And then, at the very end, something terrible happened. Marguerite had brought in the pie'ce de re'sistance, the climactic dish toward which mother had built the whole meal--the deep-dish peach pie, sugar-coated, fragrant and savory--and placed it on the serving-table near the open window. There was a bit, of wire loose at the lower end of the screen, and, in the one second Marguerite's back was turned--just one second, but just long enough--Missy saw a velvety nose fumble with the loose wire, saw a sleek neck wedge itself through the crevice, and a long red tongue lap approvingly over the sugar-coated crust.

Missy gasped audibly. Mother followed her eyes, turned, saw, jumped up--but it was too late. Mrs. Merriam viciously struck at Gypsy's muzzle and pushed the encroaching head back through the aperture.

"Get away from here!" she cried angrily. "You little beast!"

"I think the pony shows remarkably good taste," commented Rev. MacGill, trying to pa.s.s the calamity off as a joke. But his hostess wasn't capable of an answering smile; she gazed despairingly, tragically, at the desecrated confection.

"I took such pains with it," she almost wailed. "It was a deep-dish peach pie--I made it specially for Mr. MacGill."

"Well, I'm not particularly fond of peach pie, anyway," said the minister, meaning to be soothing.

"Oh, but I know you ARE! Mrs. Allen said that at her house you took two helpings-that you said it was your favourite dessert."

The minister coughed a little cough--he was caught in a somewhat delicate situation; then, always tactful, replied: "Perhaps I did say that--her peach pie was very good. But I'm equally fond of all sweets--I have a sweet tooth."

At this point Missy gathered her courage to quaver a suggestion.

"Couldn't you just take off the top crust, mother? Gypsy didn't touch the underneath part. Why can't you just--"

But her mother's scandalized look silenced her. She must have made a faux pas. Father and Rev. MacGill laughed outright, and Aunt Nettie smiled a withering smile.

"That's a brilliant idea," she said satirically. "Perhaps you'd have us pick out the untouched bits of the crust, too!" Missy regarded her aunt reproachfully but helplessly; she was too genuinely upset for any repartee. Why did Aunt Nettie like to put her "in wrong"? Her suggestion seemed to her perfectly reasonable. Why didn't they act on it? But of course they'd ignore it, just making fun of her now but punishing her afterward. For she divined very accurately that they would hold her accountable for Gypsy's blunder--even though the blunder was rectifiable; it was a BIG pie, and most of it as good as ever. They were unreasonable, unjust.

Mother seemed unable to tear herself away from the despoiled masterpiece.

"Come, mamma," said father, "it's nothing to make such a fuss about.

Just trot out some of that apple sauce of yours. Mr. MacGill doesn't get to taste anything like that every day." He turned to the minister. "The world's full of apple sauce--but there's apple sauce and apple sauce.

Now my wife's apple sauce is APPLE SAUCE! I tell her it's a dish for a king."

And Rev. MacGill, after sampling the impromptu dessert, a.s.sured his hostess that her husband's eulogy had been only too moderate. He vowed he had never eaten such apple sauce. But Mrs. Merriam still looked bleak. She knew she could make a better deep-dish peach pie than Mrs. Allen could. And, then, to give the minister apple sauce and nabiscos!--the first time he had eaten at her table in two months!

Missy, who knew her mother well, couldn't help feeling a deep degree of sympathy; besides, she wished Rev. MacGill might have had his pie--she liked Rev. MacGill better than ever. But she dreaded her first moments after the guest had departed; mother could be terribly stern.

Nor did her fears prove groundless.

"Now, Missy," ordered her mother in coldly irate tones, "you take that horse straight back to Tess. This is the last straw! For days you've been no earthly use--your practicing neglected, no time for your ch.o.r.es, just nothing but that everlasting horse!"

That everlasting horse! Missy's chin quivered and her eyes filled.

But mother went on inflexibly: "I don't want you ever to bring it here again. And you can't go on living at Tess's, either! We'll see that you catch up with your practicing."

"But, mother," tremulously seeking for an argument, "I oughtn't to give up such a fine chance to become a horsewoman, ought I?"

It was an unlucky phrase, for Aunt Nettie was there to catch it up.

"A horsewoman!" and she laughed in sardonic glee. "Well, I must admit there's one thing horsey enough about you--you always smell of manure, these days."

Wounded and on the defensive, Missy tried to make her tone chilly. "I wish you wouldn't be so indelicate, Aunt Nettie," she said.

But Aunt Nettie wasn't abashed. "A horsewoman!" she chortled again. "I suppose Missy sees herself riding to hounds! All dressed up in a silk hat and riding-breeches like pictures of society people back East!"

It didn't add to Missy's comfiture to know she had, in truth, harboured this ridiculed vision of herself. She coloured and stood hesitant.

"Someone ought to put pants on that O'Neill girl, anyway," continued Aunt Nettie with what seemed to her niece unparallelled malice. "Helen Alison says the Doctor saw her out in the country riding astraddle. Her mother ought to spank her."

Mother looked at Missy sharply. "Don't let me ever hear of YOU doing anything like that!"

