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"I saw it in a little pamphlet, in the reading-room last night, and it told about the Comanche Indians that came here about seventy years ago. The fiercest fighting you ever heard of – thirty-two Indian warriors killed right out there in the street that we came across just now, and seven Texans."
"Goodness, Norman!" she answered, with a shrug. "What do you want to resurrect all those old horrors for? It doesn't make the place any more attractive to me to know that its streets once ran red with blood. I'd rather think of them as they will be in the Spring on San Jacinto Day, red with roses after the Battle of Flowers. Think of our being here to see that!" she added, exultingly.
As they emerged from the dimly-lighted chapel into the blinding sunshine of the street, Norman remarked thoughtfully, "Of course I'm sorry that Jack had the rheumatism so badly that he had to get out of Lone Rock, but as long as we did have to leave home, I'm jolly glad it brought us to San Antonio. Think of the times we'll have going out to Fort Sam Houston to guard-mounts and parade. It's something just to be within walking distance of the largest army post of the United States."
"I'm thinking of the public library," was her rejoinder. "Jack can have all the books he wants to read this winter; and I'm thinking of the friends we'll have; the real, satisfying kind, that do things, and go places, and think, and keep you from sinking to the level of a cabbage. I've always wanted to live in the thick of things, and here we are at last!"
They paused on the curb to wait for a long string of vehicles to pass. An army ambulance came first, drawn by sleek mules, driven by a soldier in khaki and carrying several ladies and children from the Post. Close behind it came a riding party, clattering in on horseback from a breakfast at the Country Club. Then followed close on each other's heels, a dilapidated prairie schooner, three boys on a burro, a huckster's wagon, and a carriage with liveried coachman and prancing, thoroughbred horses. The clang of a long line of electric cars whizzing past, the honk of many automobiles, and the warning sound of bicycle bells, as their owners wheeled in and out through the bewildering maze of vehicles and pedestrians, made Norman exclaim, joyfully, "Gee! I'm glad we're out of Lone Rock! There's something to see here every single minute."
Mary signalled a passing car, and as soon as they were seated, drew out her newspaper clippings. "Mrs. Barnaby said for us to go to Laurel Heights first," she remarked, "so I believe we'll find it best to try this one. It sounds all right."
She read the advertisement aloud: "A five-room bungalow, never been occupied, all modern conveniences, one block from car-line, rent reasonable, inquire next door."
Then she unfolded the map and studied it as they whirled along, now and then repeating the name of a street as she came across one which sounded particularly pleasing and story-bookish, as she called it, to Norman: "King William Street, Mistletoe Avenue, Dolorosa and San Pedro."
When a little later they alighted from the car and found the place described in the advertisement, it was almost the bungalow of Mary's dreams. The vines were lacking and the lawn was still strewn with the débris of building, but that could soon be remedied.
"What good, wide porches to hang a hammock on!" exclaimed Norman, as they mounted the steps and walked around, peering through the windows.
"You'll have to say gallery," corrected Mary. "Everybody down here calls a porch a gallery. They won't know what you mean."
They walked all around the house, exclaiming over each attractive feature, as each window revealed a new one. The electric lights, the convenient little bathroom, the open fire-place in the living-room, the built-in china closet. Norman's only complaint was that the house was nowhere near the river. That was a drawback in Mary's eyes also, for ever since they had thought of a boat it had begun to take its place in that mental picture in which those alluring girls were always fluttering in and out.
"Of course we'll look farther," she said. "It wouldn't do to take the first one we came to when there are so many to choose from. I'll just run in next door and inquire the price, and tell them we'll make up our minds later."
But when she had made her inquiries her decision followed immediately. What might seem reasonable rent to the owner and to the people of that neighborhood was entirely out of the reach of the Ware pocket-book. "You won't find anything cheaper in this part of town," the woman assured her, and after several more experiences of the same kind, Mary believed her.
They passed all sorts of beautiful homes in their wanderings; stately Colonial mansions, comfortable wide-spreading houses with broad galleries and hospitable doors, picturesque bungalows in the mission style, little white-winged cottages over-run with tangles of Maréchal Niel roses, their fragrant buds swinging from the very eaves. The farther they searched the more Mary longed to find a home among them, and it was with a feeling of deep disappointment that she turned back to the hotel for lunch.
