eyes and the eager clasping of her hands as she spoke of him wanted to
hear more. She was sure that in these naïve confessions she would find
the key-note to Mary's character. So with a few well chosen questions
she encouraged her to go on, till she had gathered a very accurate idea
of the conditions which had produced this wholesome enthusiastic little
creature, almost a woman in some respects, the veriest child in others.

Mary had had an uneventful life, she judged, limited to the narrow
bounds of a Kansas village, and later to the still narrower circle of
experiences in the lonely little home they had made on the edge of the
desert, when Mrs. Ware's quest of health led them to Arizona. But it was
a life that had been lifted out of the ordinary by the brave spirit
which made a jest of poverty, and held on to the refining influences
even while battling back the wolf from the door. It had made a family of
philosophers of them, able to extract pleasure from trifles, and to
find it where most people would never dream of looking.

As she listened, Madam began to feel warmly drawn to the entire family
who had taken the good old Vicar of Wakefield for an example, and
adopted one of his sayings as a rule of life: "Let us be inflexible and
fortune will at last turn in our favour."

Mary had no intention of revealing so much personal history, but she had
to quote the motto to show how triumphantly it had worked out in their
case and what a grand turn fortune had taken in their favour after so
many years of struggle to keep inflexible in the face of repeated
disappointments and troubles. It had turned for all of them. Joyce,
after several years of work and worry with her bees, had realized enough
from them to start on her career as an artist. Holland was at Annapolis
in training for the navy. Within the last six weeks Jack's promotion had