"I couldn't, unless I could pay my own way."

"Oh, Mary, what makes you fight against anybody doing anything for you?"

"Porter says it is my contrariness---but I just can't hold out my hands

and let things drop into them."

"I know--and that's why you won't marry Porter Bigelow."

Mary flashed at her a surprised and grateful glance. "Grace," she

said, solemnly, "you're the first person who has seemed to understand."

"And I understand," said Grace, "because to me life is a Great

Adventure. Everything that happens is a hazard on the highway--as yet

I haven't found a man who will travel the road with me; they all want

to open a gate and shut me in and say, 'Stay here.'"

Mary's eyes were shining. "I feel that, too."

Grace kissed her. "You'd laugh, Mary, if I told the dream which is at

the end of my journey."

"I sha'n't laugh--tell me."

There was a rich color in Grace's cheeks. In her modish frock of the

black which she affected, and which was this morning of fine serge set

on by a line of fur at hem and wrist, and topped by a little hat of

black velvet which framed the vividness of her glorious hair, she

looked the woman of the world, so that her words gained strength by

force of contrast.

"Nobody would believe it," she prefaced, "but, Mary Ballard, some day

when I'm tired of dancing through life, when I am weary of the

adventures on the road, I'm going to build a home for little children,

and spend my days with them."

So the two girls dreamed dreams and saw visions of the future. They

sang and soared, they kissed and confided.

"Whatever comes, life shall never be commonplace," Mary declared, and

as the bell rang and she went to the table, she felt that now nothing

could daunt her--the hard things would be merely a part of a glorious

pilgrimage.

Susan's hot rolls were pronounced perfect, and Susan, serenely

conscious of it, banished the second maid to the kitchen and waited on

the table herself.

Here were five women of one clan. She understood them all, she loved

them all. She gave even to Aunt Frances her due. "They all holds

their heads high," she had confided on one occasion to Roger Poole,

"and Miss Frances holds hers so high that she almost bends back, but

she knows how to treat the people who work for her, and she's always

been mighty good to me."




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