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Today we are reading the first few chapters of the book Surprise House by Abbie Farwell Brown, published in 1917 Brown was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the first of two daughters of Benjamin F. Brown, a descendant of Isaac Allerton, and Clara Neal Brown, who contributed to The Youth's Companion. Her sister Ethel became an author and illustrator under the name Ann Underhill. Her family, for ten generations, had only resided in New England, and Brown herself spent her entire life in her family's Beacon Hill home

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SURPRISE HOUSE

CHAPTER One

THE HOUSE

On the main street of Crowfield stood a little old red house, with a gabled roof, a pillared porch, and a quaint garden. For many weeks it had been quite empty, the shutters closed and the doors locked; ever since the death of Miss Nan Corliss, the old lady who had lived there for years and years.

It began to have the lonesome look which a house has when the heart has gone out of it and nobody puts a new heart in. The garden was growing sad and careless. The flowers drooped and pouted, and leaned peevishly against one another. Only the weeds seemed glad,—as undisturbed weeds do,—and made the most of their holiday to grow tall and impertinent and to crowd their more sensitive neighbors out of their very beds.

But one September day something happened to the old house. A lady and gentleman, a big girl and a little boy, came walking over the slate stones between the rows of sulky flowers. The gentleman, who was tall and thin and pale, opened the front door with a key bearing a huge tag, and cried:—

“Good-day, Crowfield! Welcome your new friends to their new home. We greet you kindly, old house. Be good to us!”

“What a dear house!” said the lady, as they entered the front hall. “I know I am going to like it. This paneled woodwork is beautiful.”

“Open the windows, John, so that we can see what we are about,” said Dr. Corliss.

John shoved up the dusty windows and pushed out the strange little wooden shutters, and a flood of September sunshine poured into the old house, chasing away the shadows. It was just as if the house took a long breath and woke up from its nap.

“What a funny place to live in!” cried Mary. “It’s like a museum.”

“Whew!” whistled John. “I bet we’ll have fun here.”

The hallway in which they stood did, indeed, seem rather like the entrance to a museum, as Mary Corliss said. On the white paneled walls which Mrs. Corliss admired were hanging all sorts of strange things: huge shells, and ships in glass cases, stuffed fishes, weapons, and china-ware. On a shelf between the windows stood a row of china cats, blue, red, green, and yellow, grinning mischievously at the family who confronted them. On the floor were rugs of bright colors, and odd chairs and tables sprawled about like quadrupeds ready to run.

“Gee!” whispered John Corliss, “don’t they look as if they were just ready to bark and mew and wow at us? Do you suppose it’s welcome or unwelcome, Daddy?”

“Oh, welcome, of course!” said Dr. Corliss. “I dare say they remember me, at least, though it’s thirty years since I was in this house. Thirty years! Just think of it!”

They were in the parlor now, which had been Miss Corliss’s “best room.” And this was even stranger than the hallway had been. It was crowded with all sorts of collections in cabinets, trophies on the walls, pictures, and ornaments.

Dr. Corliss looked around with a chuckle. “Hello!” he cried. “Here are a lot of the old relics I remember so well seeing when I was a boy, visiting Aunt Nan in the summer-time. Yes, there’s the old matchlock over the door; and here’s the fire-bucket, and the picture of George Washington’s family. I expect Aunt Nan didn’t change anything here in all the thirty years since she let any of her relatives come to see her. Yes, there’s the wax fruit in the glass jar—just as toothsome as ever! There’s the shell picture she made when she was a girl. My! How well I remember everything!”

They moved from room to room of the old house, flinging open the blinds and letting fresh air and sunshine in upon the strange furniture and decorations. Mrs. Corliss looked about with increasing bewilderment. How was she ever to make this strange place look like their home? Aunt Nan and her strange ways seemed stamped upon everything.

“It’s a funny collection of things, Owen!” she laughed to her husband. “All this furniture is mine, I suppose, according to Aunt Nan’s will. But I am glad we have some things of our own to bring and make it seem more like a truly home. Otherwise I should feel, as Mary says, as if we were living in a kind of museum.”

“We can change it as much as we like, by and by,” her husband reassured her.

“What a funny old lady Great-Aunt Nan must have been, Daddy!” said John, who had been examining a hooked rug representing a blue cat chasing a green mouse. “Did she make this, do you think?”

“Oh, yes,” said Dr. Corliss. “I remember seeing her working at it. She hooked all these rugs. It was one of her favorite amusements. She was strange enough, I believe. I can remember some of the weird things she used to do when I was a lad. She used to put on a man’s coat and hat and shovel coal or snow like any laborer. She was always playing tricks on somebody, or making up a game about what she happened to be doing. We must expect surprises and mysteries about the house as we come to live here. It wouldn’t be Aunt Nan’s house without them.—Hello!”

John had sat down on a little three-legged stool in the corner; and suddenly he went bump! on the floor. The legs of the stool had spread as if of their own accord and let him down.

