MAURICE.
"The stubbornness of fortune."
It was the first of the month, and a steady stream of people passed in and out of the bank. Maurice sat on the steps leading up to the private entrance, and with few exceptions each new-comer had a pleasant greeting or kindly inquiry for him.
Miss Betty Bishop rustling out, bank book in hand, called, "How are you, Maurice? When are you and Katherine coming to take tea with me? Let me know and I'll have waffles."
The cabinet-maker came to the foot of the steps to ask about the lame knee, and shook his head in sympathy with Maurice's doleful face.
Colonel Parton, a tall, gray-mustached man, accompanied by two hunting dogs, hailed him: "Not going with the boys? Ah, I forgot your knee. Too bad! Jack's got the dandiest new fishing-rod you ever saw."
"As if I didn't know it," growled Maurice, us the colonel entered the bank.
The next person to accost him was Miss Celia Fair. She hadn't any bank business, but seeing Maurice as she passed, stopped to speak to him. She sat down beside him and tried in her pretty, soft way to cheer him.
"Don't look so gloomy, dear; you know if you are careful you will soon be all right again," she said.
At this Maurice poured forth all his disappointment at not being able to go with the Parton boys on their excursion down the bay.
"I am just as sorry for you as I can be," said Celia, clasping her hands in her lap—such slender hands—and looking far away as if she were tired of everything near by. It was only for a moment, then she said with a little laugh, "You can't possibly understand, Maurice, but I shouldn't mind a sprained knee in the least; I think I could even enjoy it, if I hadn't any more responsibility than you have."
"But you don't care to go fishing," he suggested.
"Oh, yes, I do; I like to fish." With a smile she said good-by, and went away.
After this Maurice settled down into deeper despondency than before. He had refused an invitation to drive, hid treated with bitter scorn Katherine's suggestion that he might like to go out to the creek with her and Blossom. "You could ride in the stage, you know, and have to walk only the least little bit," she said.
"Thank you; it is such fun to throw stones in the water," he replied, with elaborate politeness.
That Maurice was badly spoiled was no secret. The only boy in the family, with bright, engaging ways when things went to please him, he had been petted and humored by his parents, given up to by Katherine, and treated as a leader by his boy friends, until he had come to look upon his own pleasure as the most important thing in the universe. Not that he realized this. He would have been greatly surprised to hear he was selfish.
The accident by which his knee had been sprained severely was an experience as trying as it was new to him. At first the petting he received at home, and the attentions of his friends, added to his sense of importance and made it endurable, but this could not continue indefinitely. Ball playing and other sports must go on, and Maurice, to his aggrieved surprise, found they could go on very well without him.
This morning his mother had expostulated mildly. "My son, you ought not to make yourself so miserable. You could not be more unhappy if you were to be lame always."
"It is now I care about," he replied petulantly.
"I don't know what to do with Maurice," he overheard her say to his father in the hall.
"Let him alone. I am ashamed of him," was Mr. Roberts's reply.
And now, deserted and abused, Maurice was very miserable, and when he could stand it no longer he sought a distant spot in the garden and threw himself face down in the grass.
He had been lying here some time when a voice apparently quite near asked, "Have you hurt yourself?"
Lifting his flushed, unhappy face, he saw peeping at him through the hedge the girl Katherine had been so interested in on Sunday. She, too, was lying on the grass, and her fair hair was spread out around her like a veil. Maurice raised himself on his elbow and surveyed her in surprise, forgetting to reply.
"What is the matter?" she asked again, looking at him with a pair of serious gray eyes.
"Nothing," he answered.
The gray eyes grew merry. Rosalind laughed, as she said, "Then you ought not to groan. I thought when I heard you, perhaps you had fallen from a tree."
"I wasn't groaning," he protested, feeling ashamed.
"Maybe you call it sighing, but it was dreadfully deep."
"Well, I think a fellow has a right to sigh when he can't do anything or go anywhere; and everybody else is having a good time," Maurice felt anxious to vindicate himself.
"I am not having a good time," said Rosalind, "at least not very; but then you know if you stay in the Forest of Arden, something pleasant is bound to happen before long."
Maurice stared at her blankly.
"Perhaps you don't know the story," Rosalind suggested.
"Its real name is 'As You Like It,' but I call it 'The Story of the Forest.'"
"What is it about?"
"Oh,—about a banished duke, who lived in the Forest, like Robin Hood, you know, with a lot of people who were fond of him. He had a daughter, named Rosalind, and after a while she was banished too and went to look for her father in the Forest. Her cousin Celia and a funny clown, Touchstone, went with her, and they were all disguised. And—well, there is a great deal more to it—but they were all cheerful and brave—everybody is in the Forest of Arden, because they are sure there is good in everything if you only try to find it."
"But that is all a story. It isn't true."
"Oh, yes, it is."
"There wasn't a bit of good in hurting my knee and having the whole summer spoiled." Maurice's tone was undeniably fretful.