Mrs. Ware had spent part of the morning telephoning to different real estate offices recommended by Mr. Barnaby, and had a small list of houses sifted down from those offered her.
"They tell me we are too late to get much of a choice," she reported. "People have been pouring into the city for a month, and the freight stations and ware-houses are piled up with household goods. It is this way every fall, they say. No matter how many homes they build there are always more families clamoring to occupy them than can be accommodated. It would be easier for us to find one if we could afford to pay more, but I had to cut out all the high-priced ones from the lists that they gave me."
Mary took the slip of paper from her mother, saying, "So far the ones we have seen have been too big or too expensive, or else far too small. I wonder what will be the matter with these?"
She began to find out almost as soon as she and Norman resumed their search again after lunch. The lists they had led them into older parts of the town, where the rented houses had seen several generations of transitory occupants. Some of the places they visited made her shrink back in dismay. A long procession of careless tenants had passed through, each leaving some contribution to the evidences of their slack housekeeping. Nearly every family had had its share of disease and death, and Mary hurried away with a wry face and the single exclamation, "germs!" Mrs. Barnaby had spoken of that class of houses. "You want to be careful," she told her. "Even the nicest looking may have had dreadfully sick tenants in them, and although there is a law requiring landlords to fumigate, and all that sort of thing, you can't be sure that it has been done as thoroughly as it should."
"This is getting monotonous," Mary exclaimed, wearily, when they had walked block after block to no purpose, and the end of the day found them with nothing accomplished. The morning freshness of the atmosphere had given place to such enervating heat that she had been carrying her coat on her arm for several hours. The sky was overcast with clouds, when fagged and inwardly cross she climbed on the car that was to take them back to the hotel, vowing that she couldn't drag herself another step.
At the next corner half a dozen people hurried down the street, waving frantically for the car to wait. As they crowded into the aisle, laughing and out of breath, Mary heard a lady exclaim, "We certainly were lucky to catch this car. If we'd had to wait for the next one the 'Norther' surely would have caught us, and this is going to be a nasty, wet one, too."
Even as she spoke there was a sense of sudden chill in the air. A cold gale swept down the street, setting flags and awnings to flapping, and blinding pedestrians with whirling clouds of dust. The conductor hurried to close the car windows, and the passengers began struggling into their wraps.
The sudden freshening of the air had such a bracing effect that Mary straightened up, feeling that after all she might be able to walk the half block from the car to the hotel. When the time came, she found that she could even run the distance, for the few big drops of rain that splashed in her face were the fore-runner of a downpour, and they had no umbrella. Just as they reached the entrance such a mighty deluge began that Mary's disappointment in house-hunting was somewhat softened by the fact that her beloved hat had escaped a wetting which must have ruined it.
"Never mind, little Vicar," said Jack, consolingly, when she had made her report to the assembled family. "The proverbial turn in our fortune is bound to come. It's never failed us yet, you know."
"But we've simply got to get out of this expensive hotel," she answered, desperately. "Do you realize that we could keep house for a week on what it costs the four of us to stay here just one day?"
Mrs. Ware broke the long silence that followed, by suggesting, "Maybe for the present we'd better try to get a few rooms somewhere, just for light housekeeping. It's a last resort, I know, but Mary is right. Every day we spend here is taking a big mouthful out of our little capital."
Nobody liked the suggestion, for whatever else they had lacked in their Arizona homes there had been no lack of space, but they all saw the wisdom of Mrs. Ware's suggestion, and agreed to try it until they could look around and do better.
"How lovely it must be to have an ancestral roof-tree," thought Mary that night, as she tossed, restlessly, kept awake by the noises of the big hotel. "I can't think of anything more heavenly than to always live in the house where you were born, and your fathers and grandfathers before you, as the Lloyds do at The Locusts. It must be so delightful to feel that you've got an attic full of heirlooms and that everything about the place is connected with some old family tradition, and to know that you can take root there, and not have to go wandering around from pillar to post as we Wares have always had to do. I wonder if Lloyd Sherman knows how much she has to be thankful for!"