“That was one of Aunt Nan’s jokes, I remember!” laughed Dr. Corliss. “Oh, yes! I got caught myself once in the same way when I was a boy.”

“Tell about it, Father,” said Mary.

“Well; I was about your age, John,—about ten; and I was terribly bashful. One day when I was visiting Aunt Nan the minister came to call. And though I tried to escape out of the back door, Aunt Nan spied me and made me come in to shake hands. As soon as I could I sidled away into a corner, hoping he would forget about me.

“This innocent little stool stood there by the stuffed bird cabinet, just as it does now, and I sat down on it very quietly. Then bump! I went on to the floor, just as John did. Only I was not so lucky. I lost my balance and kicked my heels up almost in the minister’s face. I can tell you I was mortified! And Aunt Nan laughed. But the minister was very nice about it, I will say. I remember he only smiled kindly and said, ‘A little weak in the legs,—eh, John? I’m glad my stool in church isn’t like that, Miss Corliss. I’d never trust you to provide me with furniture,—eh, what?’”

“I don’t think that was a bit funny joke,” spluttered John, who had got to his feet looking very red.

“Neither do I,” said his mother. “I hate practical jokes. I hope we shan’t meet any more of this sort.”

“You never can tell!” Dr. Corliss chuckled reminiscently.

“What a horrid mirror!” exclaimed Mary, peering into the glass of a fine gilt frame. “See! It makes me look as broad as I am long, and ugly as a hippopotamus. The idea of putting this in the parlor!”

“Probably she meant that to keep her guests from growing conceited,” suggested Dr. Corliss with a grin. “But we shall not need to have it here if we don’t like it. There’s plenty of room in the attic, if I remember rightly.”

“Yes, we shall have to change a great many things,” said Mrs. Corliss, who had been moving about the room all by herself. “What do you suppose is in that pretty carved box on the mantel?”

“It’s yours, Mother. Why don’t you open it?” said John eagerly.

Mrs. Corliss lifted the cover and started back with a scream. For out sprang what looked like a real snake, straight into her face.

“Oh! Is it alive?” cried Mary, shuddering.

But John had picked up the Japanese paper snake and was dangling it merrily to reassure his mother. “I’ve seen those before,” he grinned. “The boys had them at school once.”

“Come, come!” frowned Dr. Corliss. “That was really too bad of Aunt Nan. She knew that almost everybody hates snakes, though she didn’t mind them herself. I’ve often seen her put a live one in her pocket and bring it home to look at.”

“Ugh!” shuddered Mrs. Corliss. “I hope they don’t linger about anywhere. I see I shall have to clean the whole house thoroughly from top to bottom. And if I find any more of these jokes—!” Mrs. Corliss nodded her head vigorously, implying bad luck to any snakes that might be playing hide-and-seek in house or garden.

Secretly John thought all this was great fun, and he dashed ahead of the rest of the family on their tour of the house, hoping to find still other proofs of Aunt Nan’s special kind of humor. But to the relief of Mary and her mother the rest of their first exploring expedition was uneventful.

They visited dining-room and kitchen and pantry, and the room that was to be Dr. Corliss’s study. Then they climbed the stairs to the bedroom floor, where there were three pretty little chambers. They took a peep into the attic; but even there, in the crowded shadows and cobwebs, nothing mysterious happened. It was a nice old house where the family felt that they were going to be very happy and contented.

Down the stairs they came once more, to the door of the ell which they had not yet visited. It was a brown wooden door with a glass knob.

“Well, here is your domain, Mary!” said Dr. Corliss, pausing and pointing to the door with a smile. “This is your library, my daughter. Have you the key ready?”

Yes, indeed, Mary had the key ready; a great key tagged carefully,—as all the other keys of Aunt Nan’s property had been,—this one bearing the legend: “LIBRARY. Property of Mary Corliss.”

“Here is the key, Father,” said Mary, stepping up proudly. “Let me put it in myself. Oh, I hope there are no horrid jokes in here!” And she hesitated a moment before fitting the key in the lock of her library—her very own library!

________________________________________

CHAPTER two

THE LIBRARY

ACCORDING to the will left by that eccentric old lady, Miss Nan Corliss, her nephew, Dr. Corliss,—whom she had not seen for thirty years,—was to receive the old house at Crowfield. His wife inherited all the furniture of the old house, except what was in the library. John Corliss, the only grandnephew, was to have two thousand dollars to send him to college when he should be old enough to go. And to Mary, the unknown grandniece whom she had never seen, Aunt Nan had declared should belong “my library room at Crowfield, with everything therein remaining.”

Mary was now going to see what her library was like, and what therein remained. She drew a long breath, turned the key, pushed open the door, and peered cautiously into the room, half expecting something to jump out at her. But nothing of the sort happened. John pushed her in impatiently, and they all followed, eager, as John said, to see “what sister had drawn.” Dr. Corliss himself had never been inside this room, Aunt Nan’s most sacred corner.

