had
taken for a snow-bank, there was a small tent, there were two light
wagons, there were dogs innumerable, but there was no sign of a house.

"What do you think of it?" inquired Mrs. Yellett, smilingly, anticipating
a favorable answer.

"It's almost too beautiful to leave." Mary innocently supposed that Mrs.
Yellett referred to the starlit landscape. "But I'm so tired, Mrs.
Yellett, and so glad to get to a real home at last, that I'm going to ask
if you will not show me the way to the house so that I may go to bed right
away."

This apparently reasonable request was greeted by a fine chorus of titanic
laughter from Mary's pupils. Mrs. Yellett waved her hand over the
surrounding landscape in comprehensive gesture.

"Ain't all this large enough for you?" she asked, gayly.

"You mean the mountains? They're wonderful. But--I really think I'd like to
go in the house."

"I shore hope you ain't figgerin' on goin' into no house, 'cause there
ain't no house to go into." She laughed merrily, as if the idea of such an
effete luxury as a house were amusing. "This yere family 'ain't ever had a
house--it camps."

Mary gasped. The real meaning of words no longer had the power of making
an impression on her. If Mrs. Yellett had announced that they were in the
habit of sleeping in the moon, it would not have surprised her.

"If you are tired, an' want to go to bed, you can shuck off and lie down
any time. Ben, Jack, Ned, go an' set with paw in the tent while the
gov'ment gets ready for bed. Cacta and Clem, you help me with them
quilts."

Mary stood helpless in the wilderness while quilts and pillows were
fetched somewhere from the adjacent scenery, and Mrs. Yellett asked her,
with the gravity of a Pullman porter interrogating a passenger as to the
location of head and foot, if she liked to sleep "light or dark." She
chose "dark" at random, hating to display her ignorance of the
alternatives, with the happy result that her bed was made up to leeward of
the great sheep-wagon, in a nice little corner of the State of Wyoming.
Mary was grateful that she had chosen dark.

As she dozed off, she was reminded of a certain magazine illustration that
Archie had pinned over his bed after the aunts had given a grudging
consent to this westward journey. There was a line beneath the pictorial
decoy which read: "Ranch Life in the New West." And there were piazzas
with fringed Mexican hammocks, wild-grass cushions, a tea-table with a
samo