"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."