the burden of keeping down those
threatening tears.

It was only a bare, plain room with unfinished walls, rough woodwork, a
cheap wooden bed, a bureau with a warped looking-glass, and on the floor
was a braided rug of rags. A little wooden rocker, another small,
straight wooden chair, a hanging wall-pocket decorated with purple
roses, a hanging bookshelf composed of three thin boards strung together
with maroon picture cord, a violently colored picture-card of "Moses in
the Bulrushes" framed in straws and red worsted, and bright-blue paper
shades at the windows. That was the room!

How different from her room at home, simply and sweetly finished anew
for her home-coming from college! It rose before her homesick vision
now. Soft gray walls, rose-colored ceiling, blended by a wreath of
exquisite wild roses, whose pattern was repeated in the border of the
simple curtains and chair cushions, white-enamel furniture, pretty brass
bed soft as down in its luxurious mattress, spotless and inviting
always. She glanced at the humpy bed with its fringed gray spread and
lumpy-looking pillows in dismay. She had not thought of little
discomforts like that, yet how they loomed upon her weary vision now!

The tiny wooden stand with its thick, white crockery seemed ill
substitute for the dainty white bath-room at home. She had known she
would not have her home luxuries, of course, but she had not realized
until set down amid these barren surroundings what a difference they
would make.

Going to the window and looking out, she saw for the first tune the one
luxury the little room possessed--a view! And such a view! Wide and
wonderful and far it stretched, in colors unmatched by painter's brush,
a purple mountain topped by rosy clouds in the distance. For the second
time in Arizona her soul was lifted suddenly out of itself and its
dismay by a vision of the things that God has made and the largeness of
it all.

CHAPTER VI

For some time she stood and gazed, marveling at the beauty and recalling
some of the things her companion of the afternoon had said about his
impressions of the place; then suddenly there loomed a dark speck in the
near foreground of her meditation, and, looking down annoyed, she
discovered the minister like a gnat between the eye and a grand
spectacle, his face turned admiringly up to her window, his hand lifted
in familiar greeting.

Vexed at his familiarity, she turned quickly and jerked down the sh