he said, "I've just placed

you."

Roger nodded. "I thought you'd remember. You were one of the younger

boys at St. Martin's--you haven't changed much, but I couldn't be sure."

Gordon hesitated. "I thought I heard from someone that you entered the

Church."

"I had a church in the South--for three years."

Gordon tried to keep the curiosity out of his voice.

"And you gave it up?"

"Yes. I gave it up."

That was all. Not a word of the explanation for which he knew Gordon

was waiting. Nothing but the bare statement, "I gave it up."

They talked a little of St. Martin's after that, of their boyish

experiences. But Roger was conscious that Gordon was weighing him, and

asking of himself, "Why did he give it up?"

The two men were sitting on the stone bench where Roger had so often

sat with Mary. The garden was showing the first signs of the season's

blight. Fading leaf and rustling vine had replaced the unspringing

greenness and the fragrant growth of the summer. There were, to be

sure, dahlias and chrysanthemums and cosmos. But the glory of the

garden was gone.