"We're going home now, and I think you'd better say 'Good-night' to Mr. Tom Axworthy and come with us."
After waiting two hours and a half for standing room on a suburban train, we reached the hotel at an early hour on July the 5th, dusty, smoke-stained, and powder-scented, like veterans from a field of battle.
That was not by any means the last of Mr. Tom Axworthy. During the remainder of our stay in Chicago it was he quite as frequently as his more mature and eligible cousin who exchanged a lingering farewell with Mary at the ladies' entrance to our hotel, and a great fear arose in the heart of Belle that the young woman was fooling away her time with this impecunious boy, instead of making the most of her opportunities to come to a satisfactory understanding with his cousin. Every morning did she gaze pathetically into my face, saying:
"I do hope Axworthy will propose to-day!" and once she added:
"I cannot face another winter in the same house with that girl and your mother. Grandma has taken it into her head that Mary is my pet lamb, the idol of my heart, for whom she, and you too, have been set aside. She doesn't see that it worries me half to death to have Mary tagging round after me the whole time, and overrunning the house with her beaux. Neither of our own girls is old enough yet, thank goodness, to consider herself my companion and equal, to wear my gloves, my boots, my best hairpins, and to use my favorite perfume; to come and plant herself down beside me whenever I'm talking confidentially to anyone, to be determined to have her finger into every pie, to know what I'm reading or thinking about. She'll insist on knowing my dreams next!"
"Perhaps you mesmerize her."
"If I did, I'd make her keep away from me! I could stand it all better if I thought she really cared a straw for me, but I have the feeling that she regards me merely as a basis for supplies."
"We can only trust, then, that the basis may be speedily transferred to Axworthy!"
On our return from the World's Fair, the family stopped off at Interlaken, but I had to go on into town to the Echo office. To my surprise, Mary joined me at my solitary dinner at the "House of the Seven Gables," where Margaret, as usual, was in charge, and she remained there for the rest of the week.
"Where's Mary?" was Belle's greeting, when I joined her on Saturday.