Margery Morris and Plain Jane

Introduction

The first book, “ Margery Morris,” was the story of a young girl in a quaint old Quaker town in New Jersey. It told of the friends she made and the fun and mishaps she had, and of the great surprise she received at the end.

The second book, “ Margery Morris, Mascot,” is the account of the winter and spring that followed the events in the first book. Margery, who longed for a career, hit upon the unassuming one of “ mascot ” and decided to bring all the happiness she could into the lives of others. Unfortunately this was not as simple as it seemed, and her well-intentioned efforts brought her embarrassment and trial. She struggled on, however, until just as she was on the point of giving way to discouragement, a final resolution to stick it out brings her success and happiness once more.

The third book, “ Margery Morris and Plain Jane,” tells of the summer Margery spends at the beautiful seashore place of Wy- 5

INTRODUCTION anoke, where she lives a wonderfully happy and healthy out-of-door life surrounded by her friends. Among these is a new friend, Jane Gale, or “ Plain Jane,” as she calls herself, who is suffering from a keen disappointment and is discouraged and sad. Margery helps her to a more normal view of life, and when the shadow of tragedy creeps near them, they both learn some great truths and a new peace and happiness.

Waiting ....

XXIII. Open Doors

Illustrations

PAGE

She Opened One of the Letters . . Frontispiece

“ I Never Knew that Anybody Could Have

Such a Good Time ” 83

But the Former Race-Horse Plunged On . 129

She Was too Tired and Unhappy to Care

What Happened ..... 222

“To Think,” She Said, “That Friday is

My Birthday” 312

Margery Morris and Plain Jane

Margery Morris and Plain Jane

Chapter I Jane

The wind blew softly in from the sea, stirring the branches of the pine-tree, stunted and bent by winter storms, and nodded the daisies blooming in the tall grass. It fluttered the blue cloak of the girl on the boulder, and played with the locks of dark hair escaping from under the edges of the red silk handkerchief bound about her head. It even took liberties with the uncompromising headgear of the five middle-aged ladies who, grouped in a semicircle, were busily engaged in sketching the pine-tree and the girl.

“ I'm so tired of posing,” sighed J ane plain- 11

MJRGERT MORRIS tively. “ I’ve sat here on this hard rock and stared at that cow tethered over there so long that when I turn my eyes and look out on the bay I can see the cow floating in the air.”

“ It has impressed itself on the retina of your eye, Jane,” explained one of the ladies learnedly.

“ You can rest after a while,” remarked another.

“ Besides, you may look anywhere you wish — except when I’m painting your eyes,” chimed in a third.

The good ladies were not at all inclined to pause in their morning’s work, especially since they had captured such a charming model and such a delightful spot wherein to paint.

Jane flushed and fixed her eyes once more on the cow. She wished wearily that when five of the dullest and most inefficient members of her art class had happened to come along the road past her cottage that morning and insisted on her posing for them under her “ lovely ” pine-tree she had been quick-witted and resolute enough to refuse. Her fatal shyness again! Overcome with embarrassment she had stood first on one foot and then on the other, stammering something inarticulate, and had finally found herself wrapped in her blue cloak with a red silk handkerchief bound round her head for a piece of “ nice color,” sitting on a hard and uncomfortable rock staring at a cow. There were so many things that she wanted to do that morning, too !

She wished that she were not too shy to tell them firmly that she was tired and was going to stop posing — for a few minutes while she rested, at any rate. For poor bashful Jane there was little pleasure in meeting her fellowbeings. And, as though she were not shy enough already there was always her unruly tongue to trip her up and cause her an agony of mortification. That dreadful tongue that would order “ keys and parrots ” for dinner, when all that Jane desired was peas and carrots, and that made her “ shoo some buys,” when she only wanted to buy some shoes, and that told guests that she was so sorry that they had come, when she was trying to express her pleasure at their arrival. If she had only been able to obtain the self-assurance possessed by some of her schoolmates, Jane would willingly have suffered martyrdom.