Next day in her shortest skirt and rain-coat, and under a dripping umbrella, Mary started to look for rooms. She was alone this time. Company was too expensive a luxury to afford more than one day, since it meant extra car-fare. She paddled blithely off, however, never minding the weather. This rain made the little home she was seeking seem all the more desirable. Whenever a window showed her a cozy interior with the light of an open fire shining cheerily over it, she thought it would not be long till she would be making afternoon tea over just such a fire, or popping corn or toasting marsh-mallows. She could think of a dozen ways to make it attractive for the girls when they dropped in of rainy afternoons.
Occupied with such plans she tramped along through the mud and slush as happily as she had gone through the sunshine the day before. But by the end of the morning repeated failures began to bring a worried line between her eyes and a sharp note of anxiety into her voice when she made her inquiries. Once, finding herself in the neighborhood of a house which she had refused the day before because it did not quite measure up to the standards she had set, she went to look at it again, thinking, after all, they might manage to be more comfortable in it than in a few rooms. To her disappointment she found a family already moving in. It had been rented almost immediately after her refusal to take it.
In her search for rooms a new difficulty faced her. Invariably one of the first questions asked her was, "Anyone sick in your family?"
"Yes, my brother," she would say. "He has rheumatism. That is why we are particular about getting a sunny south room for him."
"Well, we can't take sick people," would be the positive answer, and she would turn away with an ache in her throat and a dull wonder why Jack's rheumatism could make him objectionable in the slightest degree as a tenant. The morning was nearly gone before she found the reason. She was shown into a dingy parlor by a child of the family, and asked to wait a few moments. Its mother had gone around the corner to the bakery, but would be right back.
There were two others already waiting when Mary entered the room, a stout, middle-aged woman and a delicate-looking girl. The woman looked up with a nod as Mary took a chair near the stove and spread out her damp skirts to dry.
"I reckon you're on the same errand as us," said the woman, "but it's first come, first served, and we're ahead of you."
"Yes," answered Mary, distantly polite, and wondering at the aggressive tone. When the child left the room the woman rose and shut the door behind it, and then came back to Mary, lowering her voice confidentially.
"It's just this way. We're getting desperate. We came down here for my daughter's health – the doctor sent us, and we've gone all over town trying to get some kind of roof over our heads. We can't get in anywhere because Maudie has lung trouble. People have been coming down here for forty years to get cured of it, and folks were glad enough to rent 'em rooms and take their money, till all this talk was stirred up in the papers about lung trouble being a great white plague, and catching, and all that. Now you can't get in anywhere at a price that poor folks can pay. I've come to the end of my rope. The landlady at the boarding-house where we've been stopping, told me this morning that she couldn't keep us another day, because the boarders complained when they found what ailed Maudie. I was a fool to tell 'em, for she doesn't cough much. It's only in the first stages. After this I'm just going to say that I came down here to look for work, and goodness knows, that's the truth! What I want to ask of you is that you won't stand in the way of our getting in here by offering more rent or anything like that."
"Certainly not," Mary answered, drawing back a little, almost intimidated by the fierceness which desperation gave to the other's manner.
The landlady bustled in at that moment, and as she threw the rooms open for inspection, she asked the question that Mary had heard so often that morning, – "Any sick in your family?"
"No," answered the woman, glibly. "I'm down in the city looking for work. I do plain sewing, and if you know of any likely customers I'd be glad if you'd mention me."
The landlady glanced shrewdly at Maudie, who kept in the background.
"She does embroidery," explained her mother. "Needle-work makes her a little pale and peaked, sitting over it so long. I ain't going to let her do so much after I once get a good start."
"Well, a person in my place can't be too careful," complained the landlady. "We get taken in so often letting our rooms to strangers. They have all sorts of names for lung trouble nowadays, malaria and a weak heart and such things. The couple I had in here last said it was just indigestion and shortness of breath, but she died all the same six weeks later, in this very room, and he had to acknowledge it was her lungs all the time, and he knew it."
