Contrary Mary

To Mary, possessed and swayed by the letter which she had received from

Roger, it seemed a strange thing that the rest of the world moved

calmly and unconsciously forward.

The letter had come to her on Saturday. On Sunday morning everybody

went to church. Everybody dined afterward, unfashionably, at two

o'clock, and later everybody motored out to the Park.

That is, everybody but Mary!

She declined on the ground of other things to do.

"There'll be five of you anyhow with Aunt Frances and Grace," she said,

"and I'll have tea for you when you come back."

So Constance and Gordon and Aunt Isabelle had gone off, and with Barry

at Leila's, Mary was at last alone.

Alone in the house with Roger Poole!

Her little plans were all made, and she went to work at once to execute

them.

It was a dull afternoon, and the old-fashioned drawing-room, with its

dying fire, and pale carpet, its worn stuffed furniture and pallid

mirrors looked dreary.

Mary had Susan Jenks replenish the fire. Then she drew up to it one of

the deep stuffed chairs and a lighter one of mahogany, which matched

the low tea-table which was at the left of the fireplace. She set a

tapestry screen so that it cut off this corner from the rest of the

room and from the door.

Gordon had brought, the night before, a great box of flowers, and there

were valley lilies among them. Mary put the lilies on the table in a

jar of gray-green pottery. Then she went up-stairs and changed the

street costume which she had worn to church for her old green velvet

gown. When she came down, the fire was snapping, and the fragrance of

the lilies made sweet the screened space--Susan had placed on the

little table a red lacquered tray, and an old silver kettle.

Susan had also delivered the note which Mary had given her to the Tower

Rooms.

Until Roger came down Mary readjusted and rearranged everything. She

felt like a little girl who plays at keeping house. Some new sense

seemed waked within her, a sense which made her alive to the coziness

and comfort and seclusion of this cut-off corner. She found herself

trying to see it all through Roger Poole's eyes.

When he came at last around the corner of the screen, she smiled and

gave him her hand.

"This is to be our hour together. I had to plan for it. Did you ever

feel that the world was so full of people that there was no corner in

which to be--alone?"