Things a.s.sume formidable proportions in the darkness and dead quiet of the night that they never have by day. Away after midnight he was still thinking of what Mary had said about the young Frenchman who had lately come into his fortune, and of what Roberta had said about Lieutenant Boglin. The face of the latter rose up before him. Not a particularly good-looking face, he thought, but it was a strong, likable one, and he had a sense of humor which made him good company, and a blarney-stone turn of the tongue that would take with any girl. As for Jules Ciseaux, who had envied the Wares their home life, Phil knew all about the childhood of the lonely little lad left to the mercies of a brutal caretaker. Jules would only need to see Mary once, dear little home-maker that she was, to want to carry her away with him to his chateau beside the Loire.

Before Phil finally fell asleep he had decided just what he would say to Mary next morning, and that he would go early enough to make an opportunity to say it. It _was_ early when he went striding down the road, across the foot-bridge, and took the short cut through a meadow to the back of the Ware cottage; but the preparations for breakfast were well under way. When he reached the back porch, screened by morning-glory vines, he saw the table set out there, with fresh strawberries at each place, wreathed in their own green leaves.

Judging from the odors wafted through the door, chickens were broiling within to exactly the right degree of delectable crispness, and coffee which would be of amber clearness, was in the making. But the noises within the kitchen were not to be interpreted as easily as the odors.

There was a banging and scuffling over the floor, m.u.f.fled shrieks and broken sentences in high voices, choking with laughter. Not till he reached the open window and looked in could he imagine the cause of the uproar. Norman and Mary were wrestling and romping all over the kitchen, having a tug-of-war over something he was trying to take away from her.

Unconscious of a spectator, they dragged each other around, b.u.mping against walls amid a clatter of falling tinware, stumbling over chairs and coming to a deadlock in each others' arms in a corner, so full of laughter they could scarcely hold their grip.

"Dare me again! will you?" gasped Norman, thinking he had her pinned to the wall. But wrenching one hand free, she began to tickle him until he writhed away from her with a whoop, and dashed out of the door.

"Yah! 'Fraid cat!" she jeered after him. "Afraid of a tickle!"

"You just wait till I get back with the milk," he cried, catching up a s.h.i.+ning tin pail that stood on the bench, and starting down the path over which Phil had just come.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARY WARE in TEXAS.

Well, I'm going away and I may not see you again.]

"You'll have to hurry," she called after him. "Breakfast is almost ready."

She stooped to open the oven door and peep at the pan of biscuit within, just beginning to turn a delicate brown. Then she looked up and caught sight of Phil. He was leaning against the window looking in, his arms crossed on the sill as if he had been enjoying the spectacle for some time.

"For mercy sakes!" she exclaimed. "How long have you been there?"

The coast was clear. Norman was well on his way to the Metz place, and Mrs. Ware was helping Jack get ready for breakfast. It was as good an opportunity as Phil could have hoped for, to repeat the speech he had rehea.r.s.ed so many times the night before. And she looked so fresh and wholesome and sweet, standing there in her pink morning dress with the big white ap.r.o.n, that she was more like an apple-blossom than anything else he could think of. He wanted to tell her so; to tell her she had never seemed so dear and desirable as she did at this moment, when he must be going away to leave her.

Yet how could he tell her, when she was all a-giggle and a-dimple and aglow from her romp with Norman? Clearly she was too far from his state of mind to share it now, or even to understand it. After all, she was only a little girl at heart--only eighteen. It wasn't fair to her to awaken her quite yet--to hurry her into giving a promise when she couldn't possibly know her own mind. He would wait--

So he only leaned on the window-sill and laughed at her for having been caught in such an undignified romp, and asked her when she intended to grow up, and if she ever expected to outgrow her propensity for sc.r.a.pping. But when he had joked thus a few minutes, he said, quite suddenly and seriously, "Mary, I want you to promise me something."

She was taking the chickens from the broiler and did not look at him until they were safely landed in the hot platter awaiting them, but she said lightly, "Yes, your 'ighness. To the 'arf of me kingdom. Wot is it?"