Mary looked around the room with a shiver. Its old wallpaper, dingy paint and worn carpet proclaimed too plainly that its renovation since the last lodgers' departure had been only a superficial one, barely what the law demanded.
"No, thank you," she replied to the landlady, who had turned to her with the hope of finding a more desirable tenant. "I couldn't consider these rooms at all. There are only two, and we need three at least."
Out on the street again a tear or two splashed down and mingled with the rain on her face as she walked away. She was growing desperate herself. If two rooms had been all they needed, she could have found them a number of times over. Or, if they could have afforded some of the flats or the sunny suites she discovered on pleasant streets, her search would have been soon over. But it was the same old circle she kept coming back to. When the rooms were large enough and within their means, either they were unsanitary or the owners objected to invalids. In vain she explained that Jack's helplessness was due to an accident, and that rheumatism is not contagious. Too many people like Maudie's mother had been ahead of her and bred suspicion of all strangers in quest of rooms for light housekeeping.
Mary had told her mother not to expect her back for lunch. She would go into some tea-room or restaurant wherever she happened to be. But one o'clock found her in a part of the town where nothing of the kind was in sight. She bought an apple and some crackers at a grocery, and ate them under cover of her umbrella while she stood on a corner, waiting for a car to take her to another part of the city.
What a different place it seemed to be from the one they had seen the day of their arrival! Then it was a world of hospitable homes and sunshine and kindly faces. The very shop windows looked friendly and inviting. Now, plodding along in the wet, to the tired, homesick girl it seemed only a great, desolate place full of lonely, discouraged strangers and sick people and dingy boarding-houses, whose doors shut coldly in anxious faces.
All afternoon she kept up the search. The electric lights were beginning to gleam through the rain, throwing long, quivering reflections in the puddles when she finally turned back to the hotel, bedraggled and utterly discouraged.
"I won't cry!" she said, fiercely, to herself. "I can't! For Jack would see that I had been at it, and he is getting so sensitive lately. It would hurt him dreadfully to know that we are barred out of all the desirable places because he is an invalid."
The habit of years is strong. Mary had persisted so long in applying the good Vicar of Wakefield's motto to her childish difficulties and disappointments, that it had taught her remarkable self-control. Instead of bursting impulsively into the room as so many girls of her age would have done, and giving vent to her over-taxed nerves and discouragement in a tearful report of the day's adventures, she walked slowly from the elevator to her room, trying to think of some careless way in which to announce her failure. She paused with her hand on the knob, thinking, "I'll just tell them that I've come back like Noah's dove did the first time it was sent out from the ark, because I could find no rest for the sole of my foot; at least a rest which fitted both our ideas and our income."
To her relief, the room was empty when she entered. The only light streamed through the transom and keyhole from Jack's room, where a low murmur told that her mother was reading aloud. Opening the door just a crack so that her face was not visible, she called, gaily, "I'm back, mamma, but you can just go on with your reading; I'll not tell a single thing till I'm all dried and dressed. I'm as wet as a frog."
"Oh, I was afraid you'd be," came the anxious answer. "I'll come and get – "
"No," interrupted Mary, decidedly. "I don't want anything but time." Closing the door between the rooms, she switched on the light and began slipping out of her wet clothes into dry ones. In a moment or two she was in her soft, warm kimona and Turkish slippers, standing on the threshold of the bathroom, intending to plunge her face into a basin of hot water. It was the best thing she could think of to remove the traces of tears, and she was so tired that now she was safe in the harbor of her own room the tears would come, no matter how hard she tried to keep them back.
But before she could turn the faucet, a tap at the hall door made her dab her handkerchief hastily across her eyes, for Mrs. Barnaby's voice followed the tap.
"I surely hate to trouble you," she began, apologetically, as soon as Mary had admitted her, "but if you could only hook me up this one more time – I've been waiting for James with this shawl over my shoulders for nearly half an hour. Then I heard you come in and I thought maybe you wouldn't mind doing it once more. We're going home in the morning."
