And there was "Mary, Mary, quite contrary."
Why, of course! there were plenty of wonderful Marys. Notwithstanding, I could not altogether shake off the feeling of regret that came to me with the discovery that the young lady over the way was called Mary.
Had her name been Marguerite, or Dorothea, Millicent or even Rosemary, I would have been contented and would have considered the name a fitting one,—but to be common-or-garden Mary!
Oh, well!—what mattered it anyway? The name did not detract from the attractiveness of her long, wavy, golden hair, nor did it change the colour or lessen the transparency of her eyes. It did not interfere with her deft fingers as they travelled so artistically over the keyboard of her piano; although I kept wishing, in a half-wishful way, that it could have changed her tantalising and exasperating demeanour toward me.
From the beginning, we had played antagonists, and from the beginning this playing antagonists had been distasteful to me.
What was it in me? I wondered,—what was it in her that caused the mental ferment? I had not the slightest notion, unless it were a resentfulness in me at being taken only for what I, myself, had chosen to become,—store-clerk in an out-of-the-way settlement; or an annoyance in her because one of my station should place himself on terms of social equality with every person he happened to meet.
I was George Bremner to her. True! Then,—she was merely Mary Grant to me. Mary Grant she was and Mary Grant she would doubtless remain, until,—until somebody changed it to probably—Mary-something-worse.
As I day-dreamed, I felt the air about me more chilly than usual.
All the previous night, the sea had been running into the Bay choppy and white-tipped, but now it was as level as the face of a mirror, although everywhere on the surface of the water loose driftwood floated.
I let myself go, down the smooth shelving rock upon which I had been lying. I dropped noiselessly far down into the deep water. I came up and struck out for home,—all my previous lassitude gone from me.