“ To think,” suddenly remarked one of the sketchers, waving her brush in the direction of Jane’s little cottage, “ that little house was probably once painted white, a regular little white green-shuttered, red-roofed, elm-shaded, New-England home.”

Jane forgot her shyness for the moment. “ Oh, I love the wonderful, silvery-gray the storms have faded it into,” she said breathlessly. “ I like it much better than white paint! I know the place is shamrackle — ramshackle, I mean — and down at the heel — but if it were all ship-shape and painted up, we could rent it well, and then we’d be too conscientious to stay in it, I suppose. Besides, it is artistic — just look at it now with that big bed of phlox and larkspur against its gray walls. No, indeed, no white paint for me! ”

“ Oh, I didn’t mean to say anything against your cottage,” hastily apologized the other. “ I — I meant to say wasn’t it just funny to think that it once had paint on it. Indeed — I think it’s very pretty — much more artistic this way.”

“ Keep the pose, please, Miss Gale,” ordered a gray-haired little lady behind a tall bamboo travelling easel. “ I am just painting your cap against the trunk of the pine-tree.”

Obediently, Jane screwed herself into the attitude she had held most of the morning, and let her thoughts drift off to the little cottage.

The little place, Buttercup Cottage, as it was called, had been left to Jane together with a tiny income on the death of her godmother the winter before. For years Jane and her mother and elder sister had lived in boarding-houses, and the thought of having a home had always appeared to her the most delightful thing on earth. How she envied the girls who had big, comfortable homes, and big, comfortable families, and big, comfortable incomes.

Mrs. Gale was a busy, hard- worked teacher, who added to a slender income by tutoring outside of school hours, and Jane’s elder sister, Marion, a pretty, frail girl of eighteen, was the private secretary of a busy woman doctor. Jane could remember a time when things had been different, when her father was alive and there had been a pretty house and plenty of money. Her mother had been a young woman then, gay and charming, and there were many lively and amusing people coming to the house.

Jane, remembering the pretty, merry young mother who was always going off to dinners and theatre parties in the loveliest of dresses, often wondered how her mother stood the monotonous grind of her present life.

But now, she felt, things were going to be different. They had the little cottage where Jane and her mother could spend long, restful summers, and Marion come for her two weeks’ vacation. And “ Aunt ” Jane’s little legacy would allow Jane to study at the summer art school held in the adjoining town of Winchester, and perhaps permit her to have some art lessons in the winter, instead of having to serve as a nursery governess after school hours to an obstreperous family of young children. It would rescue her mother, too, from the tutoring she found such a strain, and give Marion some of the pretty clothes and simple pleasures her young soul longed for.

Jane’s eyes sparkled as she thought of the happy summer they were going to have, and with an involuntary thrill of happiness she suddenly drew up her knees and resting her soft cheek against them, breathed a little song of thanksgiving.

“ Miss Gale! ” protested a shocked voice, “ keep the pose — please! ”

Jane hastily straightened herself out, and wished impatiently that those tiresome women would go home. There was such a lot that she wanted to do that morning! Things that Cousin Wilhelmina would be certain to get wrong. Her mother had been away ever since the close of school, tutoring the daughter of a wealthy old friend, and she would be home now in a day or two. Jane, who had been painting and refurbishing with her own deft hands the little sitting-room of the cottage, was anxious to have it entirely finished before then. If only those women hadn’t caught her!

A bell rang on a yacht anchored in the bay below. Jane twitched.

“ I’m afraid,” she said despairingly, “ that I can’t pose much longer. It’s almost noon, and I haven’t got anything yet for lunch. And the doors we steal at in the village close at one on Wednesdays.”

“ ‘ The doors you steal at,’ ” murmured a horrified voice.