What they saw was a plain, square room, with shelves from floor to ceiling packed tightly with rows of solemn-looking books. In one corner stood a tall clock, over the top of which perched a stuffed crow, black and stern. In the center of the room was a table-desk, with papers scattered about, just as Aunt Nan had left it weeks before. On the mantel above the fireplace was a bust of Shakespeare and some smaller ornaments, with an old tin lantern. Above the Shakespeare hung a portrait of a lady with gray curls, in an old-fashioned dress, holding a book in her hand. The other hand was laid upon her breast with the forefinger extended as if pointing.

“Hello!” said Dr. Corliss when he spied the portrait, “this is Aunt Nan herself as she looked when I last saw her; and a very good likeness it is.”

“She looks like a witch!” said John. “See what funny eyes she has!”

“Sush! John! You mustn’t talk like that about your great-aunt,” corrected his mother. “She has been very good to us all. You must at least be respectful.”

“She was eccentric, certainly,” said Dr. Corliss. “But she meant to be kind, I am sure. I never knew why she refused to see any of her family, all of a sudden—some whim, I suppose. She came to be a sort of hermitess after a while. She loved her books more than anything in the world. It meant a great deal that she wanted you to have them, Mary.”

“I wish she had left me two thousand dollars!” said Mary, pouting. “These old books don’t look very interesting. I want to go to college more than John does. But I don’t suppose I ever can, now.”

“Books are rather useful, whether one goes to college or not,” her father reminded her. “She needn’t have left you anything, Mary. She never even saw you—or John either, for that matter. She hadn’t seen me since I was married. I take it very kindly of her to have remembered us so generously. I thought her pet hospital would receive everything.”

“What do you suppose became of her jewelry, Owen?” asked Mrs. Corliss in an undertone. “I thought she might leave that to Mary, the only girl in the family. But there was no mention of it in her will.”

“She must have sold it for the benefit of her hospital. She was very generous to that charity,” said Dr. Corliss.

Mary and John had been poking about the library to see if they could find anything “strange.” But it all seemed disappointingly matter-of-fact. They stopped in front of the tall clock which had not been wound up for weeks.

“We’ll have to start the clock, Father,” said Mary. “The old crow looks as if he expected us to.”

“The key is probably inside the clock case,” said Dr. Corliss, opening the door.

Sure enough, there was the key hanging on a peg. And tied to it was the usual tag. But instead of saying “Clock Key,” as one would have expected, this tag bore these mysterious words in the handwriting which Mary knew was Aunt Nan’s: “Look under the raven’s wing.”

“Now, what in the world does that mean?” asked Mary, staring about the room. “What did she mean by ‘the raven,’ do you suppose?”

“I guess she means the old crow up there,” cried John, pointing at the stuffed bird over the clock.

“Do you suppose she meant that, Father?” asked Mary again, looking rather ruefully at the ominous crow.

“Maybe she meant that,” said her father, sitting down in a library chair to await what would happen. “But I believe this is another of Aunt Nan’s little jokes. It sounds so to me.”

“Pooh! It’s just an old April Fool, I bet!” jeered John.

Mary still stared at what Aunt Nan called “the raven,” and wondered. “Under which wing am I to look?” she thought. Finally she gathered courage to reach up her hand toward the right wing, very cautiously. She half expected that the creature might come alive and nip her. But nothing happened. There was nothing under the right wing but moth-eaten feathers, some of which came off in Mary’s fingers.

“I’ll try the other wing,” said Mary to herself. She poked her fingers under the old bird’s left wing. Yes! There was something there. Something dangled by a hidden string from the wing-bone of Aunt Nan’s raven. Mary pulled, and presently something came away. In her hand she held a little gold watch and chain. On the case was engraved the letter C, which was of course as truly Mary’s initial as it had been Aunt Nan Corliss’s.

“Why, it is Aunt Nan’s watch, sure enough!” said Dr. Corliss, beaming. “Well, Mary! I declare, that is something worth while. You needed a watch, my dear. But I don’t know when I could ever have bought a gold one for you. This is a beauty.”

“It’s a bird of a watch!” piped John, wagging his head at the crow.

“I like it better than wriggly snakes,” said Mrs. Corliss, smiling.

“Oh, how good Aunt Nan was to leave it here for me!” said Mary. “I am beginning to like Aunt Nan, in spite of her eccentricities.”

“I like this kind of joke she plays on you,” said John enviously. “I wish she’d play one like that on me, too. I say, Mary, do you suppose there are any more secrets hidden in your old library? Let’s look now.”

“I wonder!” said Mary, looking curiously about the dingy room. “But I don’t want to look any further now. I am satisfied. Oh, Mumsie! Just look!” Mary put the chain of the new watch around her neck, tucked the little chronometer into her belt, and trotted away to see the effect in the crooked old mirror of the parlor.

John wanted to take down the crow and examine him further.

“Come along, John,” said his father, pushing the little brother toward the door. “This is Mary’s room, you know. We aren’t ever to poke around here without her leave, mind you.”

“No,” said John reluctantly. “But I do wish—!” And he cast a longing glance back over his shoulder as his father shut the door on Mary’s mysterious library.

