el abode in their tents and journeyed
not._' And I thought that among so many, there must have been a lot of
them who were impatient to get on to their promised land; who fretted
and fumed when day after day the pillar of cloud never lifted to lead
them on. I'd have been like that. If we could only know how long we have
to stay in a place it would make it lots easier. Now, if I had known
last fall that eight months would go by and find me still here in
Lone-Rock, I'd have made up my mind to the inevitable and settled down
comfortably. It's the dreadful uncertainty that is so hard to bear."

Just then the phonograph started up one of its old records. "_I want
what I want when I want it!_" They both looked up and laughed at each
other.

"That is the cry of the ages," said Mrs. Ware merrily. "I've no doubt
that even the tribes of Israel had some version of that same song, and
wailed it often on the march. But their very impatience showed that they
were not fit to go on towards their conquest of Canaan."

"Then you think that _I_ am not fitted yet to take possession of my
Canaan?" Mary asked quickly.

"I don't know, dear," was the hesitating answer, "but I've come to
believe that every one who reaches the best that life holds for him
reaches it through some Desert of Waiting. You remember that legend of
old Camelback Mountain, don't you?"

Mary nodded, and Mrs. Ware quoted softly, "No one fills his crystal vase
till he has been pricked by the world's disappointments and bowed by its
tasks. . . . Oh, thou vendor of salt, is not any waiting worth the while,
if in the end it give thee wares with which to gain a royal entrance?"

Mary waited a moment, then with an impatient shrug of her shoulders
picked up her embroidery hoops again. In her present mood it irritated
her to be told that waiting was good for her. The legend itself
irritated her. She wondered how any one could find any comfort in it,
least of all her mother, whose life had been so largely a desert of hard
work and hard times.

Presently, as if in answer to her thought, Mrs. Ware looked up, saying,
"You spoke just now of the call of the road. It is strange how strongly
I've felt it all afternoon, only my call takes me backward. I've been
living over little scenes that I haven't thought of before in years;
hearing little things your father said when Joyce and Jack were babies;
seeing the neighbors back in Plainsville. Maybe that is one reason I am
not impati