us yesterday morning he went straight to work to develop and print the
films he had just taken, and when he brought us the copies that
afternoon, we were busy, and he slipped them into the album with the
others without saying anything about them. So none of us saw them until
Mary came across them in showing them to Doctor Bradford.

"There was the one of us with our hands thrust through the bars, when we
were trying to make Rob choose right or left, and one of Joyce and me
drawing straws. Neither of us had the slightest idea that he had taken
us in that act, and Mary was so surprised that she gave the whole thing
away--blurted out what we were doing, before she thought that he was the
Pilgrim Father. Then in her confusion, to cover up her mistake, she
began to explain as only Mary Ware can, and the more she explained, the
more ridiculous things she told about us. Doctor Bradford must have
found her vastly entertaining from the way he laughed whenever he quoted
her, which he did frequently.

"I wish she wouldn't be so alarmingly outspoken when she sings our
praises to strangers. She gave him to understand that I am a
full-fledged author and playwright, the peer of any poet laureate who
ever held a pen; that Lloyd is a combination of princess and angel and
halo-crowned saint, and Joyce a model big sister and an all-round
genius. How she managed in the short time they were alone to tell him as
much as she did will always remain a mystery.

"He knew all about Joyce raising bees at the Wigwam to earn money for
her art lessons, and my nearly going blind at the first house-party, and
why we all wear Tusitala rings. Only time will reveal what else she
told. Maybe, after all, her confidences made things easier, for it gave
us something to laugh about right in the beginning, and that took away
the stiff feeling, and we were soon talking like old friends. By the
time the boat landed I was glad that he had fallen to my lot as
attendant instead of Rob, for he is so much more entertaining. He told
about a moonlight ride he had on the Nile last winter when he was in
Egypt, and that led us to talking of lotus flowers, and that to
Tennyson's poem of the 'Lotus Eaters.' He quoted a verse from it which
he said was, to him, one of the best comparisons in English verse.

"'There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night dews upon still waters, between wall