________________________________________

CHAPTER three

A VISITOR

THE very next day Dr. Corliss shut himself up in his new study while Mrs. Corliss and Mary set to work to make the old house as fresh as new. They brushed up the dust and cobwebs and scrubbed and polished everything until it shone. They dragged many ugly old things off into the attic, and pushed others back into the corners until there should be time to decide what had best be done with them. Meanwhile, John was helping to tidy up the little garden, snipping off dead leaves, cheering up the flowers, and punishing the greedy weeds.

The whistles of Crowfield factories shrieked noon before they all stopped to take breath. Then Mrs. Corliss gasped and said:—

“Oh, Mary! I forgot all about luncheon! What are we going to feed your poor father with, I wonder, to say nothing of our hungry selves?”

Just at this moment John came running into the house with a very dirty face. “There’s some one coming down the street,” he called upstairs; “I think she’s coming in here.” He peeped out of the parlor window discreetly. “Yes, she’s opening the gate now.”

“Let Mary open the door when she rings,” warned his mother. “It will be the first time our doorbell rings for a visitor—quite an event, Mary! I am sure John’s face is dirty.”

“I’m not very tidy myself,” said Mary, taking off her apron and the dusting-cap which covered her curls, and rolling down her sleeves.

The latch of the little garden gate clicked while they were speaking, and looking out of the upstairs hall window Mary saw a girl of about her own age, thirteen or fourteen, coming up the path. She wore a pretty blue sailor suit and a broad hat, and her hair hung in two long flaxen braids down her back. Mary wore her own brown curls tied back with a ribbon. On her arm the visitor carried a large covered basket.

“It’s one of the neighbors, I suppose,” said Mrs. Corliss, attempting a hasty toilet. “Go to the door, Mary, as soon as she rings, and ask her to come in. Even if we are not settled yet, it is not too soon to be hospitable.”

Mary listened eagerly for the bell. Their first caller in Crowfield looked like a very nice little person. Perhaps she was going to be Mary’s friend.

But the bell did not ring. Instead, Mary presently heard a little click; and then a voice in the hall below called, apparently through the keyhole of the closed door,—“Not at home.”

There was a pause, and again,—“Not at home.” A third time the tired, monotonous voice declared untruthfully, “Not at home.” Then there was silence.

“John!” cried Mary, horrified. For she thought her brother was playing some naughty trick. What did he mean by such treatment of their first caller? Mary ran down the stairs two steps at a time, and there she found John in the hall, staring with wide eyes at the front door.

“What made you—?” began Mary.

“I didn’t!” protested John. “It was—Something, I don’t know What, that spoke. When she pushed the bell-button it didn’t ring, but it made that. And now I guess she’s gone off mad!”

“Oh, John!” Mary threw open the door and ran to the porch. Sure enough, the visitor was retreating slowly down the path. She turned, however, when she heard Mary open the door, and hesitated, looking rather reproachful. She was very pretty, with red cheeks and bright brown eyes.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” said Mary. “You didn’t ring, did you?”

“Yes, I did,” said the girl, looking puzzled. “But I thought no one was at home. Somebody said so.” Her eyes twinkled.

Mary liked the twinkle in her eyes.

“I don’t understand it!” said Mary, wrinkling her forehead in puzzlement. Then an idea flashed into her head, and she showed her teeth in a broad smile. “Oh, it must have been one of Aunt Nan’s patent jokes.”

The girl gave an answering smile. “You mean Miss Corliss?” she suggested. “I know she didn’t like callers. We never ventured to ring the bell in her day. But Mother thought you new neighbors might be different. And I saw you going by yesterday, so I thought I’d try—” She looked at Mary wistfully, with a little cock to her head. “My name is Katy Summers, and we are your nearest neighbors,” she added.

“Oh, do come in,” urged Mary, holding open the door hospitably. “It is so nice to see you! I am Mary Corliss.”

Katy Summers beamed at her as she crossed the doorsill. And from that moment Mary hoped that they were going to be the best of friends.

John appeared just then, much excited and forgetting his dirty face. “It must be a kind of graphophone,” he said, without introduction. “Let me punch that button.”

Twisting himself out into the porch, John pushed a dirty thumb against the bell-button of the Corliss home. Instantly sounded the same monotonous response,—“Not at home— Not at home— Not at home.”

“I say! Isn’t it great!” shouted John, cutting a caper delightedly. “Aunt Nan must have had that fixed so as to scare away callers. Wasn’t she cute?”

Mary blushed for her brother, and for the reputation of the house. “It wasn’t cute!” she said hastily. “We shall have to get that bell changed. We aren’t like that, really,” she explained to her visitor. “We love to see people. You were very good to come to this inhospitable old house.”

“I wanted to,” said Katy simply, “and Mother thought you’d perhaps all be busy this morning, getting settled. So she sent you over this hot luncheon.” And she held out to Mary the heavy basket.

