rms, and the next he would have forgotten her.

"That young man," said Polly, sagely, "understands the art of making
himself popular. He knows it irritates a woman to see a man absolutely
indifferent to her. It's more than flesh and blood can stand. So he acts
that way, for it's a pose, of course. Just for that I'm going to make him
like me--if I can spare the time."

In this she wronged Marc Scott, who was quite innocent of the art of
posing, and whose mind was on other things these days than young women.

One day, about a fortnight after Polly's arrival, she and Scott rode over
to a little village hidden in the mountains some ten miles away. It was a
warm day and they were long on the road. It was nearing sundown when they
came within sight of Athens. Polly, as usual, was talking:

"They're such queer people--Mexicans. They can't run their own country and
they don't want anybody else to come in and run it for them."

"I wouldn't call that queer," replied Scott. "Chances are that if they let
someone else in, there wouldn't be enough country left for them to put in
their eye, and they darn well know it."

"Not necessarily," replied the girl, sturdily. "We didn't gobble up Cuba.
We just helped them to get on their feet."

"Cuba's a different proposition. Cuba was being coerced by an European
power and, of course, we had to stop it. Mexico is in the hands of her own
people and if you give them time they may make something of her. Then,
there's the oil question. That's sort of soured the native population on
us. You'd never persuade a live Mexican that the U. S. came over here for
anything in the world but to grab the oil lands--whether the U. S. was
innocent or not."

"I suppose not, and a good many of us wouldn't be innocent, would we?"

"Afraid not. You see, the oil business has developed to an importance far
beyond everything else down here. When this man, Carranza, went into
office, he went in under what they call the Constitution of 1917. It
provides that the State is entitled to retain what they call 'subsoil
rights.' That is, they don't want to sell oil lands or mines outright,
they just lease them.

"Now, if they should decide, and a lot of them want to, that that
Constitution is retroactive--and undermines the titles of land that's
already owned by foreign capital, there'd be a lot of influence brought to
bear to make trouble."

"That would affect our mine, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, but mines are pretty s