CHAPTER VII
A DESERT OF WAITING
It was so still on the porch where Mary and her mother sat sewing that warm May afternoon that they could distinctly hear the Moredock phonograph, playing some new records over and over. One of them was a quick-step that the military band had often played at Fort Sam Houston, and as Mary listened an intolerable longing for stir and excitement took possession of her. She wanted to be back in the midst of people and constantly changing scenes. She felt that she could not endure the deadly monotony of Lone-Rock another day.
Usually she had much to say as they sat and sewed through the long still afternoons, but to-day the music claimed her attention. It was very pleasing at that distance, but it was disquieting in its effect. She dropped her embroidery into her lap and sat looking out at the narrow grass-grown road winding past the house and over the hill, and ending in a narrow mountain path beyond.
"Mamma," she asked suddenly, in one of the pauses of the music, "were any of our ancestors tramps or gypsies? Seems to me they must have been, or I wouldn't feel the 'Call of the Road' so strongly. Don't you feel it? As if it beckons and you must break loose and follow, to find what's waiting for you around the next turn?"
Mrs. Ware shook her head. "No," she said slowly. "I'm like the old Israelites. When they came to Elim, with its wells and palm trees, they were glad to camp there indefinitely. This is my Elim."
"I wonder, now," mused Mary, "if they really were satisfied. I don't mean to be irreverent, but only last night I read that verse, 'Whether it were two days or a month or a year that the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, the Children of Israel abode in their tents and journeyed not.' And I thought that among so many, there must have been a lot of them who were impatient to get on to their promised land; who fretted and fumed when day after day the pillar of cloud never lifted to lead them on. I'd have been like that. If we could only know how long we have to stay in a place it would make it lots easier. Now, if I had known last fall that eight months would go by and find me still here in Lone-Rock, I'd have made up my mind to the inevitable and settled down comfortably. It's the dreadful uncertainty that is so hard to bear."
Just then the phonograph started up one of its old records. "I want what I want when I want it!" They both looked up and laughed at each other.
"That is the cry of the ages," said Mrs. Ware merrily. "I've no doubt that even the tribes of Israel had some version of that same song, and wailed it often on the march. But their very impatience showed that they were not fit to go on towards their conquest of Canaan."