“Oh, how kind of you!” cried Mary. “Let me tell Mother. She will be so pleased! It is so nice to have our nearest neighbor call on us right away.”

“I can’t stop but a minute this time,” said Katy, “for my own luncheon is waiting on the table. But I’d like to see your mother. I’ll wait here in the hall.”

At the end of the hall facing the front door was an armchair with a back studded with brass nails. Katy sat down in this chair to wait for Mrs. Corliss. Mary ran up the stairs feeling very happy, because already she had found this new friend in the town where she was afraid she was going to be lonesome.

But hardly had she reached the top of the stairs when she heard a funny little cry from the hall below. It was Katy’s voice that called. “Oh!” it cried. “Help! Mary Corliss!”

“What is it?” called Mary, leaning over the banisters to see what the matter was.

And then she saw a strange thing. The chair in which Katy Summers sat was moving rapidly of its own accord straight toward the front door. Katy was too startled to move, and there she sat, grasping the arms of the chair, until it reached the doorsill. When it touched the sill, the chair stopped and gently tilted itself forward, making Katy slide out, whether she would or no.

“Well, I never!” said Katy with a gasp. “If that isn’t the impolitest chair I ever saw!”

“Oh, Katy!” cried Mary, flying down the stairs. “I am so sorry. We didn’t know it was that kind of chair. We hadn’t cleaned the hall yet, so we never suspected. It must be another of Aunt Nan’s jokes. She probably had this made so that peddlers or agents who got inside and insisted on waiting to see her would be discouraged. Please don’t blame us!”

Then down came Mrs. Corliss, with Katy’s basket in her hand. “What a reception to our first caller!” she said with a rueful smile. “And you came on such a kind errand, too! But you must try to forget, little neighbor, that this was ever an inhospitable house, and come to see us often. We are going to change many things.”

“Yes, indeed, I shall come again,” said Katy Summers. “I hope that Mary and I shall be in the same class at High School.”

“So do I,” said Mary. “I begin to-morrow. Will you call for me so that I can have some one to introduce me on my first day?”

“Yes,” said Katy, with a roguish look, “if you’ll let me wait for you in the garden.”

Mary turned red. “You needn’t be afraid,” she said. “We won’t let those things happen any more, will we, Mother?”

“No,” said Mrs. Corliss. “We will have the carpenter attend to those ‘jokes’ at once.”

But until the carpenter came John had a beautiful time riding down the front hall on the inhospitable chair, and making the automatic butler cry, “Not at home.” John thought it a great pity to change these ingenious devices which made the front hall of Aunt Nan’s house so interesting. But he was in the minority, and that very afternoon the carpenter took away an electric device from the old armchair, which ended its days of wandering forever. And instead of the “bell” he put an old-fashioned knocker on the front door.

________________________________________

CHAPTER four

THE BOOKS

THE town of Crowfield was built on a swift-flowing river with a waterfall, which gave it strong water-power. So the houses were easily fitted with electricity. Even the old Corliss mansion was up to date in that respect, at least. This was why Aunt Nan had been able to carry out her liking for strange devices and unexpected mechanical effects, as Mr. Griggs, the carpenter, explained when he came to make more hospitable the front hall. He chuckled over the moving chair, the secret of which was a spring concealed under one of the brass nail-heads. Any one who sat down and leaned back was sure to press this button, whereupon the chair would begin to move.

“It beats all how clever that old lady was!” said Mr. Griggs. “I never saw anything like this before. She must ’a’ got some electrician down from the city to fix this up for her. We don’t do that kind of job in Crowfield.”

“Do you suppose there are any more such things about the house?” inquired Mrs. Corliss anxiously.

“I’ll take a look,” said Mr. Griggs. “But I mightn’t find ’em, even so.”

And he did not find them; Aunt Nan had her secrets carefully concealed. But for weeks the family were continually discovering strange new surprises in their housekeeping.

That very night at supper, just after Mr. Griggs had left the house with his kit of tools, a strange thing happened. They were sitting about the round dining-table, the center of which, as they had noticed from the first, seemed to be a separate inlaid circle of wood. In the middle of this Mary had set a pretty vase of flowers—nasturtiums, mignonette, marigolds, and yellow poppies, the last lingerers in their garden.

They were talking about their first day in Crowfield, about the visit of Katy Summers, and the funny things that had happened to their first caller; and they were all laughing merrily over Mary’s description of how Katy had looked when she went riding out toward the door in the inhospitable chair. Dr. Corliss had just reached out his hand for the sugar. Suddenly the table center began slowly to revolve, and the sugar bowl retreated from his hand as if by magic.

“Well, I never!” said the Doctor. “This is a new kind of butler’s assistant!”

“It makes me feel like Alice in Wonderland!” exclaimed Mary. “It is the Mad Hatter’s breakfast; only instead of every one’s moving on one place, the place moves on by itself!”

They found that Mary had hit her knee by accident against a spring concealed under the table.

“Aunt Nan lived here all alone,” said Mrs. Corliss, “and I dare say she found this an easy way to pass things to herself when she was eating her lonely meals.”

