Aunt Frances beamed. "I hope so."
"But Mary will be miserable."
"Then she'll be very silly."
Grace sighed. "No woman is silly who asks for the best. Mother, I'd
love to marry a man with a mission--I'd like to go to the South Sea
Islands and teach the natives, or to Darkest Africa--or to China, or
India, anywhere away from a life in which there's nothing but bridge,
and shopping, and deadly dullness."
She was in earnest now, and her mother saw it.
"I don't see how you can say such things," she quavered. "I don't see
how you can talk of going to such impossible places--away from me."
Grace cut short the plaintive wail.
"Of course I have no idea of going," she said, "but such a life would
furnish its own adventures; I wouldn't have to manufacture them."
It was with the wish to make life something more than it was that Grace
asked Roger the next day, "Is there any work here in town like yours
for the boy--you see Mary has told me about him."
He smiled. "Everywhere there are boys and girls, unawakened--if only
people would look for them; and with your knowledge of languages you
could do great things with the little foreigners--turn a bunch of them
into good citizens, for example."
"How?"
"Reach them first through pictures and music--then through their
patriotism. Don't let them learn politics and plunder on the streets;
let them find their place in this land from you, and let them hear from
you of the God of our fathers."
Grace felt his magnetism. "I wish you could go through the streets of
New York saying such things."
He shook his head. "I shall not come to the city. My place is found,
and I shall stay there; but I have faith to believe that there will yet
be a Voice to speak, to which the world shall listen."
"Soon?"
"Everything points to an awakening. People are beginning to say, 'Tell
us,' where a few years ago they said, 'There is nothing to tell.'"
"I see--it will be wonderful when it comes--I'm going to try to do my
little bit, and be ready, and when Mary comes back, she shall help me."
His eyes went to where Mary sat between Porter and Aunt Frances.
"She may never come back."
"She must be made to come."
"Who could make her?"