"Well, I'm going away and I may not see you again for a long time. The chief wants me to take a position, engineering the construction of a big dam down in Mexico. It would keep me down there two years, but it would be the biggest thing I've had yet, in every way. Last night I just about made up my mind I'd take it.

"While I'm gone you will be striking out into all sorts of new trails, and I am afraid that on some of them somebody will come along and try to persuade you to join him on his, even if you are such a little girl. Now I want to have a hand in choosing the right man, and I want you to promise me that you won't let anybody persuade you to do that till I come back. Or at least if they do try, that you'll send me word that they're trying, and give me a chance to come back and have a look at the fellow, and see if I think he is good enough to carry you off."

"Why, the idea!" she laughed, a trifle embarra.s.sed, but immensely pleased that he should think it possible for her to have numerous suitors or to have them soon, and flattered that he should take enough interest in her future to want to be called back from Mexico to direct her choice.

"But will you promise?" he urged.

"Yes; that is not much to promise."

"And you'll give me your hand on it?" he persisted.

"Yes, and cross my heart and body in the bargain," she added, lightly, "if that'll please you any better."

For all his gravity, she thought he was jesting until she reached her hand through the window to seal the compact.

"You know," he said, as his warm fingers closed over it, "I've never yet seen anybody whom I considered good enough for little Mary Ware."

Her eyes fell before the seriousness of his steady glance, and she turned away all in a flutter of pleasure that the "Best Man" should have said such a lovely thing about _her_. It was the very thing she had always thought about him.

Mrs. Ware came out just then, wheeling Jack in his chair, and soon after Norman was back with the milk, and breakfast was served out on the porch among the morning-glories. "A perfect breakfast and a perfect morning,"

Phil said. The 'bus which was to call for him came while they were still lingering around the table, and there was only time for a hasty good-by all around.

"Come and walk out to the gate with me, Mary, and give me a good send-off," he said, hurriedly s.n.a.t.c.hing up his suit-case.

Now in this last moment, when there was much to say, neither had a word, and they walked along in silence until they reached the gate. There he turned for one more hand-clasp.

"Remember your promise," he said, gravely, as his fingers closed warmly over hers. "I meant every word I said."

"I'll remember," she answered, dimpling again as if he had reminded her of a good joke; "and I'll keep my word. Honest, I will!"

With that he went away, carrying with him a picture which he recalled a thousand times in the months that followed; Mary, standing at the gate in the pink and white dress that had the freshness of a spring blossom, with her sweet, sincere eyes and her dear little mouth saying, "I'll keep my word! Honest, I will!"

It was a long, long, hot summer that followed. The drought dried up the creek so that the boat lay idle on the bank. The dust grew deeper and deeper in the roads and lay thick on the wayside weeds. Even the trees were powdered with it; all the green of the landscape took on an ashen grayness. Meadows lay parched and sere. Walking ceased to be a pleasure, and as they gasped through the tropical heat of the endless afternoons, they longed for the dense shade of the pines at Lone Rock, and counted the days till they could go back.

But as soon as the sun dropped behind the hills each day, and the breeze started up from the far-away Gulf, their discomfort was forgotten. In the wonderful brilliance of the starry nights when there was no moon, or in the times when one hung like a luminous pearl above a silver world, the air grew fresh and cool, and they sat late in the open, making the most of every minute. In the early mornings there was that same crisp freshness of the hills again, so one could endure the merciless, yellow glare and the panting heat of the afternoons, for the sake of the nights and dawns.

Even without that, however, they would have been content to stay on, enduring it gladly, for Jack was daily growing stronger; and to see him moving about the house on his own feet, no matter how falteringly at first, was a cause for hourly rejoicing.

Mary still played the part of Baloo with Brud and Sister, starting early in the morning and taking them over to the old mill-dam, in the shade of some big cypress and sycamore trees. She was teaching them to read and write, but there was little poring over books for them. They built their letters out of stones, and fas.h.i.+oned whole sentences of twigs; wrote them in the sand and modelled them in mud, scratched them on rocks with bits of flint, as Indians do their picture language, and p.r.i.c.ked them in the broad sycamore leaves with thorns. By the end of the summer they had enough of a vocabulary to write a brief letter to their father, and their pride knew no bounds when each had achieved one entirely alone, from date to stamp, and dropped it into the box at the post-office. His pride in them was equally great, and the letter that he sent Mary with her final check was one of the few things which she carried away from Texas as a cherished memento.