Then with a keen look into Mary's face, she added, kindly, "Why, you poor child, what's the matter? Your brother isn't worse, I hope!"
There was such a note of real concern in the sympathetic voice that Mary's lip trembled and her eyes brimmed over again. When the next moment she found herself drawn into Mrs. Barnaby's capacious embrace with a plump hand patting her soothingly on the back, the story of her discouragement seemed to sob itself out of its own accord. The performance left Mary's eyes very red and tear-swollen, but the outburst brought such relief that she could laugh the moment it was over. It was Mrs. Barnaby's surprise which brought the laugh.
"I can't get over it!" she kept exclaiming. "To think that all this time I supposed that you were enormously wealthy – actually rolling in riches! Well, well!"
"I didn't know that my 'short and simple annals of the poor' would be so upsetting," giggled Mary, hysterically. "You were so sweet and sympathetic I couldn't help telling you. But don't take it to heart, please. We Wares never stay discouraged long. I'll be all right now after I get my face washed. As soon as I fasten your dress I'll run in and turn on the hot water."
The hooking proceeded in silence, Mrs. Barnaby so absorbed in thought that she forgot her usual sigh of relief and expression of thanks at the end. Instead she said, abruptly, "You come and go up on the train with us in the morning to Bauer. It's only thirty miles from here and it's up in the hills, high and dry, and there's the Metz cottage I'm sure you can get, all freshly scrubbed and ready to move into. Mrs. Metz is the cleanest little German woman you ever saw, – scrubs even the under sides of her tables as white as the tops. It wasn't rented when we came down here last Saturday. Let me talk to your mother about it. I'm sure it is just the place for you."
"Oh, no," began Mary. "We couldn't possibly go there! We've counted so much on living here in San Antonio this winter and meeting some of our friends' friends – "
Then she stopped with a little gasp, and after an instant's pause said, apologetically, "I didn't mean to refuse so abruptly, and now I take it all back. Changing plans so suddenly is somewhat of a shock to one's system, isn't it! After all, I'm like a drowning man catching at straws, and I'd be very glad, indeed, if you would talk to mamma about it. You can go right in now while I finish dressing, if you like."
It was not the first time Mrs. Barnaby had been ushered into Jack's room. Their acquaintance had begun over the railing of their adjoining balconies the first day of Mary's house-hunting, and had rapidly deepened into a mutual liking. So strongly had Mrs. Barnaby been attracted to the young fellow who bore his crippled condition so lightly that he made others forget it, that she induced James to go in and make his acquaintance also. The two men had spent several hours of the long, rainy morning together, each greatly interested in the other's conversation.
Mary, who had been gone all day, did not know of this, but she knew that her mother had met and liked Mrs. Barnaby, and that the story of the day's unsuccessful search would not sound half so serious if that cheerful old lady told it, especially if it were followed immediately by her offer to find them a home in Bauer.
Bauer was an uncharted country on Mary's map, but if Mrs. Barnaby thought of it as their desired haven, she could trust her capable hands to take them safely into it. So it was with a sigh of relief that she opened the door between the rooms, saying, "Here's Mrs. Barnaby, mamma," and left her to make explanations while she finished dressing.
CHAPTER III
THE LITTLE TOWN OF BAUER
Mary was the only one to whom the change of plans made a vital difference. She had built such lovely dream-castles of their winter in San Antonio that it was hard to see them destroyed at one breath.
"Of course it's the only thing to do," she said, in a mournful aside to Norman, "but did you ever dream that there was a dish of rare, delicious fruit set down in front of you, so tempting that you could hardly wait to taste it, and just as you put out your hand it was suddenly snatched away? That's the way I feel about leaving here. And I've dreamed of getting letters, too; big, fat letters, that were somehow going to change my whole life for the better, and then just as I started to read them I always woke up, and so never found out the secret that would make such a change in my fortunes."
"Maybe it won't be so bad after all," encouraged Norman. "Maybe we can have a boat. There's a creek running through the town and the Barnaby ranch is only seven miles out in the country. We'll see them often."
