should become a recognized authority on the
subject. The other was to prove by her own achievements the truth of
something which the Colonel quoted from Emerson. It flattered her that
he should quote Emerson to her, a mere child, as if she were one of his
peers, and she wished that Joyce could have been there to hear it.

This was the sentence: "_If a man can write a better book, preach a
better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he
build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten track to his
door_."

Mary did not yet know whether the desert would yield her the material
for a book or a mouse-trap, but she determined that no matter what she
undertook, she would force the world to "make a beaten track to her
door." The first step was to find out how much had already been
discovered by the great naturalists who had gone before her, in order
that she might take a step beyond them. With that in view, she plunged
into the course of study that the Colonel outlined for her with the same
energy and dogged determination which made her a successful killer of
snakes.

Lloyd came upon her the third morning after the breaking up of the
house-party, sitting in the middle of the library floor, surrounded by
encyclopaedias and natural histories. She was verifying in the books all
that she had learned by herself in the desert of the habits of trap-door
spiders, and she was so absorbed in her task that she did not look up.

Lloyd slipped out of the room without disturbing her, wishing she could
plunge into some study as absorbing,--something that would take her
mind from the thoughts which had nagged her like a persistent mosquito
for the last few days. She knew that she had done nothing to give
Bernice just cause for taking offence, and it hurt her to be
misunderstood.

"If it were anything else," she mused, as she strolled up and down under
the locusts, "I could go to her and explain. But explanation is
impossible in a case of this kind. It would sound too conceited for
anything for me to tell her what I know to be the truth about Malcolm's
attentions to her, and as for the othah--" she shrugged her shoulders.
"It would be hopeless to try that. Oh, if I could only talk it ovah with
mothah or Papa Jack!" she sighed.

But they had gone away immediately after the house-party, for a week's
outing in the Tennessee mountains. She could have gone to her
grandfather for advice on most questions, but