She did not write often in her Good Times book. There was so little to chronicle. An occasional visit from the Barnaby's, a call at the rectory, a few minutes spent in neighborly gossip in the Metz garden; never once in the whole summer a happening more exciting than that, except when the troops from Fort Sam Houston were ordered out on their annual "hike" and pa.s.sed through Bauer in July. Each of the different divisions camped a day and a night in the grove back of the cottage, near enough for the Wares to watch every manoeuvre. The Artillery band played at sunset when it was in camp, and gave a concert that night in the plaza. When the Cavalry pa.s.sed through, Lieutenant Boglin came to supper and spent the evening. Gay was up for a day twice, and Mary went once to San Antonio. That was all. Yet stupid as it was for a girl of her age, and much as she missed young companions.h.i.+p, Mary managed to get through the summer very happily. All its unpleasantness was atoned for one day in early September, when she looked out to see Jack going down the road, straight and strong, pus.h.i.+ng his own wheeled chair in front of him. He was taking it down to Doctor Mackay's office to leave "for the first poor devil who needs it," he said.

In the last few weeks he had discovered what he had not known before, that the town was full of invalids in quest of health, attracted from all over the country by the life-giving air of its hills. He had made the acquaintance of a number of them since he had been able to ride around with the doctor. Now, as he went off down the road with the chair, with all of the family at the window to see the happy sight, Mrs.

Ware repeated to Mary what the doctor had said about Jack's effect on his other patients, and what the rector had told her of the regard all the villagers had for Jack.

"The dear boy's year of suffering has done one thing for the world," she added. "It has given it another Aldebaran. Don't you remember in _The Jester's Sword_--" She quoted it readily, because ever since she had first seen it she had always read Jack's name in place of Aldebaran's:

"'_It came to pa.s.s whenever he went by, men felt a strange, strength-giving influence radiating from his presence, a sense of hope.

One could not say exactly what it was, it was so fleeting, so intangible, like warmth that circles from a brazier, or perfume that is wafted from an unseen rose._' That's what one feels whenever Jack comes near."

"Yes, I know," a.s.sented Mary. "Even old Mr. Metz tried to say as much to me about him. He didn't choose those words, of course, but in his own broken way he meant the same thing."

When the day came to leave, there was no one to go with them to the station. The Rochesters were away on their vacation, and it was too early in the morning for the Barnabys to come in from the ranch. They had bidden each other good-by the day before, with deep regrets on both sides. It seemed so good to both Mary and her mother to see Jack attending to the tickets and the trunks in his old way, so quick and capable. While he was getting the checks, Mary walked down the track a little piece to a place where she could look back at the town for one more picture to carry away in her memory.

How friendly and homelike and dear it seemed now. Between the belfry of St. Peter's and the gray tower of Holy Angels, rose the smoke from many breakfast fires, and the windmills twirled merrily in the morning sun.

For all its dreariness she was carrying away the recollection of a score of happy times.

Over there was the free camp-yard, where their little Christmas tree had spread such cheer. Further on shone the spire of St. Boniface. She would always think of it as she saw it Easter morning, its cas.e.m.e.nt windows set wide, and its altar white with the snowy beauty of the rain lilies.

There was the meadow through which she had gone in blue-bonnet time, to find Phil waiting under the _huisache_ tree, and there the creek, running on to Fernbank. Nearer by she could see the windmill tower she had so often climbed, sticking up over the roof that had sheltered them during the ten months they had been in Bauer. "Dear little old Bauer,"

she thought, gratefully. She wouldn't have believed it in the beginning if anyone had told her, that there would be any regrets in her leave-taking when the time came to go. How wonderfully it had all turned out. The crooked _had_ been made straight, and the rough places smooth.

She could face the future gladly, buoyantly, now, no matter what it held, since Jack was well again.

"Come on, Mary, it's time to go aboard!" called Norman.

"You go on in, and save me a seat," she called back. "Here come the children. I must wait to speak to them."