1002 
B»c RURAL NEW-YORKER 
August 24, 1918 
“Peter!” cried Mary Ware. “You have 
driven past your gate!” 
"Dark night,” admitted Peter, “but 
I’m afraid a week away from home is too 
much for you, Mary. We’ll be there in a 
minute.” 
A tense, worried expre.ssion—hidden in 
the dark—crept over Mrs. Ware’s thin 
little face, for Peter's voice betrayed him. 
This was another of his surprises. I’eter 
loved surprises—his wife didn’t. 
Through twenty years of married life 
Mrs. Ware had invariably expressed 
pleasure over the surprises Peter planned, 
but Peter, meaning just the best in the 
world, lacked intuition. Surprise and 
calamity were almost synonj’ins to loyal 
little Mrs. Ware. A turn in the dark 
country road revealed a brilliantly lighted 
house, and Mrs. Ware gave a happy sigh 
of relief. A surprise, true, but only the 
harmless one of Peter’s sister’s house¬ 
warming ! 
Guests came crowding out upon the 
verandah and, “Welcome home !” came a 
cheery hail in many voices. 
“If it were my new house I should pro¬ 
test such a greeting!” Mary laughingly 
addressed her husband’s sisters. 
“Put it is your home, Mary, yours!” 
proclaimed Peter. 
Mary stared, bewildered, dismayed; 
grasped the full measure of the disaster— 
it was disaster—and swayed a little. 
“I mu.st seem pleased.” she thought 
frantically. “Peter meant just the best 
in the world. I must make the best of 
it. I must!” 
Mary was well accustomed to simulat¬ 
ing delight. She accepted the situation 
and made merry with her guests the 
evening through, but it was as if she 
walked in a nightmare. For of all 
Peter’s surpri.ses none had the magnitude 
of this, none was ever so disastrous. 
All her life Mary Ware had longed for 
a new house, but she had watched this 
house building and had daily rejoiced 
that it was not hers, could never be hers. 
To the last detail it was exactly what 
she would not have cho.sen. There was 
anxiety, too, mixed with Mrs. Ware’s 
dismay—the money. She shivered a little 
as she thought of the unpaid mortgage 
incurred by the purchase of the hundred 
acres to the west. It was twelve years 
since they bought that laud and it was 
still unpaid for. Mary abhorred debt. 
Y^et she had readily concurred in the 
purchase; for of their previous holding 
a hundred and twenty acres came to them 
from Mary’s people, and but ninety acres 
were Peter’s own. She sympathized with 
Peter’s wish to make his contribution to 
the farm larger than her inherited por¬ 
tion. 
“We did a lot in a week, didn’t we?” 
exulted Peter, when the family was alone. 
“We didn’t have time to dispose of the 
stuff in the old house, but we’ve moved 
all the best things. I wanted my old 
armchair the worst way, but Ella said I 
shouldn’t spoil your nice new sitting- 
room, and I gave in.” 
“We’ll arbitrate that,” .smiled Mary, 
inexpressibly relieved at knowing that 
her household treasures were safe. Her 
grandmother’s mahogany, her great¬ 
grandmother’s rosewood, were not here ! 
“But Peter,” Mary began rather diffi¬ 
dently when they were alone in their 
new bedroom, “it must have cost so much 
—and there’s the debt for the land. IIow 
can we manage all this extra?” 
“That is part of the surprise,” laughed 
Peter. “This is all paid for, every dollar. 
And there hasn’t been a debt on the land 
for five years!” 
Mary '.sat down suddenly, her face 
blank and expressionless. 
“Oh—I have worried so about it!” 
she gasped. 
“You .shouldn’t h.ave worried—that’s 
my end of it. It is all paid—every 
dollar,” he repeated. 
Peter had worked and waited twelve 
years for the triumph of that moment, 
but for the first time in their married life 
Peter’s Surprises 
By Harriet Brunkhurst 
Mary was thoroughly angry with him. 