Jane giggled. “ I mean,” she cried, “ the stores where we deal. They close at one on i8

Wednesdays so that the shop people can have a half-holiday. And then I have to go to the refrigerator for the mail. ,, For some reason, when she was nervous or embarrassed, Jane always spoke of post-offices, banks, elevators and all such institutions of public service as “ refrigerators ” and posted her letters, deposited money, or was shot skyward in a department store, all in a refrigerator.

The leader of the sketchers drew out her watch. “ We’ll have to hurry, if we’re going to catch that half-past twelve trolley,” she announced, “ and if we don’t get it, we won’t get any lunch.”

“ I don’t see why they can’t wait for us,” sighed the little lady who was always late.

“ That’s the worst of boarding-houses,” complained another, beginning to pack up her sketching things. “ They are so fussy about meals being on time.”

Jane caught at a swaying branch of pine above her head and pulled herself to her feet. “ Let me see what kind of a creature you have made of me,” she laughed. “ Think of having one’s portrait painted by five such geniuses.”

There seemed to have been a difference of opinion among the five as to Jane’s actual appearance. One had pictured her with an eagle beak of pronounced Roman tendencies and a small retreating chin, while to another her chin was long and aggressive below a pert and aspiring nose. While a third had boldly and originally provided her with a basin-face. In only one of the portraits was there any resemblance to the real Jane with her delicate features, and wide, dreaming, gray eyes. “ Plain Jane ” she called herself, for to Jane, and to her contemporaries, she was too fragile and too colorless to be pretty. Only those of her elders who were possessed of the seeing eye recognized the beauty that might develop under a happier and more care-free life.

The ladies having departed with many last words and kind promises to return soon to paint Jane again, she dashed into the house, threw her cloak on the chair, and pinning on a wide black hat in place of the discarded red handkerchief, ran down the narrow road that wound its way above the rocks to the elm-shaded, white-housed, old fishing village of Wyanoke. The sun shone down w r armly upon her and a fresh breeze stirred the late daisies and buttercups in the long grass beside the road. A bluebird swayed on a wild rose-bush just bursting into bloom and sang of summer joys. Below the rocks the blue waters of the bay sparkled in the sunshine, the white sailboats darted hither and thither, and an oceangoing yacht, slender and graceful, lay anchored.

With a sigh of happiness, Jane bent down to pick a cluster of fragrant wild strawberries. How perfect it all was. And what a wonderful summer they were going to have.

The clock in the village steeple struck half-past twelve, and with a gasp Jane stopped dreaming and sped on her way. The shops would be closed if she did not hurry. But as she ran, she could not keep her eyes from the bay and the great sand-dunes on the opposite shore standing dazzling white against a cloudless blue sky. The road turned abruptly at the end of the rocky promontory and led down the hill into the village. With her head turned for a last backward glance at bay and shore, J ane dashed around the corner, almost straight into the mud-guard of an automobile just rounding the turn.

With a startled scream she threw herself back, caught her heel in a tuft of grass and came down full length on her side in a cluster of daisies. There was a violent screeching of brakes and the car stopped a few feet farther on. Its driver, and the young girl with him, jumped out and ran back to her.

“ I hope you aren’t hurt,” they both cried at once.

Jane scrambled to her feet and stood gazing at a pleasant faced lad and a very pretty young girl about her own age. “ I’m not a bit hurt,” she assured them as soon as she could get her breath. “ I’m — I’m just — startled.”

“ I do hope you’re not hurt,” repeated the boy.

“ We’re ever so sorry,” chimed in the girl, pulling her hat from off her blond curls and fanning Jane violently, evidently feeling that first aid of some kind must be rendered. “ I do hope that you’re not hurt.”

“ Not a bit,” murmured Jane politely, beginning to realize that she was feeling rather shaken.

“ We were so absorbed in that view — forgot to blow my horn — ran into you . . the

boy explained in a breath.

“ I’m afraid that I ran into you — I ought to have heard you coming, but I was so absorbed in the view.”

They all laughed.

