It had only been going on a week of seven days. It was exactly a week ago to-day it began, while they were making the birthday presents together, Margaret sitting in this very chair and Nell—the Enemy sitting on the toppest door-step. Who would have thought it was coming? There was nothing to warn—no thunder in the sky, no little mother-bird on the syringa bush. It just came—oh, hum!
“I’m ahead!” the Enemy had suddenly announced, waving her book-mark. She had got to the “h” in her Mother, and Margaret was only finishing her capital “M.” They were both working “Honor thy Mother that thy days may be long,” on strips of cardboard for their mothers’ birthdays, which, oddly enough, came very close together. Of course that wasn’t exactly the way it was in the Bible, but they had agreed it was better to leave “thy Father” out because it wasn’t his birthday, and they had left out “the land which the Lord thy God giveth” because there wasn’t room for it on the cardboard.
“I’m ahead!”
“That’s because I’m doing mine the carefulest,” Margaret had retorted, promptly. “There aren’t near so many hunchy places in mine.”
“Well, I don’t care; my mother’s the best-looking, if her book-mark isn’t!” in triumph. “Her hair curls, and she doesn’t have to wear glasses.”
Margaret’s wrath had flamed up hotly. Mother’s eyes were so shiny and tender behind the glasses, and her smooth brown hair was so soft! The love in Margaret’s soul arose and took up arms for Mother.
“I love mine the best, so there!—so there!—so there!” she cried. But side by side with the love in her soul was the secret consciousness of how very much the Enemy loved her mother, too. Now, sitting sewing all alone, with the Enemy on the other side of the fence, Margaret knew she had not spoken truly then, but the rankling taunt of the curls that Mother hadn’t, and the glasses that she had, justified her to herself. She would never, never take it back, so there!—so there!—so there!
“She’s only got to the end o’ her ‘days,’—I can see clear from here,” soliloquized the Enemy, with awakening exultation. For the Enemy’s “days” were “long,”—she had finished her book-mark. The longing to shout it out—“I’ve got mine done!”—was so intense within her that her chin lost its balance on the fence-rail and she jarred down heavily on her heels. So close related are mind and matter.
Margaret resorted to philosophic contemplation to shut out the memory of the silent on-looker at the fence. She had swung about discourteously “back to” her. “I guess,” contemplated Margaret, “my days ’ll be long enough in the land! I guess so, for I honor my mother enough to live forever! That makes me think—I guess I better go in and kiss her good-night for to-night when she won’t be at home.”
It was mid-May and school was nearly over. The long summer vacation stretched endlessly, lonesomely, ahead of Margaret. Last summer it had been so different. A summer vacation with a friend right close to you all the time, skipping with you and keeping house with you and telling all her secrets to you, is about as far away as—as China is from an Enemy ’cross the fence! Oh, hum! some vacations are so splendid and some are so un-splendid!