? Well, this is the man who made the figures. His wife
is coming as chaperon for Miss Brisbane."

"She still needs a chaperon, does she?"

"It would seem so. Besides, Mrs. Parker goes everywhere with her
husband."

"I hope she'll be as nice as Mrs. Wilcox."

"I don't think Lawson would bring any crooked timber along--there must
be something worth while in them."

"Well, I am delighted, George. I confess I'm hungry for a message from
the outside world; and during the school vacation we can get away once
in a while to enjoy ourselves."

The certainty of the return of the artistic colony changed Curtis's
entire summer outlook. Work had dragged heavily upon him during February
and March, and there were moments when his enthusiasm ebbed. It was a
trying position. He began to understand how a man might start in his
duties with the most commendable desire, even solemn resolution, to be
ever kindly and patient and self-respecting, and end by cursing the
redmen and himself most impartially. Misunderstandings are so easy where
two races are forced into daily contact, without knowledge of each
other's speech, and with only a partial comprehension of each other's
outlook on the world. Some of the employes possessed a small vocabulary
of common Tetong words, but they could neither explain nor reason about
any act. They could only command. Curtis, by means of the sign language,
which he had carried to marvellous clearness and swiftness, was able to
make himself understood fairly well on most topics, but nevertheless
found himself groping at times in the obscure caverns of their thinking.

"Even after a man gets their thought he must comprehend the origin of
their motives," he said to Wilson, his clerk. "Everything they do has
meaning and sequence. They have developed, like ourselves, through
countless generations of life under relatively stable conditions. These
material conditions are now giving way, are vanishing, but the mental
traits they formed will persist. Think of this when you are impatient
with them."

Wilson took a pessimistic view. "I defy the angel Gabriel to keep his
temper if he should get himself appointed clerk. If I was a married man
I could make a better mark; but there it is--they can't see me." He
ended with a deep sigh.

Curtis took advantage of Lawson's letter to write again to Elsie, and
though he considered it a very polite and entirely circumspect
performance, his fervor of gladness burned through