“Let’s keep it like this,” said Mary. “Now I shan’t be needing always to ask John to pass the salt.”

“I don’t think it’s fair!” protested John. “Now, Mary has the seat by the button, and she can make the table turn when she likes. I wish I had a button, too.”

“You’d keep the table whirling all the time, John,” laughed his father. “No, it is better as it is. We chose our seats this way, before we knew about the lively center-piece. Let’s stick to what chance gave us. Aunt Nan’s house seems to be a kind of good-luck game, doesn’t it?”

But in spite of the strange things that were continually happening there, it did not take long for the Corliss family to feel quite at home in this old house, and in Crowfield. Mary was admitted to the High School, and found herself in the same class with Katy Summers, which pleased them both very much. They soon became the closest chums. John went to the Grammar School, where he found some nice boys of his own age who lived just down the road; Ralph and James Perry, cousins in opposite houses, and Billy Barton a little farther on.

These promptly formed the Big Four; and the neighborhood of the Big Four was the liveliest in town. The Corliss house, with its collections and curiosities, became their favorite meeting-place, and in these days could hardly recognize itself with the merry streams of children who were always running in and out, up and down the stairs. It was fortunate that Dr. Corliss, who kept himself shut up in his study with the book he was writing, was not of a nervous or easily distracted temperament.

As for Mrs. Corliss—being a mother, she just smiled and loved everybody. It was her idea that first of all a home should be a happy place for the family and for every one who came there. The first thing she did was to send for the familiar furniture of the city house which they had left when Dr. Corliss was obliged to give up his professorship in college and move into the country. Now the strange rooms of Aunt Nan’s inhospitable old house were much less strange and much more homelike than they had ever been, and every corner radiated a merry hospitality.

But in the library nothing was changed. Mary would not let anything be moved from the place in which Aunt Nan had put it. For she had grown much attached to the old lady’s memory, since the finding of that little watch and chain.

You may be sure that Mary and John looked about the library carefully, to see if more of the same kind of nice joke might not be concealed somewhere. But they found nothing. It was not until nearly a week later, when there came a rainy Saturday, that they found time to look at the books themselves.

“Hello! Here’s a funny book to find in an old lady’s library!” cried John. “It’s our old friend ‘Master Skylark,’ one of the nicest books I know. But how do you suppose a children’s book came to be here, Mary? Daddy says for years Aunt Nan never allowed any children in the house.”

“I wonder!” said Mary. “And here’s another child’s book, right here on the desk. I noticed it the first time I came in here, but I never opened it before. ‘Shakespeare the Boy’ is the name of it. I wonder if it is interesting? I like Shakespeare. We read his plays in school, and once I wrote a composition about him, you know.”

“Papa says Aunt Nan was crazy about Shakespeare,” said John.

“Why, here’s a note inside the cover of the book, addressed to me!” said Mary wonderingly.

“Let me look!” cried John, darting to her side. “Yes, it’s in that same handwriting, Mary. It’s a letter from Aunt Nan. Do hurry and open it!”

Mary held the envelope somewhat dubiously. It was not quite pleasant to be receiving letters from a person no longer living in this world. She glanced up at the portrait over the mantel as she cut the end of the envelope with Aunt Nan’s desk shears, and it seemed to her that the eyes under the prim gray curls gleamed at her knowingly. She almost expected to see the long forefinger of the portrait’s right hand point directly at her.

It was a brief letter that Aunt Nan had written; and it explained why she had left her library of precious books to this grandniece Mary whom she had never seen.

Mary Corliss (it began): I shan’t call you dear Mary because I don’t know whether you are dear or not. You may be if you like the sort of things I always liked. And in that case I shall be glad you have them for your own, when I can no longer enjoy them. I mean the things in this room, which I have given all to you, because there is no one else whom I can bear to think of as handling them. I heard your father say once that he hated poetry. That was enough for me! I never wanted to see him again. He can have my house, but not my precious books. Well, I read in the paper which your mother sent me that you had won a prize at school for a composition about William Shakespeare, the greatest poet who ever lived. You have begun well! If you go on, as I did, you will care as I have cared about everything he wrote. So you shall have my library and get what you can out of it. Be kind to the books I have loved. Love them, if you can, for their own sake.

Your Great-Aunt,

NAN CORLISS.

“What a strange letter!” said John. “So it was your composition that did it. My! Aren’t you lucky, Mary!”

“I do like Shakespeare already,” said Mary, glancing first at Aunt Nan’s portrait, then at the bust of the poet below it. “And I guess I am going to like Aunt Nan.” She smiled up at the portrait, which she now thought seemed to smile back at her. “I must go and tell Father about it,” she said eagerly, running out of the room; and presently she came back, dragging him by the hand.