Mary wanted to wail out, "Oh, it isn't boats, and ranches, and old people I want! It's girls, and boys, and something doing! Being in the heart of things, as we would be if we could only stay here in this beautiful old city!"
The wail found no voice, however, for even in the midst of her disappointment Mary remembered Jack, and could not let him feel that this change in their plans meant any sacrifice for her. Besides, she had to acknowledge that the creek and the ranch did hold out some compensations, and she was deeply grateful to these two kind old people who had come to their rescue in such cordial, neighborly fashion. Mr. Barnaby had been called into the family council also, and had spent the evening with them discussing prices and prospects.
Even Norman was impressed by their offers of assistance, and spoke of it as he sat slowly unlacing his shoes after they had gone. Mary was in the next room, repacking her trunk, for it had been decided that she and Norman were to go to Bauer on the early accommodation train when the Barnabys left for home. The door between the rooms was still open, and she heard him say, thoughtfully:
"What do you suppose makes them so rattling good to us when we're just strangers?"
Jack laughed and quoted, teasingly:
"'What makes the lamb love Mary so?'
The eager children cry.
'Oh, Mary loves the lamb, you know,'
The teacher did reply."
"Aw, talk sense!" was Norman's disgusted answer. "I don't know what you mean by that."
An understanding smile flashed between Jack and his mother, who had stayed to help him prepare for the night, and she answered for him.
"Jack only means that we get just what we give in this world, dear. From the days of Solomon it's been a proverb that the man who would have friends 'must show himself friendly.' And that's what you and Mary did the first night you met the Barnabys. You made them feel that you found them genuinely interesting, and that awakened a liking for you."
"But anybody'd find that old man interesting," Norman explained, gravely. "You never heard such Indian stories as he can tell, – true ones that he's been in himself, – and hunting – Gee! you ought to hear him! I bid to sit next to him going up on the train."
"You're welcome to him!" called Mary. "I'll take Mrs. B." Then she came to the doorway, a pile of folded garments in her hands. "I declare, she's just an old dear! She's thought of so many ways to save us expense since she found out that we have to economize. She even offered to have our two extra trunks checked on their tickets. They only brought suit-cases. So we'll have no extra baggage to pay for."
The sun was shining next morning, and although the chill of the Norther was still in the air, the rain-washed plazas were greener than ever, and new roses were opening to take the places of the old ones that the storm had beaten off the day before. Mary's spirits seemed to have passed through the same freshening process, for there was no trace of tears or regrets on the bright face that greeted her travelling companions.
The only morning train was an accommodation, which carried much freight and took its own time for the journey. This happened to be a day when it was four hours on the road, but none of the little party felt that time dragged. Ordinarily, Mary would have enjoyed keeping close to the old ranchman, as Norman did, hopping off the car every time they stopped on a side-track, to investigate everything along the way, – the lime works, the rock quarry, the station where the mail was put off for the soldiers who were camped at the Government reservation for target practise. Even the little oil-burning engine would have been of as much interest to her as it was to Norman, had she not been so busily occupied otherwise.
As they wound higher and higher into the hills she looked out now and then with a quick exclamation of pleasure at the view, but for the most part she was "visiting" with Mrs. Barnaby, as that good soul expressed it. Their acquaintance took long strides forward that morning. Part of the time Mary chattered along just as if her listener had been one of the Warwick Hall girls, and part of the time she listened to elderly views and confidences with the seeming sympathy of middle age. A bit of personal history from one called out a corresponding scrap from the other, and they had exchanged views on many subjects, ranging from young turkeys to unhappy marriages, when the porter passed through the train calling, "Bauer! All out for Bauer!"
Mrs. Barnaby glanced out the window, saying in surprise, "I had no idea we were so near home!" Then she gave Mary's sleeve an affectionate little pat with her plump hand, exclaiming cordially, "I declare, it's been a real treat to have you along." And Mary, as she helped Mrs. Barnaby struggle into her coat, responded, "Well, I've enjoyed every inch of the way. Somehow you make me feel that you're just my age or I'm just yours, – I don't know which. You can't imagine how 'little and lorn' I feel at the thought of leaving you."
