Mary Ware's Promised Land

by Annie F. Johnston

"It does seem nicer to be back than I thought it would," she admitted to herself. "But maybe that's because I know I don't have to stay. Even the finest cage in the world is more attractive with its door open than shut."

Although she did not realize the fact, much of her hurry to get the house in order was due to a feeling that the summons to take advantage of that open door might come very soon, and she wanted to be ready when it came.

Late that afternoon she started to the post-office with two letters, one to the principal of the Girls' Camp, the other to the teacher in Warwick Hall who had been given as reference.

"Oh, I hope my application will get there in time, and I hope my references will be satisfactory," she thought earnestly. "They ought to be impressed, with a list which begins with Bishop Chartley and Madam, and General Walton's wife, and includes twenty people from New York to Fort Sam Houston in Texas."

Just then a wagon, bearing a huge load of hay, creaked slowly along the road past her, and a half forgotten superstition of her childhood flashed into her mind. Hazel Lee had told her once that if you make a wish on a hay-wagon it will come true if "yes" is the first word you say after doing so. But should you be asked a question requiring any other answer, or should it be necessary to make a remark not beginning with the magic yes, you'll "lose your wish."

So it was with a smile at the old foolishness that Mary watched the loaded wagon go lumbering by. She had wished for a speedy and favorable reply to the letter she was about to post. It had been a point of honor with Hazel and herself whenever the other came running up, significantly tapping mute lips with an impatient forefinger, to ask, "Do you love candy?" or "Do you like peaches?" recognizing the necessity of some question to which the liberated little tongue could respond with a fervent yes. Boys were always so mean about it, asking, "Do you want me to pull your hair?" or "Do you love Peter Finn?" a half-witted boy in the neighborhood.

The childish rite brought up a little of the old thrill of apprehension, that no one might ask her the proper question to make her wish come true, and Mary smiled broadly over her own foolishness as she went on up the street. It was the only street which Lone-Rock boasted; just a straggling road, beginning down by the railroad station and the mine offices, and ending farther up the mountain in a narrow wagon track. The houses of the white families were scattered along it at uneven intervals for the space of half a mile. Then one came to a little wooden school-house on one side, and on the other the tiny box of a room which served as a post-office. The school-house was used as a chapel one day out of the week. The mining company's store was beyond that, and a little farther along, the colony of shanties where the Mexican workmen and their families lived.

The fact that Mary had met no one since leaving home and that only the hay-wagon had passed her, emphasized the loneliness of the little hamlet and made her glad that she need not look forward to spending a winter there. Her quick eyes noted a few changes, however, which promised interesting things. Five new houses had gone up in their absence. There was a piano in one of them, Billy Downs had told Norman, and Mr. Moredock, the man in the new yellow house, who had come for his health, was writing a history of some kind, and had brought a whole wagon-load of books.

The postmaster would know all about the newcomers, Mary reflected with satisfaction. One of her pleasures of coming back was meeting her old friend, the postmaster, and at the thought of him she walked a little faster. Captain Doane had held the office ever since Lone-Rock had been a mail station, and in a way was a sort of father confessor to everybody in the place. A clean-shaven jolly old face with deep laughter wrinkles about the blue eyes, which twinkled through steel-bowed spectacles, bushy iron-gray hair and bristling eyebrows—that was about all one saw through the bars of the narrow delivery window. But so much kindly sympathy and neighborly interest and good advice and real concern were handed out with the daily mail, that every man in the community regarded him as his personal friend.

There were only two mail trains a day in Lone-Rock, and at this hour Mary was sure of finding him at leisure. Seeing him through the open window, sound asleep in his arm-chair over an open newspaper, with his spectacles slipping down his nose, Mary was about to spring in the door with a playful "boo." But she remembered her wish on the hay-wagon and the necessity of waiting for him to speak first. So she only rattled the latch. He started up, a little bewildered from his sudden awakening, but seeing who had come, dashed off the old slouch hat, perched on the back of his head.