“Well, Mary!” said Dr. Corliss. “So it was your Shakespeare essay that won you the library! I remember how fond Aunt Nan used to be of the Poet. She was always quoting from him. I am glad you like poetry, my dear; though for myself I never could understand it. This is, indeed, a real poetry library. I am glad she gave it to you instead of to me, Mary. There are any number of editions of Shakespeare here, I have noticed, and a lot of books about him, too. I suppose she would have liked you to read every one.”

“I mean to,” said Mary firmly. “I want to; and I am going to begin with this one, ‘Shakespeare the Boy.’ I feel as if that was what she meant me to do.”

As she said this Mary began to turn over the leaves of the book in which she had found the note from Aunt Nan. “The story sounds very nice,” she said.

Just then something fell from between the leaves and fluttered to the floor. Her father stooped to pick it up.

“Aunt Nan’s bookmark,” he said. “It would be nice to keep her marks when you can, Mary. Why!” he exclaimed suddenly, staring at what he held in his fingers. It was long and yellow, and printed on both sides.

“Mary!” he cried, “did you ever see one of these before? I have never seen many of them myself, more’s the pity!” And he handed the “bookmark” to his daughter.

It was a hundred-dollar bill.

“Papa!” gasped Mary, “whose is it?”

“It is yours, Mary, just as much as the watch and chain were; just as much as the library is,” said her father. “Everything in the room was to be yours; Aunt Nan said so in her will. This is certainly a part of your legacy. I wonder if Aunt Nan forgot it or put it there on purpose, as another of her little jokes?”

“I think she put it there on purpose,” said John. “My! But she was a strange old lady!”

“I think she was a very nice old lady,” said Mary. “Now I must go and tell Katy Summers about it.”

________________________________________

CHAPTER five

INSTRUCTIONS

WITH the hundred dollars which she had found in the book Mary started an account in the Crowfield Savings Bank, under her own name. She was very proud of her little blue bank-book, and she hoped that some time, in some unexpected way, she would save enough money to go to college, as John was to do.

But the outlook was rather hopeless. The Corliss family were far from well off. Even in Crowfield, where expenses were low, they had a hard time to live on the small income from what Dr. Corliss had managed to save while he was Professor of Philosophy in the city college. Dr. Corliss was writing a book which he hoped would some day make his fortune. But the book would not be finished for many a day. Meanwhile, though there was very little money coming in, it was steadily going out; as money has a way of doing.

The best thing the family could do at present was to save as much as possible by going without servants and dainties and fine clothes—just as people have to do in war-time; and by doing things themselves, instead of having things done for them. Mrs. Corliss was a clever manager. She had learned how to cook and sew and do all kinds of things with her deft fingers; and Mary was a good assistant and pupil, while John did everything that a little boy could do to help. He ran errands and built the fires, and even set the table and helped wipe the dishes when his mother and sister were busy.

The neighbors were very friendly, and there were so many pleasant new things in Crowfield that the family did not miss the pleasures they used to enjoy in the city, nor the pretty clothes and luxuries which were now out of the question. And Mary did not spend much time worrying about college. There would be time enough for that.

After the finding of that hundred-dollar bill, Mary and John spent a great deal of time in opening and shutting the leaves of books in the library, hoping that they would come upon other bookmarks as valuable as that first one. But whether Aunt Nan had left the bill there by mistake, as Dr. Corliss imagined, or whether she had put it there on purpose, as Mary liked to think, apparently the old lady had not repeated herself. The only foreign things they found in the musty old volumes were bits of pressed flowers and ferns, and now and then a flattened bug which had been crushed in its pursuit of knowledge.

John soon grew tired of this fruitless search. But Mary came upon so many interesting things in the books themselves that she often forgot what she was looking for. Many of the books had strange, old-fashioned pictures; some had names and dates of long ago written on the fly-leaf. In many Mary found that Aunt Nan had scrawled notes and comments—sometimes amusing and witty; sometimes very hard to understand.

Mary loved her library. She had never before had a corner all to herself, except her tiny bedroom. And to feel that this spacious room, with everything in it, was all hers, in which to do just as she pleased, was a very pleasant thing.

“Where’s Mary?” asked Katy Summers one afternoon, running into the Corliss house without knocking, as she had earned the right to do.

“I think she is in the library,” said Mrs. Corliss, who was busy sewing in the living-room. “That is a pretty likely place in which to look nowadays, when she isn’t anywhere else!”

“Shall I go there to find her?” asked Katy.

“Yes, Dear; go right in,” said Mrs. Corliss. “She will be glad to see you, I am sure.”

The door of the library was hospitably open. And Katy Summers, creeping up on tiptoe and peeping in softly, saw Mary with her thumb between the leaves of a book, kneeling before one of the bookshelves.

“I spy!” cried Katy. “What’s the old Bookworm up to now? Or perhaps I ought to say, considering your position, what’s she down to now?”

Mary jumped hastily to her feet. “Hello, Katy,” she said cordially. “I was just looking up something. Say, Katy, do you know what fun it is to look up quotations?”

“No,” said Katy, laughing. “I don’t see any fun in that. No more fun than looking up things in a dictionary.”

