Part 8 (1/2)

”If I'm going anywhere, I want to go to college--”

To college! A Spencer girl--or a Spicer--going to college! Miss Cordelia gasped. If Mary had been noticing, she might not have pursued her inspiration further, but her mind was running along a breathless panorama of Niagara Falls, Great Lakes, Chicago, the farms of the Middle West, Yellowstone Park, geysers, the Old Man of the Mountain, Aztec ruins, redwood forests, orange groves and at the end of the vista--like a statue at the end of a garden walk--she imagined a great democratic inst.i.tution of learning where one might conceivably be prepared to solve some of those problems which life seems to take such deep delight in presenting to us, with the grim command, ”Not one step farther shall you go until you have answered this!”

”To college?” gasped Miss Cordelia.

”Yes,” said Mary, still intent upon her panorama, ”there's a good one in California. I'll look it up.”

The more Mary thought of it, the fonder she grew of her idea--which is, I think, a human trait and true of nearly every one. It was in vain that her aunts argued with her, pointing out the social advantages which she would enjoy from attending Miss Parsons' School. Mary's objection was fundamental. She simply didn't care for those advantages. Indeed, she didn't regard them as advantages at all.

Helen did, though.

In her heart Helen had always longed to tread the stage of society--to her mind, a fairyland of wit and gallantry, masquerades and music, to say nothing of handsome young polo players and t.i.tled admirers from foreign sh.o.r.es--”big fools,” all of them, as you can guess, when dazzled by the smiles of Youth and Beauty.

”Mary can go to California if she likes,” said Helen at last, ”but give me Miss Parsons' School.”

And Mary did go to California, although I doubt if she would have gained her point if her father hadn't taken her part. For four years she attended the university by the Golden Gate, and every time she made the journey between the two oceans, sometimes accompanied by Miss Cordelia and sometimes by Miss Patty, she seemed to be a little more serene of glance, a little more tranquil of brow, as though one by one she were solving some of those problems which I have mentioned above.

Meanwhile Helen was in her glory at Miss Parsons'; and though the two aunts didn't confess it, they liked to sit and listen to her chatter of the girls whose friends.h.i.+p she was making, and to whose houses she was invited for the holidays.

When she was home, she sang s.n.a.t.c.hes from the operas, danced with imaginary partners, rehea.r.s.ed parts of private theatricals and dreamed of conquests. She had also learned the knack of dressing her hair which, when done in the grand manner, isn't far from being a talent. Pulled down on one side, with a pin or two adjusted, she was a das.h.i.+ng young d.u.c.h.ess who rode to hounds and made the old duke's eyes pop out. Or she could dip it over her ears, change a few pins again and--lo!--she was St. Cecilia seated at the organ, and b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

”She is quite pretty and very clever,” said Miss Cordelia one day. ”I think she will marry well.”

”Do you think she's as pretty as Mary?” asked Miss Patty.

”My dear!” said Miss Cordelia with a look that said 'What a question you are asking!' ”--is pretty in a way, of course,” she said, ”but there is something about our Mary--”

”I know,” nodded Miss Patty. ”Something you can't express--”

”The dear child,” mused Miss Cordelia, looking out toward the west. ”I wonder what she is doing this very moment!”

At that very moment, as it happened, Mary was in her room on the other side of the continent studying the manufacture of raisin fudge.

Theretofore she had made it too soft, or too sugary, but this time she was determined to have it right. Long ago she had made all the friends that her room would hold, and most of them were there. Some were listening to a girl in spectacles who was talking socialism, while a more frivolous group, perched on the bed, was arguing the question whether the perfect lover had a moustache or a clean-shaven lip.

”Money is cruel; it ought to be abolished,” said the earnest girl in the spectacles. ”Money is a millstone which the rich use to grind the poor.

You girls know it as well as I do.”

Mary stirred away at the fudge.

”It's a good thing she doesn't know that I'm rich,” she smiled to herself. ”I wonder when I shall start grinding the poor!”

”And yet the world simply couldn't get along without the wage-earners,”

continued the young orator. ”So all they have to do is strike--and strike--and keep on striking--and they can have everything they want--”

”So could the doctors,” mused Mary to herself, stirring away at the fudge. ”Imagine the doctors striking.... And so could the farmers.

Imagine the farmers striking for eight hours a day, and no work Sundays and holidays, and every Sat.u.r.day afternoon off....”

Dimly, vaguely, a troubled picture took shape in her mind. She stirred the fudge more reflectively than ever.