"If you had been banished as Rosalind was, I suppose you would not have thought there was any good in that; but she didn't cry about it. She made the best of it, and had a good time in spite of it."
"Who says I was crying?" Maurice demanded angrily.
Rosalind opened her gray eyes wide, then she sat up and tossed back her hair. Maurice felt convicted of rudeness. Was she going? He hoped not, for he wished to talk to her.
"I suppose I am rather cross," he acknowledged; "but don't you think it is pretty hard to hurt your knee and have to walk with a crutch, and stay at home when the other boys go fishing?"
"Yes, indeed. Does it hurt much?" Rosalind asked, with ready sympathy.
"No, not now; it did at first, but the doctor says it will be five or six months before it is well again."
"Then it isn't for always? That is something good."
Maurice somehow felt uncomfortable. He did not wish the emphasis laid on the good. It seemed wise to change the subject. "What a lot of hair you have," he remarked.
"It has been washed, and grandmamma said I might dry it in the sun," Rosalind explained, shaking her head so vigorously she was enveloped in a shining cloud.
"Isn't it a great bother? Kit hates to have hers braided."
"Who is Kit?"
"She is my sister Katherine."
"It must be nice to have a sister. I haven't anybody but father and Cousin Louis, and of course they are better than any one else. There are grandmamma and Aunt Genevieve, but I am not very well acquainted with them yet. I should love to have some children related to me."
I have a little sister, too; her name is Blossom. That is, her real name is Mary, and we call her Blossom."
"Kit and Blossom; and what is your name?" Rosalind asked.
"Maurice Roberts."
Rosalind tossed back her hair and began to twist it into a shining rope. "I am Rosalind Whittredge," she said. "I should not think you would ever be unhappy," she added.
"Do you know, I saw you last Sunday when you were studying something. Kit and I peeped at you through the hedge."
"I was learning a hymn for grandmamma. Why didn't you speak to me?"
"I didn't know whether you'd like it."
"Why, of course I should have liked it. I was beginning to think that day I should never get acquainted with any one, and I was feeling dreadfully lonesome when the magician came in."
"The magician?" Maurice exclaimed. Certainly this was a singular girl who talked about magicians in an everyday tone.
Rosalind laughed. "I mean Morgan, who does cabinet work. Do you know him?"
"Everybody in Friendship knows Morgan. He is a good fellow, too. Why do you call him the magician?"
"Because that is what father called him when he was a little boy. Once when Morgan had made an old desk look like new, grandfather said he was a magician, and father, who heard him, thought he meant it really. Father and Uncle Allan used to play in his shop and talk on their fingers to him. Can you do that?"
"Why, yes; I'll teach you if you like."
"I should like it very much. It is so tiresome to write things."
"Morgan is very clever, too, about understanding. You only begin to spell a word when he guesses what you want to say," Maurice added.
"I went to his shop the other day with Miss Herbert, but she wouldn't let me stay long. I made friends with his funny dog."
"Do you know what we call him? Curly Q. And the cat—did you see him? He is Crisscross."
"How funny," said Rosalind. "I think they are very good names. Crisscross wouldn't have anything to do with me."
"Are you going to live here?" Maurice asked.
"No; but I shall be here a long time. I think Friendship is a nice place, and funny too, because it has a bank with a garden around it. At home our banks are all on the street and have offices over them."
"Yes; Friendship isn't a city," Maurice acknowledged apologetically. "I should like to live in a big city."
"I like Friendship. It only seems a little odd, you know," Rosalind hastened to add. "Do they ever let you go into the bank part of your house?"
"Why, of course, I can go in whenever I choose. My father is the cashier, and it is to take care of the bank that we live here."
The conversation was brought to an end by a maid sent to find Rosalind. After she had gone Maurice saw a book on the grass where she had been lying, and reaching through the hedge with his crutch, he drew it toward him. When he removed the outside cover, even his uncritical eye saw it was a handsome hook. "Shakespeare's 'As You Like It.' Edited by Louis A. Sargent," he read. "Why, it is one of Shakespeare's plays," he said, in surprise. So this was the story Rosalind was talking about.
On the fly-leaf was some writing in small clear letters. "For Rosalind, with the wish that she may meet the hard things of life as bravely, and find as much happiness by the way, as did her namesake in the Forest of Arden. From her friend, Louis A. Sargent."
"Meet the hard things of life as bravely—" Maurice's face grew hot. "You wouldn't have thought there was any good in that." The touch of scorn in Rosalind's tone stung as he recalled it. He turned the leaves and began to read.
It was a pleasure to look at the large clear type; he soon became interested.
Half an hour later Katherine's voice broke in upon the Forest of Arden. "Maurice, Maurice, what are you doing? Mother sent me to find you."
"I am reading. Don't bother, please," was the reply, in a tone so far removed from melancholy that Katherine, reassured, obediently retired.