A silence fell, then for no reason they all laughed again.

Jane felt her fatal shyness stealing upon her; she ought to hurry on her way, she knew, but her feet seemed fastened to the ground for all eternity.

“ I wonder,” asked the girl, pinning her hat back on her curls, “ if you could tell us how to get to Vinehaven — and about how far it is. A box of books belonging to my grandfather was sent there by mistake — and we’re chasing after it.”

“ Yes,” echoed the lad, “ I wonder if you could tell us. I’m just here for the day and I’m not very well up on the country round about, and the directions of the old chap at the express office were pretty confusing.”

Jane flushed. “ I — I — really don’t know how to get there. It’s somewhere in that direction,” waving a vague hand toward the horizon. “ I think that it’s about ten miles, though, as the fly crows.” She stopped, and her face flushed still more crimson. “ I mean,” she corrected in a low voice, “ it’s about ten miles as — as the crow flies.”

They all laughed once more and Jane went on:

4 4 But almost anyone along the road can tell you how to get there. But perhaps — you’d better ask at the refrigerator. I mean,” she cried, 44 1 mean the post-office ! ”

Then feeling that she had succeeded in completely disgracing herself, she turned on her heel and ran down the road toward the village.

Chapter II The Letter

All the way down the hill J ane scolded herself. Why, she asked herself indignantly, must she always turn scarlet, and be flustered in that ridiculous way? Why couldn’t she be dignified and polite and self-confident like other girls? That nice boy and girl had looked so bewildered. How unconscious the girl was — and how pretty, with her blond curls tied back with a wide black ribbon. She wished Marion and her mother could have seen her. And the boy was so nice and polite ; her mother, she thought, would have said that there was strength in his square chin, and humor in his rather long upper lip and turned-up nose; while Marion would have admired his black hair and the blue eyes that seemed all the bluer for the clear tan of his skin. She wondered who the young people were and if they would 24 belong to the summer colony she had watched with so much interest and a certain wistfulness the summer before when she had paid “Aunt ” Jane a visit at Buttercup Cottage.

“ Well, I won’t get to know them, anyway — they will be too busy having a good time to notice a dull thing like me,” Jane sighed, with a vindictive jerk at the head of a tall daisy growing by the roadside. “ I’m just tired and sick of always looking on at other people having a good time. I’m just like a little darky boy plastering his nose against the window of a candy shop. I wonder how it seems to be pretty and popular, and to have a good time. I wonder how it feels to look like that girl.”

In a moment or two, Jane forgot all thoughts about being pretty or not being pretty in the never failing pleasure of the quaint village street with its spreading elms and old houses, painted white and set in green dooryards. Again she thanked the memory of the kind godmother who had given her the little home by the sea.

Her purchases over, she turned another corner and stopped before the village post-office. She always rather dreaded the sorting of the noon mail, for that was the social hour of the village when the summer people and the “ natives ” flocked to the little building to chatter and gossip and make engagements for the rest of the day. Jane never felt quite so alone and out of place as when she was among that gay crowd. Everyone seemed to know everybody else, and she to know scarcely anyone beyond a few of the old ladies who had been acquaintances of her godmother’s, a fisherman or two, and the woman who maltreated the clothes under the name of washing them.

To-day almost everyone had gone, and there were only a few stragglers left, absorbed in the letters they were reading.

Jane hurried forward to the window. “Any mail for me, Mrs. Goodwin? ”

The postmistress hesitated. “ What’s yer name? ” she demanded.

“ Jane Gale,” answered Jane briefly. It was rather a sore point with her that Mrs. Goodwin never could remember her name. She always seemed to know the names of all the other cottagers.

Mrs. Goodwin reached behind a row of pigeonholes and after slowly thumbing over a pile of mail, agonizing to eager Jane, she handed over two letters and a paper.

Once more in the green, sun-flecked street, Jane opened one of the letters, and as she walked slowly along skimmed its pages.

