longings of those dreams were half-veiled in her eyes, looking
out shyly as if afraid of wounding her guardians by full revelation.
She wanted to meet life, to take a place in the world--but what would
then become of Willock and Bill?

"Bill used to live seven miles away at the mountain with the
precipice," she went on, after she had told about the wonderful window.
"But it was too far off. When he got to know me, it tired him, walking
this far twice a day, morning and night,--didn't it, Bill! So at last
Brick and Bill decided to cut some cedars from the mountain and make me
a cabin,--they took the dugout to sleep in. There are two rooms in the
cabin, one, the kitchen where we eat--and the other, my parlor where I
sleep. Some time you shall visit me in the cabin, if Brick and Bill
are willing. They made it for me, so I couldn't ask anybody in, unless
they said so."

"We aren't far enough along," observed Bill, "to be shut up together
under a roof."

"I'd like to have you visit my parlor," Lahoma said somewhat wistfully.
"I'd like to show you all my books--they were Bill's when we first met
him, but since then he's given me everything he's got, haven't you, old
Bill!" Lahoma leaned over and patted the unyielding shoulder.

Bill stared moodily at the top of the mountain as if in a gloomy
trance, but Wilfred fancied he moved that honored shoulder a trifle
nearer the girl.

She resumed, her face glowing with sudden rapture: "There are six
books--half a dozen! Maybe you've heard of some of them. Bill's read
'em over lots of times. He begins with the first on the shelf and when
he's through the row, he just takes 'em up, all over again. I like to
read parts of them--the interesting parts. This is the way they stand
on the shelf: The Children of the Abbey--that's Bill's favorite; The
Scottish Chiefs, David Copperfield, The Talisman, The Prairie, The Last
of the Mohicans."

"I like The Children of the Abbey best, too," observed Brick Willock
thoughtfully. "Lahoma, she's read 'em all to me; that's the way we get
through the winter months. They's something softening and enriching
about that there Children of the Abbey; and Scottish Chiefs has got
some mighty high work in it, too. I tells Lahoma that I guess them two
books is just about as near the real thing out in the big world as you
can get. David Copperfield is sort of slow; I've went with people that
knowed a powerful sight more than them characters in