quotation. Mary knew that she could not copy the curls, but she decided to try the rest of the coiffure in the morning. Not a single twist or wave had escaped her sharp eyes. In the darkness of her retreat, after they had gone, she put her hands to her head, rehearsing in pantomime each move she would have to make to produce the result she admired.
Suddenly her hands dropped and one clutched the railing, as the window shutters of the next room were thrown open with a bang and some one stepped out on to the balcony adjoining hers. The intruder was a large and elderly woman in a rustling black dress. The light from the room streaming out behind her showed that she was portly and gray-haired, and the way she peered through the vines, changing quickly from one view-point to another, showed that she was impatient.
When she turned, Mary saw that her dress, which was made to fasten in the back, was open from collar to belt, and she readily guessed the trouble. Forgetting that her presence was unknown to the anxious watcher, she leaned forward through the dark, saying politely, "Can I help you, Madam?"
If a hand had reached out and grabbed her, the old lady could not have been more startled. With a stifled shriek she backed up against the wall to hide her open bodice, and stood there limp and panting.
"Merciful fathers! how you scared me!" she breathed as Mary's face appeared in the full light. When she saw only a little school-girl of seventeen or thereabouts her relief found vent in a hysterical giggle. It shook her plump shoulders until they both started to laughing so hard that she could barely find voice to explain, or Mary to apologize.
"I just couldn't get my dress hooked up the back," she finally managed to say. "I rang half a dozen times for a chambermaid, but the ones on this floor all seem to be off duty this time of evening, and I won't ask a bell-boy as some of the ladies do. I don't think it's decent. So I just thought I'd look down into the court and see if I couldn't catch sight of James. He did it yesterday and I vowed I'd never ask him again. He's willing enough, but he kept me standing a solid half hour by the clock, and we were both tuckered out when he got through."
"Let me come and do it for you," said Mary with her usual alacrity for following up promising beginnings.
"Oh, if you only would!" was the grateful answer. "I'll go in and unlock the door – "
Before she could finish her sentence Mary had climbed lightly over the railing which divided their balconies, and was following her into her room through the long windows that opened to the floor.
"Do you know," confided the old lady while Mary deftly fastened the hooks, "I think a hotel is the lonesomest place on the face of the globe for a woman. I come down here once a year or so with my husband, and he has a good time sitting around in the lobby smoking and making friends with stockmen like himself, but by the end of the second day I'm homesick for the ranch. Of course I enjoy the stores and the crowds on the street, and seeing all the finely dressed tourists at meal-times, but we've been down here three days now, and you're the first person I've spoken to besides the chambermaid and James. It's all right for strangers to keep themselves to themselves I suppose, but I must say it's a sort of strain when it comes to being the stranger yourself. I want somebody to neighbor with."
"So do I," responded Mary with such heartiness that the old lady instantly expanded into warm friendliness. Before she was fairly fastened into her rustling black and purple gown she had confided to Mary that it was her very best one, and that it just wouldn't wear out, because it was too fine for church and she had no occasion to put it on save when she made her rare visits to San Antonio. The sleeves had been changed so many times to keep it in fashion, that her dressmaker had refused to alter it another time, even if the lace on it did cost five dollars a yard. James said why didn't she wear it at home and get done with it. But she told him much comfort a body would take around home in the tight gear a dressmaker boned you up in. But she'd have to do something, for full skirts were clear out now, and she felt like a balloon when other people were going around as slim and lank as starved snakes.
"It doesn't take long to get out of date," she added, "when you're living up in the hills in the back-woods."
"Oh, I know that," agreed Mary. "I've been living in a lonesome little spot out in Arizona for so long that I've nearly forgotten what civilization is like."
"You don't look like it," was the frank comment as the still franker gaze of her listener travelled over her dress from top to bottom, noting every detail.
"Oh, this," answered Mary, as if the eyes had spoken. "This is a dress that I got in New York last Easter vacation. I was in school at Washington, but as I had to leave at the end of the term and go back home I've had no occasion to wear it since. That's why it looks so new."
"Now do sit down and tell me about it," urged her hostess hospitably. "I've always wanted to go to Washington."
She pushed forward a low rocker, and took the arm chair opposite with such a look of pleasurable anticipation on her kindly old face, that Mary obeyed. She knew how it felt to be fairly bursting with a sociability for which there was no outlet. She had experienced that same sensation a few minutes before when she watched Roberta and the Major's daughter go by with their friends. Besides, she felt a real liking for this companionable old lady who introduced herself as Mrs. Barnaby of Bauer, Texas. Mrs. James Barnaby.
"She's the real, comfortable, homey sort," thought Mary, who had been much given of late to classifying people. "She's like mission furniture – plain and simple and genuine. She'd be her simple unpretentious self no matter what gilt and veneer she found herself among."
Mary was proud of her insight afterward when she learned more about Mrs. Barnaby's family. They had come out from Ohio over fifty years before when she was so young that she could barely remember the great prairie schooner that brought them. They had suffered all the hardships of the early Texas settlers, gone through the horrors of the Indian uprisings, and fought their way through with sturdy pioneer fortitude to the place where they could fold their hands and enjoy the comforts of the civilization they had helped to establish.
She told Mary little of this now, however, but led her on with many questions to talk of herself. Mrs. Barnaby had a lively curiosity and always took the most straightforward means to gratify it.
"She's interested in people, no matter who they are, just as I am," thought Mary, instantly recognizing the spirit which prompted the questions, and for that reason was led on to tell more than she would have told to most strangers. She did not take the world at large into her confidence now as she had done in her chatterbox days. In just a few moments Mrs. Barnaby had a very fair snapshot picture of the Ware family in her mind. Mary had given it very simply.
"I had gone from school at Warwick Hall to New York, to spend the Easter vacation with my sister Joyce. She's an artist and has her studio there. And we got word that my oldest brother, Jack, had been dreadfully hurt in an accident at the mines where he was manager – that it had made him a cripple for life. We all just adore Jack, so of course I packed up and went straight back to Arizona. It wasn't possible for Joyce to leave just then, and my brother Holland is in the navy, and of course he couldn't get away. Except the trained nurse there was nobody with mamma at the time but my youngest brother Norman, and as he is only fourteen I felt that I had to go."
"I hope he got better right away," interrupted Mrs. Barnaby eagerly.
"Yes, he did for awhile. He even got so that he could wheel himself around in his chair and go down to the office awhile every morning. But as soon as the cold weather set in he began to have such dreadful rheumatism that the doctor said the only thing to do was to take him to a milder climate. So we got ready right away and brought him down here."
"It must have been a hard trip for him," commented Mrs. Barnaby with a sympathetic shake of the head. "Arizona always did seem to me like the jumping-off place. I don't