“Well, it is fun,” returned Mary. “I think I must be something like Aunt Nan. She loved quotations. Just look at this row of ‘Gems from the Poets.’ They’re full of quotations, Katy. I’m going to read them all, some time.”

“Goodness!” cried Katy. “What an idea! I think poetry is stupid stuff, sing-song and silly.”

“So Daddy thinks,” said Mary. “But it isn’t, really. It is full of the most interesting stories and legends and beautiful things. This library bores Daddy almost to death, because all the books on these two walls are poetry. I believe that Aunt Nan had the works of every old poet who ever wrote in the English language. And see, these are the lives of the poets.” She pointed to the shelves in one corner.

“Huh!” grunted Katy. “Well, what of it?”

“Well, you see,” said Mary, looking up at Aunt Nan’s portrait, “the more I stay in this library, the more I like Aunt Nan’s books, and the more I want to please Aunt Nan herself. I like her, Katy.”

“I don’t!” said Katy, eyeing the portrait sideways. “You never had her for a neighbor, you see.”

“She never did anything to you, did she?” asked Mary.

“No-o,” drawled Katy reluctantly. “She never did anything either good or bad to me. But—she was awfully strange!”

“Of course she was,” agreed Mary. “But that isn’t the worst thing in the world, to be strange. And she was awfully kind to me.— Say, Katy, don’t you like Shakespeare?”

“Not very well,” confessed Katy.

“Well, I do,” Mary asserted. “I haven’t read much of him, but I’m going to. Every time I look at that head of Shakespeare on the mantelpiece, I remember that it was my composition about Shakespeare that was at the bottom of almost everything nice that has happened in Crowfield. Why, if it hadn’t been for him, perhaps we shouldn’t have come to live here at all, and then I shouldn’t ever have known you, Katy Summers!”

“Gracious!” exclaimed Katy. “Wouldn’t that have been awful? Yes, I believe I do like him a little, since he did that. I wrote a composition about him once, too. It didn’t bring anything good in my direction. But then, it wasn’t a very good composition. I only got a C with it.”

“Well,” said Mary, “I feel as if I owe him something, and Aunt Nan something. And sooner or later I’m going to read everything he ever wrote.”

“Goodness!” said Katy. “Then you’ll never have time to read anything else, I guess. Look!”— She pointed around the walls. “Why, there are hundreds of Shakespeares. Hundreds and hundreds!”

“They are mostly different editions of the same thing,” said Mary wisely. “I shan’t have to read every edition. There aren’t so very many books by him, really. Not more than thirty, I think. I’ve been looking at this little red set that’s so easy to handle and has such nice notes. I like the strange spelling. I’m going to read ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ first. I think that’s what Aunt Nan meant.”

“What do you mean by ‘what Aunt Nan meant’?” asked Katy curiously. “Has she written you another letter?” Mary had told her about the will.

“No, not exactly,” confessed Mary. “But see what I found just now when I finished reading ‘Shakespeare the Boy,’—the book that was lying on her desk with that first note she wrote me.” And she opened the volume which she held in her hand at the last page. Below the word “Finis” were penned in a delicate, old-fashioned writing these words:—

Mem. Read in this order, with notes.

1. Midsummer Night’s Dream.

2. Julius Cæsar.

3. Twelfth Night.

4. Tempest.

5. As You Like It.

6. Merchant of Venice.

7. Hamlet, etc.

“Pooh!” cried Katy. “I don’t believe she meant that for you, at all! She was just talking to herself. Let’s see if there was anything written at the end of ‘Master Skylark.’ Didn’t you say that was lying on her desk, too?”

They ran to get this other child’s book, which, strangely enough, had also been left lying on the desk, as if Aunt Nan had just been reading both. And there, too, at the end was written exactly the same list, with the same instructions.

“That settles it!” exclaimed Mary. “She did mean me to see that list, so she left it in both those children’s books, which she thought I would be sure to read first. I am going to read Shakespeare’s plays in just the order she wished. I’m going to read my very own books in my very own library. I’m going to begin this very afternoon!” Mary was quite excited.

“Oh, no! Please not this afternoon!” begged Katy. “I want you to come with me while I do an errand at the express office in Ashley. It is a three-mile walk. I don’t want to go alone. Please, Mary!”

“Oh, bother!” Mary was about to say; for she wanted to begin her reading. But she thought better of it. Katy had been so kind to her. And, after all, it was a beautiful afternoon, and the walk would be very pleasant down a new road which she had never traveled. She laid down the book reluctantly.

“Well,” she said. “I can read my books any time, I suppose. Isn’t it nice to think of that? Yes—I’ll go with you, Katy. It will be fun. Just wait till I get my hat, and tell Mother.”

“You’re a dear!” burst out Katy, hugging her.

“If I go with you this time, Katy, you’ll have to read Shakespeare with me another time,” bargained Mary with good-natured guile.

“All right,” said Katy. “Sometime, when it is not so nice and crisp and walky out of doors, as it is to-day.”

And off the two girls started, with comradely arms about one another’s shoulders.