bit to drink from a clear spring that bubbled up in
the path, and sat down to rest awhile under a huge tree. Mary leaned her
head back against the trunk and drawing a small book from her sweater
pocket she opened it upon her knee.

"What is the book?" asked Agony.

"_The Desert Garden_, by Edwin Langham," replied Mary.

"Oh, do you know _The Desert Garden_?" cried Agony in delighted wonder.
"I've actually lived on that book for the last two years. I'm wild about
Edwin Langham. I've read every word he's ever written. Have you read
_The Silent Years_?"

Mary nodded.

"_The Lost Chord_? I think that's the most wonderful book I've ever
read, that and _The Desert Garden._ If I could ever see and speak to
Edwin Langham I should die from happiness. I've never felt that way
about any other author. When I read his books I feel reverent somehow,
as if I were in church, although there isn't a word of religion in them.
The things he writes are so fine and true and noble; he must be that way
himself. Do you remember that part about the bird in _The Desert Garden,
_ the bird with the broken wing, that would never fly again, singing to
the lame man who would never walk? And the flower that was so determined
to blossom that it grew in the desert and bloomed there?"

"Yes," answered Mary, "it was very beautiful."

"It's the most beautiful thing that was ever written!" declared Agony
enthusiastically. "It would be the greatest joy of my life to see the
man who wrote those books."

"Maybe you will, some day," said Mary, rising from her mossy seat and
preparing to take the path again.

It was not long after that that they came to the edge of the woods, and
saw before them the scattered houses of the little village of Atlantis.
Mary's old nurse was overjoyed to see her, and pressed the two girls to
stay and eat big soft ginger cookies on the shady back porch, and quench
their thirst with glasses of cool milk, while she inquired minutely
after the health of Mary's "ma" and "pa."

"Mrs. Simmons is the best old nurse that ever was," said Mary to Agony,
as they took their way back to the woods an hour later. "I'm so glad to
have had this opportunity of paying her a visit. I haven't seen her for
nearly ten years. Wasn't she funny, though, when I told her that father
might have to go to Japan in the interests of his firm? She thought
there was nobody in Japan but heathens and missionaries."

"Shall you go to Japan too, if your fathe