Part 13 (2/2)
”Cross my heart and hope to die!”
”Are you ready?”
”Quite ready.”
”Then did you ever hear of any one in our family named Paul?”
”Y-yes--”
”Who was he?”
It was some time before he told the story, but trust a girl to make a man speak when she wishes it! He softened the recital in every possible way, but trust a girl again to read between the lines when she wants to!
”And didn't he ever come back?” she asked.
”No; you see he couldn't very well. There was an accident out West--somebody killed--anyhow, he was blamed for it. Queer, isn't it?” he broke off, trying to relieve the subject. ”The Kaiser can start a war and kill millions. That's glory. But if some poor devil loses his head--”
Mary wasn't through yet.
”You say he's dead!” she asked.
”Oh, yes, years ago. He must have been dead--oh, let me see--about fifteen or twenty years, I guess.”
”Poor dad!” thought Mary that night. ”What he must have gone through!
I'll bet he didn't think that love was the only thing in life. And--that other one,” she hesitated, ”who was 'wild after the girls,' Wally says, and finally ran off with one--I'll bet he didn't think so, either--before he got through--to say nothing of the poor thing who went with him. But dead fifteen or twenty years--that's the queerest part.”
She found the cable again. It was dated Rio Janeiro--
”G.o.ds sake cable two hundred dollars wife children sick desperate next week too late.”
It was signed ”Paul” and--the point to which Mary's attention was constantly returning--it wasn't fifteen or twenty years ago that this appeal had been received by her father.
The date of the cable was scarcely three years old.
CHAPTER XIV
For days Mary could think of little else, but as week followed week, her thoughts merged into memories--memories that were stored away and stirred in their hiding places less and less often.
”Dad knew best,” she finally told herself. ”He bore it in silence all those years, so it wouldn't worry me, and I'm not going to start now.
Perhaps--he's dead, too. Anyhow,” she sternly repeated, ”I'm not going to worry. I've seen enough of worry to start doing that.”
Besides, she had too much else on her mind--”to start doing that.”
As the war in Europe had progressed--America drawing nearer the crimson whirlpool with every pa.s.sing month--a Red Cross chapter was organized at New Bethel. Mary took active part in the work, and whenever visitors came to speak at the meetings, they seldom went away without being entertained at the house on the hill.
”I love to think of it,” she told Aunt Patty one day. ”The greatest organization of mercy ever known--and practically all women's work!
Doesn't that mean a lot to you, Aunt Patty? If women can do such wonderful things for the Red Cross, why can't they do wonderful things in other ways?”
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