To live under a burden of debt when 
there was no debt; to do without necessi¬ 
ties in order to offset the expense of well- 
meant but exasperating surprises; to 
keep their only child, Grace, suitably 
clothed on almost nothing—and to have 
the whole capped with this monstrosity 
of a house and the knowledge that there 
had never been cause for worry or petty 
economies! Just for a moment Mary 
contemplated the luxury of wrathful 
self-exi)res.sion. Then- 
“That is good, Peter,” she answered 
quietly. 
“The only thing about it that isn’t 
perfect is Grace’s being away in Cali¬ 
fornia and missing it. Ella and Ed are 
going to California to live, you .see. They 
pretended to want that piece of ground of 
to love every timber of it. She treasured 
her mother’s old furniture—even to the 
old stuff that added to the confu.sion of 
the “woodhouse chamber.” “Ten thou¬ 
sand dollars’ worth of nothing.” Peter 
called it. 
And the dreams of three generations 
had come to this! 
The new house stood on a level piece of 
ground with a good view of the road, but 
none of the hills. The trees were one 
good maple and an elm which might be 
good with a hundred years added to its 
too flagrant youth. There was no gar¬ 
den, neither flowers nor vegetables; no 
smooth sward. It was all new, raw, un- 
fini.shed. The house was built from plans 
designwl for a narrow city lot, and it 
was painted a bright yellow; the veranda 
—an addition not provided in the plan.s— 
The Old House Being Made Over 
us so that we could carry out the sur¬ 
prise. They’re going next week.” 
“We’d better go to sleep, Peter,” Mary 
was suddenly too tired even to smile. 
“Morning comes soon—even in new 
houses.” 
But Mary did not sleep. What would 
Grace say? Grace, planning to make in¬ 
terior decorating her profession ! 
The house was .small and shabby. 
Mary’s grandfather built it. What the 
home lacked in the hou.se was balanced 
by the grounds, for the grounds were laid 
out to correspond with the mansion grand¬ 
father purposed later to build. There 
was a formal grassy square in front of 
the house, euclo.sed by a low, cemented 
stone wall with steps leading down to a 
graveled half-moon drive; stone pillars 
guarded the service driveway, and the 
house was flanked on one side by a grove 
of elms and maples, on the other by a 
rose garden. 
For three generations the new house 
to match the grounds was a live topic. 
In Mary’s early married life the new 
house was frequently under discussion. 
Then came the purchase of the hundred 
acres. As the years passed and Peter 
was always embarrassed at meeting the 
interest payments, Mary ceased to men¬ 
tion the new house. 
Then Mary’s ambitions changed, for as 
Grace grew older she showed a singular 
fondness for the old hou.se. She seemed 
extended around three sides of the house, 
and it was too narrow to be comfortable, 
at the same time that it effectually shut 
off the sunshine from all the lower rooms. 
The rooms themselves were too small and 
too many, with a box-like appearance. 
The new furniture included such night¬ 
mares as imitation leather in the parlor, 
and mi.ssion bedroom furniture flanked 
by flowered wall paper and lace curtains. 
Nor was Peter’s selection of “best 
things” from the old house quite in ac- 
coi'dance with Mary’s tastes. The bright 
yellow oak dining and bedroom furniture 
were installed in state; likewise the red 
plush easy chair and the over-ornate reed 
‘‘ladie.s’ rocker.” which had marred the 
harmony of the parlor; some rugs of 
startling designs—in short, Peter’s “best 
things” comprised the surprises of the 
past twenty years. He had tired of none 
of them. 
The kitchen was not convenient; a 
bathroom was temporarily omitted; the 
woodwork throughout was oak, finished 
bright and shiny. 
“Good wood spoiled!” sighed Mary. 
“Oh, what will Grace say?” 
Grace returned and her astoni.shment 
fully satisfied her father. 
