he shelf where pens,
ink and money-order blanks awaited the needs of the public. Mary had
often occupied it, and from this perch had given the Captain some of the
most amusing hours of his life.

He had missed her when she went away to school, and he never handed out
the letters to her family post-marked "Warwick Hall" without a vision of
the friendly little girl swinging her feet from her seat on this high
stool, as she told him amazing tales of Ware's Wigwam and a place
somewhere off in Kentucky that she seemed to regard as a cross between
the Land of Beulah and the Garden of Eden. When she came back from
Warwick Hall she no longer dangled her feet, but sat in more grown-up
fashion, her toes propped on the round below. And she seldom stayed
long. There was too much to be done at home, with Jack needing such
constant attention. But her short accounts of boarding-school life were
like glimpses into a strange world, and he carried home all she told to
repeat to his wife; for in an out-of-the-way corner of the universe,
where little happens, the most trivial things are accounted of vital
interest.

Now he had many questions to ask about Jack's recovery. It was a matter
of household rejoicing in Lone-Rock that he had come back able to take
his old place among them. Mary satisfied his curiosity and gave a brief
outline of their doings while away, but she had questions of her own to
ask. How was Aunt Sally Doane? The Captain's wife was "Aunt Sally" by
courtesy to the entire settlement. Was her rheumatism better, and was
the old red rooster still alive? Was it true that Mr. Moredock was an
author, and how many young people had the new families brought with
them?

But all roads led to the Rome of her heart's desire, and between her
questions and the Captain's she kept jumping back, grasshopper-like, to
the subject uppermost in her mind. His cordial interest, unlike her
family's half-hearted consenting, led her into further confidences.

"Jack wants me to wait awhile and study at home until he can afford to
send me back to Warwick Hall, but I might be in my twenties before that
time, and the girls in my classes would be so much younger that they'd
look upon me as a hoary old patriarch. Of course I'd be better equipped
for what I hope to do eventually, but it would give me such a late
start, and there are a number of things that I am fitted to do right
now. Besides, it would handicap Jack to spend so much on me. It's only
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