The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware by Annie Fellows Johnston

An hundred times that summer, Jack made the story of Aldebaran his own. He had his rare, exalted moments, when all things seemed possible; when despite his helpless body his spirit walked erect, and faced his future for the time undaunted. He had his daily struggle with the host of hurts which cut him to the quick, the reminders of his thwarted hopes and foiled ambitions. Then, too, there were times when the only way he could keep up his courage was to repeat grimly through set teeth, "Tis only one hour at a time that I am called on to endure. By the bloodstone that is my birthright, I'll keep my oath until the going down of one more sun." Before the summer was over it came to pass that more than one soul, given fresh courage by his brave example, looked upon him as the villagers had upon Aldebaran: "A poor, maimed creature in his outward seeming, and yet so blithely does he bear his lot it seems a kingly spirit dwells among us."

Mary's letters to Joyce began to take on a cheerful tone that was vastly encouraging to the toiler in the studio.

"We have revised Emerson," she wrote one July morning. "It is fully as true to say, 'If one can make a better garden, show a bigger circus or put up a more cheerful front to Fate than his neighbours, though he build his house in Lone-Rock, the world will make a beaten track to his door.' The path it has made to ours is a wide one. The boys swarm here all hours of the day, to Norman's delight, the summer campers make our garden the Mecca of their morning pilgrimages, and the cheerful front we put up to Fate seems to be the magnet that draws them back again in the afternoons.

"Really, our shady front porch reminds me sometimes of a popular Summer Resort piazza, it is so gay and chatty. The ladies of the camp come over nearly every day and bring their sewing and fancy work, and Huldah and I serve tea. It would do you good to see how mamma enjoys Mrs. Levering and Mrs. Seldon. They're like the friends she used to have back in Plainsville, and this is the first really good social time she has had since we left there.

"Professor Levering and Professor Seldon seem to find Jack so congenial. They talk to him by the hour on the scientific subjects he loves. It is a Godsend to him to have such a diversion. Mrs. Levering said to me this morning that he is a daily wonder to them all, and a rebuke as well. 'We think _we_ have troubles,' she said, 'until we come over here. Then you make them seem so insignificant that we are ashamed to label them troubles. Oh, you Wares; I never saw such a family! You fairly radiate cheerfulness. I wish you'd tell me how you do it.'

"I told her I supposed it was because we were all such copy-cats. First we imitated the old Vicar of Wakefield so many years that it gave us a cheerful bent of mind, and lately we'd taken the story of Aldebaran to heart and were imitating him and the other Jester. She said, 'Commend me to copy-cats. I'm glad I discovered the species.'

"I am telling you all this in order that you may see that we have managed to keep inflexible to the extent of impressing our neighbours, at least, and there is no need for you to worry about us any more. I hope you will accept Eugenia's invitation and spend that two weeks at the sea-shore in the idlest, most care-free way you can think of, and not give one anxious thought to us. True, our day of great things is over. We no longer lay large plans, and sweep the heavens with a telescope, looking for pleasure on a large scale, among the stars. But it is wonderful how many little things we find now that we used to let slip unheeded, since we've gone to looking for them with a microscope."

Two days later another letter was sent post-haste to Joyce, written in a hurried scrawl with a pencil, clearly showing Mary's agitation.

"Something exciting has happened at last! The Leverings brought a friend to call this afternoon, who has just arrived in Lone-Rock to spend the rest of vacation with them; a grumpy, middle-aged, absent-minded, old professor from the East, who seemed rather bored with us at first. But when he was taken out to the side-show in the 'Zoo,' he waked up in a hurry. His very spectacles gleamed and his gray whiskers bristled with interest when he saw my assortment of pressed wild-flowers from the desert, and the collection of butterflies and trap-door spiders and other insects in my 'Buggery,' as Norman calls it. When I showed him all the data I had collected from text-books and encyclopaedias about the insect and plant life of the desert, and all the notes I had made myself from my own observations, he actually whistled with surprise. He sat and fired questions at me like a Gatling gun for nearly an hour, winding up by asking me if I had any idea what a valuable collection I had made, and if I would be willing to part with it.

"Then it came out that he is a noted naturalist who is preparing a set of books on insects and their relation to plant life, and is spending a year in the West on purpose to study the varieties here. Some of my specimens are so rare he has not come across them before, and he said my notes would save him weeks of time -- in fact, would be like a blazed trail through a wilderness, showing him where to go to verify my observations without loss of time.

"Of course, when it comes to the pinch, I _don't_ want to part with my beautiful collection of specimens. It means a great deal to me; I was over four years making it. But it is too great an opportunity to let pass. He is to name the price to-morrow after he has made a careful estimate, so I don't know how much he will offer, but Mrs. Levering says it is sure to be far more than an inexperienced teacher or stenographer could earn in a whole summer.