Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1914-11-27
CHAPTER vi.
Old Accounts.

L was almost dusk when Mary
reached home. While she was
passing the billboard at the cor
ner-a fare of yellow letters, as
If color and the alphabet had united to
breed a monster-she heard children
shouting. A block away and across
the street, coming home from ROLES
toms hill, where they had peer coast
ing, were Bennett and Gussie Bates, lit
tie Emily, Tab Winslow and Pep.
Nearly every day of snow they passed
her house. She always heard them
talking. and usually she heard across
at the corner the click of the penny in
the slot machine. which no child seem
ed able to pass without pulling. To
night as she heard them coming Mary
fumbled In her purse. Three. four. five
pennies she found and ran across the
street and dropped them In the slot
machine and gained her own door be-
fore the children anne. She stood at
her dark threshold and listened. She
had not reckoned in vain. One Of the
children pushed down on the rod In the
child's eternal hope of magic, and
when magic came and three. four. five
chocolates dropped ~obediently in their
hands Mary listened to what they said.
1t was not much. and 1t was not very
coherent, but 1t was wholly ineligible.
Look at. shrieked Bennett. who
had made the magic.
did it?" cried Gussie and repeated
the operation.
'It-it-it never!' said Tab winslow
at the third.
MAKE 1t again; make 1t again!
cried little Emily, and they did.
"Gorry!" observed Pep in ecstasy.
When it would give no more they
divided with the other children and
ran on, their red mittens and mutiers
flaming In the snow. Mary stood star
ing after them for a moment; then she
closed her door.
Il wonder what made me do that"
she thought.
In her dining room she mended the
fire without taking of her hat. 1t
was curious. she reflected. Here was
this room looking the way it looked.
and away off there was the little fel-
low who had never seen the room.
and in a little while he would be call
ing this room home and looking for
his books and his mittens and know
ing it better than any other place in
the world. And there was Jenny with
that bottom drawerful. and pretty soon
somebody that now was not, would
be, and would be wearing the drawer
full and calling Jenny mother" and
would know her better than any one
else in the world. Mary could not
imagine that little boy of Lily's get
ting used TO her-Mary-and calling
her-welI. what would he call her?
She hadn't thought of that.
Bother" thought Mary Chavah.
there's going to be forty nuisances
about it that l s'pose l haven't even
thought of yet"
She stood by the window. She had
not lighted the lamp, so the world
showed white. not black. Snow makes
outdoors look big. she thought. But
it was big-what a long journey 1t
was to Idaho. Suppose something
happened to the man he was to travel
with? John Blood was only a boy; he
would probably put the child's name
and her address in the little travellers
pocket, and these would be lost. The
child was hardly old enough to remem-
Der what to do. He would go astray.
and none of them would ever know
what had become of him and what
would become of him? She saw him
and his bundle of clothes alone in the
station in the city.
She turned from the window and
mechanically mended the fire again,
She drew down the window shade and
went to the coat closet to hang away
her wraps. Then abruptly she took