To her mother, in private, ‘AYhat are 
we going to do?” 
“There is nothing we can do, dear. 
Your father and Aunt Ella planned it 
and they think it perfect. It has cost 
so much that we must use it—besides, it 
would make your father the laughing 
stock of the town if we didn’t.” 
“Let’s go down to the old place,” sug¬ 
gested Grace. 
“It looks neglected already,” said Mary, 
wistfully. 
“Still.” Grace was thoughtful, “all the 
good things are here, and everything we 
longed to consign to a bonfire is gone. 
If only we could start now and do it 
over.” 
Mary smiled sadly, and just then they 
saw Peter approaching. 
“Looking things over?” he inquired. 
“We must get it ready for a tenant. One 
more married farmhand will make us 
easy outdoors and in the house, too.” 
“Daddy, dear!” cried Grace blithely, 
“if you need another tenant house, I’m 
just afraid you’ll have to build it. Grand¬ 
father. mother and I were borne here— 
and I’m not going to have any farmhands 
living in the house where I was born. 
Leave it just as it is, please. Daddy.” 
“Why, all right. Baby,” Peter an¬ 
swered instantly. “I’d not thought of it 
that way. Do as you like with it.” And 
he went away whistling. 
Mary’s eyes were tender. Peter was so 
beautifully ready to “do anything in the 
world ’ for his family. Ills worst blun¬ 
ders found root in the kindliest impulses. 
Y'ou couldn’t be angry with him—yet liv¬ 
ing with him had its difficulties. 
“Didn t Daddy ever ask you how you 
wanted things?” questioned Grace. 
“It isn’t his fault,” pleaded Mary. “He 
was brought up to consider surprises the 
high occasions of life. 
"I still shudder over our first visit to 
his relatives. We were expected on 
Thursday—we arrived on Tuesday, at 
ten o’clock in the morning! Curtains were 
down, furniture piled everywhere, elabo¬ 
rate culinary preparations were in prog¬ 
ress—nothing ready, of course. And I 
was a stranger! 
“Thej’ didn’t seem to mind at all; ac¬ 
cepted it as a good joke and had heaps 
of fun over it—the more as the surprise 
was on me as well as on themselves. They 
put the house in order in a twinkling, 
then spent the week of our visit in sur¬ 
prising other people and being surprised 
—visiting parties, you know, fifteen, 
twenty, twenty-five at a time. And they 
thought it the jolliest .sort of fun. 
“Your father has the habit ingrained. 
I’ve never planned upon a blue dress 
that he hasn’t gone and bought me a 
brown one. I've tried mentioning spe¬ 
cifically what I wished, but he always 
brings something else because I’d enjoy 
a surprise so much more! And he is 
always so eager and happy over it all 
that I have never had the heart to seem 
other than pleased. There is one thing, 
though —ril never be party to a surprise 
if I know it!” 
Wherein Mary boasted unduly. 
“Mother,” Grace announced some days 
later, “I think I’d like to postpone college 
for a year. I can’t leave you alone with 
this—” an eloquent gesture indicated the 
house, “and anyway there is a good deal 
that I can study, about my special work 
of interior decorating, I mean—alone. If 
you don’t mind, I’ll make a sort of studio 
of the old house. It will be pleasanter to 
have it used a little.” 
Mary consented gratefully, and the plan 
was adopted. Peter chaffed his daughter 
about taking an entire house for a studio, 
and Grace laughingly added, “To say 
nothing of a park for gi'ounds !” 
Letters from California, however, where 
Ella and Ed were visiting a sister and 
inspecting real estate, indicated a steadily 
declining enthu.siasm which gradually 
verged into something approaching home- 
sickne.ss. 
“I don’t see how they can fail to like 
California !” Grace marveled. 
Then Ed became ill of typhoid, and 
Ella was frantic. Alice, the sister living 
there, was a widow, and the two women 
(Continued on page 1010) 
