THE self-a.s.sertive sleigh-bells suddenly ceased their tinkling, and the long covered van, with its four horses, drew up in front of our "House of Many Gables," in Lake City. Watty, then a tall lad of eighteen, over-coated, fur-capped, and gloved, went quickly out, banging the front door after him, while his younger brothers and sisters made holes with their breath through the frost on the window panes, to watch his departure with the hilarious load of young folks.

"Why aint you goin', Mame?" asked Joe, our smallest son, of the girl spending her Christmas holidays with us.

"Wasn't asked," she replied defiantly. "An' what's more, I don't care to go anywheres, neither, if the girls don't act better to me than they done at that party the other night."

Belle raised her head from the Treasurer's book of the House of Refuge.

"Perhaps you weren't nice to them, Mary?"

"Yes, I was too. I smiled whenever one of them looked at me, but they all turned their heads as if they'd never seen me before."

My wife sighed as she bent over her book again. If the difficulty of befriending Mary rested only with outsiders it might have been patiently borne, but there was mother, to whom the girl's presence in the house was a constant grievance.

I had been able to buy a quiet horse and a Mikado cutter for Belle when the snow came, but she had no pleasure out of them during the vacation.

"I'm going to drive downtown, mother," I heard her say one morning.

"Would you like to go?"

"Is Mary gaun?"

"I thought of taking her."

"Then I'll no' gang. I wadna like to crood Mary."

"Dear mother, there's plenty of room."

"Ay, ay, but ye ken Mary doesna like tae sit wi' her back tae the horse."

That sort of thing was always happening. One day the old lady came home from a round of visits, much perturbed in mind and body. The sandy hair I inherited, and have largely lost, does not show the gray with which it is mixed, and so light and wiry is she one finds it difficult to remember my mother's seventy years. She is a small woman, but her personality is sufficiently large for the ripples to be felt throughout the household when its surface is disturbed.

"What dae ye think I've been hearin'?" she cried, finding me alone in the nursery on the sofa, and helpless in her hands.

"I can't imagine, mother. You generally have something spicy to tell us after you've been calling on the MacTavishes."

"Dae ye ken 'at yon hizzy ye've ta'en intill yer hoose ca's hersel' Mary _Gemmell_?"

"Oh, well, what's in a name?"

"I wonner tae hear ye, Davvit! What wad yer faither hae thocht aboot it, or yer gran'faither? Gie'n the femly name, that's come doon unspotted frae ae generation till anither, tae a funnlin' aff the streets! Ou, ay!

I micht 'a' kent what wad happen when I h'ard tell o' ye bein' merrit till an Amerrican."

"Hold up there, mother. You're just twenty years too late in raking up that story. If it suits me and Belle to have that girl called 'Mary Gemmell,' Mary Gemmell she shall be, if it turns all Scotland head over heels into the North Sea."

So seldom do I break out that an eruption of mine never fails to clear the air of an unwelcome topic.

Our boys have grown up on a sort of an "every-man-for himself"

principle, and when it came to a fight for the favorite corner of the sofa, the favorite game, or picture-book, "Mamie" was in the thick of it every time.

"What else can you expect?" said I to Belle, consolingly. "She's been fighting the world on her own account ever since she can remember, and our house represents to her only a change of battle ground."

"I think her father must have been a gentleman."

"He certainly had one gentlemanly peculiarity."

"Don't be a brute, Dave. I mean that Mary's ancestors must have been wealthy people, she has such a taste for luxury."

"That doesn't follow. I'm sure you've seen plenty of poor folks go without the necessaries of life in order to get the luxuries."

"She is shiftless enough. To-day I took her into a store to buy her some stockings, and she refused to have any but the very best quality. 'The second best are what I get for myself, Mary,' said I; 'they wear much longer than the others.' 'I don't care,' she said. 'If I can't have the best, I don't want any.' 'Then do without,' said I, and we left the place. The fun of it is that she won't even darn her old ones! I can't always be so firm with her. I'm amazed at myself sometimes, the things she gets out of me. What do you suppose she wants now?"

I gave a warning cough to signify that my mother had come into the nursery, but Belle gazed straight ahead into the wood fire, and seesawed in the rattan rocker--a tuneful symphony in a mauve tea-gown.

"A cornet, if you please."

"A cornet!" said I. "Whatever put that into her head?"

"I can't tell. She says the music professor at the convent can teach her to play it, and she thinks if she learned she might be able to lead the singing in a church with one."

"Perhaps somebody played the cornet in that concert company she was with."

"Na, na. It's nearer hame than that," mother struck in. "She has a notion o' ane o' thae cratur's 'at pl'y at the Opera Hoose. I hae seen her gang by the window wi' him, an' spiered at Watty wha he was."

"I don't like Wat's telling tales of Mary."

"He dinna, Davvit, till I pit it tae him. He canna bear the tawpie, and doesna like to hae her p'inted oot as his sister. A body canna blame the laddie. It's a heap better than his fa'in' in luv wi' her."

"Perhaps it is," groaned Isabel.

When mother had gone to bed my wife said:

"Mrs. Wade has been here to-day to ask Watty and Mary to a young people's dance on Friday night."

"What did you say?"

"I told her I wasn't going to dress that girl up and send her out to parties to be snubbed and slighted by the other girls, as she was at the dancing school ball. She said that if I let Mary go she'd see that she had a good time. For her part, she admired the way I'd stuck up for the girl in spite of everything; and if she was good enough to live with us as a daughter, it would surely not contaminate anybody else to meet her out of an evening."

Sat.u.r.day night I inquired of Belle how Mary got on at the party.

"First rate. Mrs. Wade met her at the door of the drawing room and kissed her. 'How you've grown, Mary!' said she, and then she took her round and introduced her to all the girls in the room, including some of those who've been cutting her right and left, as well as to every boy she didn't know already. Of course she danced every dance, and had the best time going."

"And, of course, she put it all down to her own superior attractions?"

"Just exactly. This morning she didn't want to help me make the beds!"

Mary's Christmas present had been a beautiful silver-plated cornet, and of course she must learn to play it when she went back to the convent.

Word came shortly that the music master employed there could not undertake to teach her to play the instrument, but that a "professor"

could be secured to go out from Detroit twice a week--if desired. We seemed to be in for it, so the lessons were desired, and we comforted ourselves with the a.s.surance that if Mary did not turn out to be a tiptop reciter she would surely prove a tiptop cornet player. Her unusual talent would justify my wife in her unusual step, and the society of Lake City would forgive her for attempting to thrust the girl into its midst as an equal. Many of our acquaintances seemed to take mother's view of the case,--"Matter out of place becomes _dirrt_!"--and Belle was put on her mettle to convince the majority that she had done exactly the right thing in thus discla.s.sing people. Discla.s.sing people? In a free republic!

We received glowing accounts of the cornet lessons.