“ Dearest Janeykins,” it began, “ I do hope you are well and being a good girl.” Jane smiled at this, for never did her mother commence a letter to her without it. “And that you are not making Cousin Willy too much trouble. Be certain to order the things you and she like — and don’t worry about its being extravagant. It seems hard to realize that I’ll be with you in a few days, and that my stay here is almost over. It has been a wonderful change for me, and I feel like another person. Alice is a dear child, and no trouble at all to teach. I feel certain that with the coaching she’s had she will be able to enter Miss Hylan’s next fall.”

Jane stood still, and reading carefully the next few lines, noted with satisfaction that her mother seemed in better health and spirits than she had been for a long time. Then skipping an account of several long automobile rides and a dinner with some old friends, she put the letter in her pocket and went on her homeward way.

At the end of the village where the road turned and climbed up toward the top of the hill, stood a long, low, white stucco cottage with verandas and brick terraces running out to the very rocks themselves, and a large garden, gay with old-fashioned flowers, sweetwilliams and columbines, pansies and bleedingheart, and now Damask roses and brilliant phlox just coming into bloom, between the house and the street. It had been closed during the beginning of the season, for its artist owner was abroad, but Jane had noticed several days before that someone was living there. “ It’s too ducky a house,” she had said to Cousin Willy, “ to be all blind and sad behind closed shutters. It ought to have somebody young and pretty living there to make it gay.”

As J ane neared it, a handsome old man and two ladies, evidently mother and daughter, came to the gate and stood there chatting. They seemed very gay and happy, pleased with themselves and the world. She noted with a wistful pang their care-free expression. “ That might be mother and Marion,” she thought.

“ That girl is just about Marion’s age. I wish that Marion looked as rosy and strong as she does. But it’s wonderful,” with a sigh of contentment, “ to think that mother is going to be here all summer, and that she can get really rested and built up.”

The little group dissolved ; the old gentleman turned back to the house, and the others moved off toward the cluster of handsome villas known as Perkins Point, the girl calling back as she went, “ Don’t you think, Mr. Morris, that Margery and I might be bridesmaids? ”

Her mother laughed and, pulling at her sleeve, urged her onward.

Idly wondering who was to be married and thinking how delightful it must be to have a wide circle of friends and go to weddings and parties, Jane continued on her way. She had only been to two weddings in all her quiet life, but she considered them the most delightful of functions and longed to go to more.

“ I wonder who those people are,” she thought with a backward glance at the cottage. “ That man is handsome and distinguished enough to be someone — but I do wish he were young and pretty to go with his house.”

3 °

At the top of the rocks Jane sat down on a boulder beside the road to finish her mother’s letter. “When I come home, Janey dear, I have a strange piece of news to tell you. I do hope that for my sake you will take it bravely, and that you will realize how much happiness it will bring into our lives. And indeed, dear, my joy is not all selfish. I cannot but feel that it will make life take a turn for you and Marion and be cheerful now. My girls have been so brave and patient. And remember, dear, always, how much I love you.”

Jane read over the letter slowly and carefully, and then read it again. “ What does it mean? ” she thought with a clutch at her heart. “ Oh, it’s all right — of course, it’s all right,” she reassured herself. “ Mother said it would bring happiness.”

She sat staring at the distant sand-dunes. “ I wonder what it can be,” she repeated. “ Can mother have obtained a new position — somewhere that will take her away from us? Well, anyway,” she comforted herself, “ it’s all right, mother said so. She said that things are going to take a turn and be cheerful. That proves that things are all right. And anyway, even if she does have to go away to some other school, she’ll be here all summer.”

She rose slowly and went on her way. The sun still shone down warmly, the bay still sparkled, and the wind still nodded the wild rose-bushes; she found another wild strawberry and ate it; but her mood had changed. To her volatile nature the berries had lost their savor, the sun was glaring, and the sea wind brought with it a threat of rain or fog; the bay seemed uninteresting.

