ntly early in the morning. So at this young
and tender hour, with many misgivings, Mary set about preparing her _al
fresco_ class-room.

She chose a nice, flat little piece of the United States, situated in the
shade of the clump of willows that bordered a trickling creek not far from
her sylvan bath-room of the early morning. How she was to sit on the
ground all day and yet preserve a properly pedagogical demeanor was the
first question to be settled. That there was nothing even remotely
resembling a chair in camp she felt reasonably assured, as "paw" was
sitting on an inverted soap-box under a pine-tree, and "paw," by reason of
age and infirmity, appropriated all luxuries. Mrs. Yellett, with her usual
acumen, grasped the situation.

"I'm figgerin'," she commented, "that there must be easier ways of
governin' than sittin' up like a prairie-dog while you're at it."

Mrs. Yellett took a hurried survey of the camp, lessening the distance
between herself and one of the light wagons with a gait in which grace was
entirely subservient to speed; then, with one capacious wrench of the
arms, she loosened the spring seat from the wagon and bore it to the
governess with an artless air of triumph. It was difficult, under these
circumstances, to explain to Mrs. Yellett that without that symbol of
scholastic authority, a desk, the wagon seat was useless. Nevertheless,
Mary set forth, with all her eloquence, the mission of a desk. Mrs.
Yellett was genuinely depressed. Had she imported the magician without his
wand--Aladdin without his lamp? She proposed a bewildering choice--an
inverted wash-tub, two buckets sustaining the relation of caryatides to a
board, the sheet-iron cooking-stove. In an excess of solicitude she even
suggested robbing "paw" of his soap-box.

Mary chose the wash-tub on condition that Mrs. Yellett consented to
sacrifice the handles in the cause of lower education. She felt that an
inverted tub that was likely to see-saw during class hours would tend
rather to develop a sense of humor in her pupils than to contribute to her
pedagogical dignity.

The camp, as may already have been inferred, enjoyed a matriarchal form of
government. Its feminine dictator was no exception to the race of
autocrats in that she was not an absolute stranger to the rosy byways of
self-indulgence. There was a strenuous quality in her pleasuring perhaps
not inconsistent in one whose daily tasks included sheep-herding,
ditch-digging, var