‘Why,’ said another, ‘Some there are who tell
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell
The luckless Pots he marr’d in making—Pish!
He’s a Good Fellow, and ’twill all be well.’”
“That expresses what I want to say better than I ever could,” said Mary Louise. “I can’t blame anybody very much because he or she may have been marred in the making.”
“Right dangerous doctrine for us to practice in regard to ourselves,” said Josie. “It’s all right to feel that way about the other fellow, but, if we get to feeling that way about ourselves and excusing our every fault because we were made that way, we’d be a mighty lopsided bunch. For my part, I’d rather think of myself as wet clay—never dried and baked—always wet and pliable, and with it my own job to mould myself into some kind of useful and even beautiful shape. I don’t want to blame a soul but myself for my shortcomings.” She put a book back in place with a vigorous push.
Mary Louise had come to the Higgledy Piggledy Shop to try to throw off some of the misery and gloom she felt enveloping her. She longed to tell Josie about her predicament, but Elizabeth Wright was present and Irene had just come gliding in her wheel chair from the dumb waiter, an arrangement Danny had perfected so that the lame girl could come to the shop whenever she wanted to and not be dependent on anyone to be carried up stairs. Entering from the rear of the building, she merely wheeled herself into the large dumb waiter and, with a few pulls of the rope, landed on the second floor.
Mary Louise shrank from discussing her trouble concerning her grandfather with Irene because of the fact of her living next door and of Uncle Peter Conant’s being such a friend of Grandpa Jim. The poor girl had become very sensitive and, because of Colonel Hathaway’s feeling against Danny, feared perhaps his friends were sharing that feeling. She was sure her grandfather quite freely expressed his opinion of Danny to anyone who would listen to him. That in itself was very unlike Grandpa Jim, who had always been reticent about his affairs even with an old and tried friend like Mr. Peter Conant.
Josie has such a level head. Perhaps she could suggest something to do. At least, it would be a relief to talk it over with her. It seemed strange and wrong for anything to have come into her life that she could not discuss with Danny, but she felt that it would be rank disloyalty to poor Grandpa Jim if she mentioned the trouble to him. It was plain to see that the young man was puzzled and hurt by the Colonel’s treatment of him and now was becoming irritated and impatient. It seemed absurd to accuse Colonel Hathaway of being not quite himself since the stand he had taken in regard to his grandson-in-law was the only evidence of it. He attended to his affairs as usual, looking after his investments with punctilious care, clipping coupons, seeing that his property was kept up with all repairs necessary, and reinvesting his money as bonds matured. He had even made quite an extensive sale of real estate, selling at a large profit and investing the money to great advantage, so he declared, in some mines. This particular investment had caused Mary Louise more sorrow than she had known before in all her life. It seemed to the girl that even the death of her mother had not brought such intense suffering.
The Colonel had come home after selling a large number of bonds, loudly proclaiming, “I’ll tie it up, too, so that rascal can’t get his clutches on it. The worthless fellow!”