Missy hung her head, but luckily mother took it for just a general att.i.tude of dejection. "I can't tolerate tomboys." she went on. "I can't imagine what's come over you lately."

"It's that O'Neill girl," said Aunt Nettie.

Mother sighed; Missy couldn't know she was lamenting the loss of her sweet, shy, old-fashioned little girl. But when she spoke next her accents were firm.

"Now you go and take that horse home. But come straight back and get to bed so you can get an early start at your practicing in the morning.

Right here I'm going to put my foot down. It isn't because I want to be harsh--but you never seem to know when to stop a thing. It's all well and good to be fond of dumb animals, but when it comes to a point where you can think of nothing else--"

The outstanding import of the terrific and unjust tirade was that Missy should not go near the sanitarium or the pony for a week.

When mother "put her foot down" like that, hope was gone, indeed. And a whole week! That was a long, long time when hope is deferred--especially when one is fifteen and all days are long. At first Missy didn't see how she was ever to live through the endless period, but, strangely enough, the dragging days brought to her a change of mood. It is odd how the colour of our mood, so to speak, can utterly change; how one day we can desire one kind of thing acutely and then, the very next day, crave something quite different.

One morning Missy awoke to a dawn of mildest sifted light and bediamonded dew upon the gra.s.s; soft plumes of silver, through the mist, seemed to trim the vines of the summerhouse and made her catch her breath in ecstasy. All of a sudden she wanted nothing so much as to get a book and steal off alone somewhere. The right kind of a book, of course--something sort of strange and sad that would make your strange, sad feelings mount up and up inside you till you could almost die of your beautiful sorrow.

As soon as her routine of duties was finished she gained permission to go to the Library. As she walked slowly, musingly, down Maple Avenue, her emotions were fallow ground for every touch of Nature: the slick greensward of all the lawns, glistening under the torrid azure of the great arched sky, made walking along the shady sidewalk inexpressibly sweet; the many-hued flowers in all the flowerbeds seemed to sing out their vying colours; the strong hard wind pa.s.sed almost visible fingers through the thick, rustling mane of the trees. Oh, she hoped she would find the right kind of book!

Mother, back on the porch, looked up from her sewing to watch the disappearing figure, and smiled.

"We have our little girl back again," she observed to Aunt Nettie.

"I wish that O'Neill girl'd move away," Aunt Nettie said. "Missy's a regular chameleon."

It's a pity Missy couldn't hear her new cla.s.sification; it would have interested her tremendously; she was always interested in the perplexing vagaries of her own nature. However, at the Library, she was quite happy: for she found two books, each the right kind, though different.

One was called "Famous Heroines of Medieval Legend." They all had names of strange beauty and splendour--Guinevere--Elaine--Vivien--names which softly rustled in syllables of silken brocade. The other book was no less satisfying. It was a book of poems--wonderful poems, by a man named Swinburne--lilting, haunting things of beauty which washed through her soul like the waves of a sun-bejewelled sea. She read the choicest verses over and over till she knew them by heart:

Before the beginning of years, there came to the making of man Grief with her gift of tears, and Time with her gla.s.s that ran...

and, equally lovely:

From too much love of living, from hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving whatever G.o.ds may be That no life lives forever; that dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea...

The verses brought her beautiful, stirring thoughts to weave into verses of her own when she should find a quiet hour in the summerhouse; or to incorporate into soul-soothing improvisings at the piano.

Next morning, after her hour's stint at finger exercises, she improvised and it went beautifully. She knew it was a success both because of her exalted feelings and because Poppy meowed out in discordant disapproval only once; the rest of the time Poppy purred as appreciatively as for "The Maiden's Prayer." Dear Poppy! Missy felt suddenly contrite for her defection from faithful Poppy. And Poppy was getting old--Aunt Nettie said she'd already lived much longer than most cats. She might die soon.

Through a swift blur of tears Missy looked out toward the summerhouse where, beneath the ramblers, she decided Poppy should be buried. Poor Poppy! The tears came so fast she couldn't wipe them away. She didn't dream that Swinburne was primarily responsible for those tears.

Yet even her sadness held a strange, poignant element of bliss.

It struck her, oddly, that she was almost enjoying her week of punishment--that she WAS enjoying it. Why was she enjoying it, since, when mother first banned athletic pursuits, she had felt like a martyr?

It was queer. She pondered the mysterious complexity of her nature.

There pa.s.sed two more days of this inexplicable content. Then came the thunder-storm. It was, perhaps, the thunder-storm that really deserves the blame for Missy's climactic athletic catastrophe. No lightning-bolt struck, yet that thunder-storm indubitably played its part in Missy's athletic destiny. It was the causation of renewed turmoil after time of peace.

Tess had telephoned that morning and asked Missy to accompany her to the Library. But Missy had to practice. In her heart she didn't really care to go, for, after her stint was finished, she was contemplating some new improvisings. However, the morning didn't go well. It was close and sultry and, though she tried to make her fingers march and trot and gallop as the exercises dictated, something in the oppressive air set her nerves to tingling. Besides it grew so dark she couldn't see the notes distinctly. Finally she abandoned her lesson; but even improvising failed of its wonted charm. Her fingers kept striking the wrong keys.