"Oh, but I'm not going to leave you until you're safely settled," was the comforting assurance. "James has some business at the court-house that will keep him in town for an hour or so. As soon as we drop him there I'll drive around with you to make arrangements about the cottage. There's Pedro now."
They were on the platform by this time, and she indicated by a nod the slim young Mexican who had driven the carriage from the ranch to meet them. It was a roomy, old-fashioned carriage drawn by two big gray mules, with much shining nickel-plating on their stout black harness. The station was half a mile away from the village, and as they swung down the sunny white road towards it, at a rapid gait, both Norman and Mary looked out eagerly at the place that was to be their home for a whole long winter, and maybe more.
From a distance it looked almost like a toy village, with its red roofs, blue barns and flashing windmills nestled against the background of misty hills. Low mountain peaks rose here and there on the far horizon beyond.
"This is distinctly a German village, you know," explained Mrs. Barnaby, as they passed a group of little flaxen-haired Teutons on the roadside, who were calling to each other and their dog in a tongue which Mary could not understand.
"Bauer was settled by an old German count and a baron or two, who came over here with their families and followers. They made it as much like a corner of the Fatherland as they could, and their descendants still cling to their language and customs. They don't want any disturbing, aggressive Americans in their midst, so they never call on new-comers, and never return their visits if any of them try to make the advances. They will welcome you to their shops, but not to their homes. Even the English and Scotch people who have owned the out-lying ranches as long as they have owned the town are looked upon as aliens and strangers, in a way."
Mary gave an exclamation of dismay. "Texas certainly is full of surprises," she said, in a disappointed tone. "One thinks of it as being young and crude, and with the proverbial hospitality of a new country. I've always thought of it as having the latch-string out for everybody."
"Oh, Texas has," Mrs. Barnaby hastened to assure her. "Its doors are wide open, and its welcome corresponds to its size, the biggest in the Union. But Bauer is different. It has a few families who will not look on you with suspicion. The old couple who own the cottage which I hope to get for you will be good neighbors, and if you were to live here a long time there are others who would be friendly. Then there are several American families who have found a foothold in the town, and as I said, English-speaking people on the ranches hereabout. They are cultured, refined people, interesting to know, but strangers coming here rarely make their acquaintance. You see we have so many transients coming for their health, staying just a few weeks or months and going on again – it's hardly to be expected we'd – "
Her sentence was interrupted by a dashing girl in khaki and a cowboy hat, astride a fiery little mustang. She rode past the carriage, calling out a greeting as she passed. Norman turned around exclaiming, "Did you see that? A cartridge belt around her waist and a six-shooter in her holster! That's the wild West for you."
"That's the sheriff's daughter," explained Mrs. Barnaby. "She's his deputy, and meets the trains when it's necessary and he's out of town."
"I'd like to know her," said Mary. "I'm glad that there's something to give one the kind of a thrill you naturally expect to have out here. I was beginning to have such a foreign, far-away feeling, seeing all these picturesque little German gardens with old women weeding in them. We can imagine we are abroad this winter in Cologne or Pottsdam or Bingen on the Rhine. Oh, oh! How quaint and dear!"
The exclamation escaped her as the gray mules stopped at the gate of an old garden, over whose stone walls arched a row of great pecan trees. A straight path ran from the gate to the kitchen door, stiffly bordered by coxcombs and princes' feather, while on each side chrysanthemums and roses and a host of old-fashioned autumn flowers made the little plot a tangle of colors and sweet smells. There were some bee-hives under the bare peach trees, and at one side beyond them, a small vineyard where the mockingbirds still sang noisily although the grapes had all been gathered and pressed into wine. An old man with a flowing white beard and a high black hat sat on a bench by the kitchen door placidly smoking a long pipe.
"That's Mr. Metz," said Mrs. Barnaby, preparing to alight. "Come in with me."
"It's all just like one of the pictures in Joyce's studio," commented Mary, as they followed the straight walk to the door, "and this is just like one of those lovely old-master, Dutch interiors," she added, in a whisper, as Mr. Metz ushered them into the big, clean kitchen, where his wife sat knitting.
