ar, the propriety?"

"Do you think Flap-Jacks would help any one out in propriety?" retorted
'Tana. "But we won't stumble over that question long, for I want to leave
the camp and go back to the Ferry."

"And then, 'Tana?"

"And then--I don't know, Mrs. Huzzard, to school, maybe--though I feel old
for that, older than either of you, I am sure--so old that I care nothing
for all the things I wanted less than a year ago. They are within my
reach now, yet I only want to rest--"

She did not finish the sentence.

Mrs. Huzzard, noticing the tired look in her eyes and the wistfulness of
her voice, reached out and patted her head affectionately.

"You want, first of all, to grow strong and hearty, like you used to
be--that is what you need first, then the rest will all come right in good
time. You'll want to see the theaters, and the pictures, and hear the fine
music you used to talk of. And you'll travel, and see all the fine places
you used to dream about. Then, maybe, you'll get ambitious, like you used
to be, about making pictures out of clay. For you can have fine teaching
now, you know, and you'll find, after a while, that the days will hardly
seem long enough for all the things you want to do. That is how it will be
when you get strong again."

'Tana tried to smile at the cheerful picture, but the smile was not a
merry one. Her attention was given to Lyster and Overton, whom she could
see from the tent door.

How tall and strong Dan looked! Was she to believe that story of him heard
last night? The very possibility of it made her cheeks burn at the thought
of how she had stood with his arm around her. And he had pitied her that
night. "Poor little girl!" he had said. Was his pity because he saw how
much he was to her, while he himself thought only of some one else? One
after another those thoughts had come to her through the sleepless night,
and when the day came she could not face him to speak to him of the
simplest thing. And of the money she must have, she could not ask him at
all. She wished she could have courage to go to him and tell him the
thing she had heard; but courage was not strong in her of late. The fear
that he might look indifferently on her and say, "Yes, it is true--what
then?"--the fear of that was so great that she had walked by the water's
edge, as the sun rose, and felt desperate enough to think of sleep under
the waves, as a temptation. For if it was true--

The two older women watched