FullReads

This morning she revisited all these hallowed spots. She thrilled on the very verge of the river and quivered amid the waving corn. She scaled the sentinel hickory and turned her eyes upon the Southern city. It was nearly a week since she had been allowed to wander so far afield, and Camelot seemed more than ever wonderful as it lay in the shimmering distance gleaming and glistening beyond the hills. Trails of smoke waved above all the towers, showing where Sir Beaumanis still served his kitchen apprenticeship for his knighthood and his place at the Table Round. Thousands of windows flashed back the light.

“I could get there,” pondered Mary, “if God would send me that goat and wagon. I guess there’s quite a demand for goats and wagons. I could dress my goat all up in skirts like the ladies dressed their palfreys, an’ I’d wear my hair loose on my shoulders–it’s real goldy when it’s loose–an’ my best hat. I guess Queen Guinevere would be real glad to see me. Oh, dear,” she fretted as these visions came thronging back to her, “I wish Heaven would hurry up.”

Between the pasture and the distant city she could distinguish the roofs of another of the havens of her dear desire–the house where the old ladies lived. Four old ladies there were, in the sweet autumn of their lives, and Mary’s admiration of them was as passionate as were all her psychic states. She never could be quite sure as to which of the four she most adored. There was the gentle Miss Ann, who taught her to recite verses of piercing and wilting sensibility; the brisk Miss Jane, who explained and demonstrated the construction of many an old-time cake or pastry; the silent Miss Agnes, who silently accepted assistance in her never-ending process of skeletonizing leaves and arranging them in prim designs upon cardboard, and the garrulous Miss Sabina, who, with a crochet needle, a hair-pin, a spool with four pins driven into it, knitting needles and other shining implements, could fashion, and teach Mary to fashion, weavings and spinnings which might shame the most accomplished spider. Aided by her and by the re-enforced spool above mentioned, Mary had already achieved five dirty inches of red woollen reins for the expected goat. But the house was distant just three fields, a barb-wire fence, a low stone wall, and a cross bull, and Mary knew that her unaccustomed leisure could not be expected to endure long enough for so perilous a pilgrimage.

Her dissatisfied gaze wandered back to her quiet home surrounded by its neatly laid out meadows, cornfield, orchard, barns, and garden. And a shadow fell upon her wistful little face.

“That old aunt,” she grumbled, “she makes me awful tired. She’s always pokin’ round an’ callin’ me.”

Such, indeed, seemed the present habit and intent of the prim lady who was approaching, alternately clanging a dinner-bell and calling in a tone of resolute sweetness:

“Mary, O Mary, dear.”

Mary parted the branches of her tree and watched, but made no sound.

“Mary,” repeated the oncoming relative, “Mary, I want to tell you something,” and added as she spied her niece’s abandoned sunbonnet on the grass, “I know you’re here and I shall wait until you come to me.”

“I ain’t coming,” announced the Dryad, and thereby disclosed her position, both actual and mental. “I suppose it’s something I’ve done and I don’t want to hear it, so there!” Then, her temper having been worn thin by much admonishing, she anticipated: “I ain’t sorry I’ve been bad. I ain’t ashamed to behave so when my mamma is sick in bed. And I don’t care if you do tell my papa when he comes home to-night.”

The intruding relative, discerning her, stopped and smiled. And the smile was as a banderilla to her niece’s goaded spirit.

“Jiminy!” gasped that young person, “she’s got a smile just like a teacher.”