The Making of Mary | Page 9

would
know it was the bounden duty of the girls in the house to wait on the
boys."
"An' a hantle better it is than to see the laddies aye rinnin' efter the
lasses, tendin' them han' an' fut as they dae here. When a man comes
hame efter his d'y's wark, he should be let sit on his sate, an' hae a'
things dune for him."
"David," said Belle, sinking to a footstool at my feet with a dramatic
gesture, "you shall never button my boots again! But seriously," she
continued, as mother withdrew in high dudgeon to her sanctum upstairs,
"I don't think Mary should be expected to brush the boys' boots. We
didn't engage her as servant, and even if we had, there isn't a hired girl

in this part of the country that wouldn't make a fuss if she had to brush
the boots of the man of the house, not to mention the boys. We'll have
to pack Mary off somewhere, if only to keep the peace."
So Mary was sent to a convent, and at the end of three months came
back for her holidays to our summer cottage at Interlaken. Being so
near the big lake does not agree with my mother, and she rarely spends
more than a week with us there, but during July and August visits my
married sister in town. The coast was clear for Belle and me to decide
what progress had been made in the making of Mary, and we fancied
we discovered a good deal.
"What have they done to you, those nuns, to tone you down so quickly,
Mary?" I asked, as she sat beside me, swinging in a low rocker, and
looking so pretty that I was quite proud of her as an ornament to our
front veranda.
"I dunno," she said, "unless it was the exercise for sitting perfectly still
on a row of chairs. A nun goes behind us and drops a big book or
something, and any girl that jumps gets a bad mark."
"Capital!" I cried; "no wonder you have learned repose of manner."
Thus encouraged, the girl continued:
"Then we have little parties and receptions, and we have to converse
with the nuns and with each other, and anybody that mentions one of
the three D's gets a bad mark."
"The three D's?"
"Yes, sir--Dress, Disease, and Domestics."
"Hear this, Belle," I said, laughing, as my wife took the rocking chair
on the other side of me; "fancy any collection of women being obliged
to steer clear of the three D's!"
"You should ask Mary about her studies," was the severe reply. "We

were much pleased with your letters."
"Yes, mawm; Sister Stella was always very good about that; helped me
with the big words, and often wrote the whole thing out for me.
Sometimes I had to copy it two or three times before I could please
her."
Belle hastily changed the subject. "Let Mr. Gemmell hear that piece
you recited to me this morning."
I am no judge of elocution, but the general effect of the young girl
standing there in the arch of the veranda, a clematis-wreathed post on
either side, and her face, with its delicate coloring, turned toward the
golden twilight, was pleasing in the extreme.
"She'll maybe be famous some day," said Belle, when Mary had
discreetly retired. "She is far quicker at learning verses off by heart
than she is at reading them."
"Still, to be a successful elocutionist nowadays one has to be
thoroughly well educated, and Mary is too late in beginning."
"You can't tell. She's got the appearance, and that's half the battle."
"With us, perhaps; but remember, we are not capable critics, even
though one of us is a Theosophist."
"Laugh as you like, Dave. Theosophy satisfies me, because it explains
some things in my own nature that I never could understand before."
"It may be that you are too soon satisfied. That's the way with all new
movements--one story is good till another is told. Your
great-granddaughter will smile at the credulity of your ideas on this
very subject."
"She can smile, and so can you. We don't pretend to know everything;
we only hope that we are on the right road to learn. I, for one, am
thankful to think that there are wiser heads than mine puzzling over the

problem of our psychic powers. I've always taken impressions from
inanimate objects, and it has bothered me. Now I find my sensations
analyzed and classified under the head of Psychometry, and it is a
comfort to know that other people besides myself can discern an aura,
and are foolishly wise enough to trust the impressions they receive in
that way."
"But if I were you, I don't think I'd