p into
the Indian, and the bottle was knocked out of my hand and broke with a
crash.

I was horrified at the catastrophe. The medicine cost fifty cents. My
mother had given me the last money in the house. I must not be without
my medicine; the dispensary doctor was very emphatic about that. It
would be dreadful to get sick and have to stay out of school. What was
to be done?

I made up my mind in less than five minutes. I went back to the drug
store and asked for Mr. Pastor himself. He knew me; he often sold me
postage stamps, and joked about my large correspondence, and heard a
good deal about my friends. He came out, on this occasion, from his
little office in the back of the store; and I told him of my accident,
and that there was no more money at home, and asked him to give me
another bottle, to be paid for as soon as possible. My father had a
job as night watchman in a store. I should be able to pay very soon.

"Certainly, my dear, certainly," said Mr. Pastor; "very glad to oblige
you. It's doing you good, isn't it?--That's right. You're such a
studious young lady, with all those books, and so many letters to
write--you need something to build you up. There you are.--Oh, don't
mention it! Any time at all. And lookout for wild Indians!"

Of course we were great friends after that, and this is the way my
troubles often ended on Dover Street. To bump into a wooden Indian was
to bump into good luck, a hundred times a week. No wonder I was happy
most of the time.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BURNING BUSH

Just when Mrs. Hutch was most worried about the error of my ways, I
entered on a new chapter of adventures, even more remote from the cash
girl's career than Latin and geometry. But I ought not to name such
harsh things as landladies at the opening of the fairy story of my
girlhood. I have reached what was the second transformation of my
life, as truly as my coming to America was the first great
transformation.

Robert Louis Stevenson, in one of his delightful essays, credits the
lover with a feeling of remorse and shame at the contemplation of that
part of his life which he lived without his beloved, content with his
barren existence. It is with just such a feeling of remorse that I
look back to my bookworm days, before I began the study of natural
history outdoors; and with a feeling of shame akin to the lover's I
confess how late in my life nature took the first place in my
affections.

The subject of n