“ I do wish that mother hadn’t said ‘ take it bravely,’ ” she thought at last, impatient with her own depression. “ That’s what is making me feel sad. Besides,” she consulted her letter again, “ she says life will ‘ take a turn and be cheerful.’ Perhaps if she does go away she’ll have a very much larger salary.”

She tucked her packages tighter under her arms and ran across the grass to the side door of Buttercup Cottage, singing to herself, “ take a turn and be cheerful, be cheerful, be cheerful.”

In the charming dining-room with its quaint little old-fashioned fireplace, and low windows, Jane found a gray -haired little woman, whose

3 2

primness seemed incongruous with her rosy plumpness, perched on the top of a tall stepladder. “ Oh, Cousin Willy/' she cried, suddenly resolving to say nothing about her mother's letter, “ here are the things for luncheon — and I’m almost starved. What are you doing? ” she added with a laugh.

Cousin Willy scrambled down with remarkable agility considering her weight and gray hairs. “ Why, you see, Jane,” she explained, “ I bought this cretonne at a bargain one day — not that I wanted it — but it was so cheap. And I thought that I had better get it, for you never know — and it just occurred to me it might make nice hangings for the windows.”

Jane looked at the cretonne, her quick artistic sense rebelling at its glaring color in her cool little green and white dining-room, but she only said tactfully, “ Well, we can try the curtains and then if we don’t like them after a day or two, we can take them down.”

Still humming her little song, “ be cheerful, be cheerful, take a turn and be cheerful,” Jane went into the kitchen and began to prepare luncheon. After the years of boarding-houses, J ane delighted in the little kitchen with its windows hung with honeysuckle and its little back porch with a view of the sea. She took a housewifely pride in the shining pots and pans and in the shelf of little boxes labeled cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and sage, and found a certain little book, “ Cooking for Two,” more soul-satisfying than the most touching novel. She almost, but not quite, enjoyed the dishwashing. “ It’s lovely up until after the cups are washed,” she would declare, dipping the glasses delicately into the hot, soapy water, “ and it’s fine after it’s all over and you’re putting the nice clean dishes away, but there’s an unpleasant interval between.”

“ There’s always an unpleasant interval in everything,” Cousin Willy would philosophize, and deciding that the flowers needed watering, or cutting, or looking at, would escape out of the kitchen.

After luncheon was over, Jane took a handful of bread-crumbs and went out on the front portico, with its graceful hood and narrow high benches facing each other, the skilful work of some long-dead New England builder. A little wren who had built her nest in the top of one of the portico posts year after year regarded Jane’s advent as an insult and never failed to scold at her in the most vigorous language known to birddom.

“ To hear you squeaking and shrieking, Jennie-wren,” Jane laughed to-day, looking at the tiny brown thing perched on the back of one of the benches, every feather ruffled and little mouth wide open with indignation, “ no one would ever imagine that you can sing sweetly when you wish to.”

Idly watching the bird, Jane sat down on the doorstep, her hands folded in her lap. Luncheon and the cool quiet of the little old cottage had soothed her depressed spirit. An automobile passed and looking up, she caught sight of the boy and girl she had met earlier in the morning. The girl recognizing her, nodded and waved, and the boy smiled with a flash of white teeth.

“ Who are they, Jane? ” asked her cousin behind her.

“ I don’t know — I saw them in the village this morning — they almost ran over me — or I almost ran over them — I don’t know which. The girl is very pretty — the loveliest blond hair, and the boy has the blackest hair and the bluest eyes and brownest skin I ever saw. He’d match your new hat beautifully, Cousin Willy,” she added teasingly. Cousin Willy’s hats were a constant amusement to Jane.

“ Did you say they ran over you, or almost did? ”

“ Yes.” Jane flushed, and looked embarrassed. She had remembered suddenly how she had stammered and stuttered and the absurd things she had said. No wonder, she thought painfully, that the boy had smiled when he saw her.