me to Warwick Hall was that she had been here. Would you believe
it?" she rattled on, "Last night on the sleeping-car I counted up
forty-two good reasons for wanting to come here to school."

It had been many a moon since Mary's remarks had met with such
flattering attention. Not realizing she was being studied she felt that
Madam was genuinely interested. It encouraged her to go on.

"Jack gave me my choice of all the schools in the United States, and I
chose this without hesitating an instant. Jack is paying my expenses you
know. I couldn't have come a step if it hadn't been for him, and there
wouldn't have been the faintest shadow of a hope of coming if he hadn't
been promoted to the position of assistant manager at the mines. Oh,
Madam Chartley, I _wish_ you knew Jack! He's just the dearest brother
that ever lived! So unselfish and so ambitious for us all"--

She stopped abruptly, feeling that she was letting her enthusiasm run
away with her tongue. But Madam, noting the quick leap of light to her
eyes and the eager clasping of her hands as she spoke of him wanted to
hear more. She was sure that in these naive confessions she would find
the key-note to Mary's character. So with a few well chosen questions
she encouraged her to go on, till she had gathered a very accurate idea
of the conditions which had produced this wholesome enthusiastic little
creature, almost a woman in some respects, the veriest child in others.

Mary had had an uneventful life, she judged, limited to the narrow
bounds of a Kansas village, and later to the still narrower circle of
experiences in the lonely little home they had made on the edge of the
desert, when Mrs. Ware's quest of health led them to Arizona. But it was
a life that had been lifted out of the ordinary by the brave spirit
which made a jest of poverty, and held on to the refining influences
even while battling back the wolf from the door. It had made a family of
philosophers of them, able to extract pleasure from trifles, and to
find it where most people would never dream of looking.

As she listened, Madam began to feel warmly drawn to the entire family
who had taken the good old Vicar of Wakefield for an example, and
adopted one of his sayings as a rule of life: "Let us be inflexible and
fortune will at last turn in our favour."

Mary had no intention of revealing so much personal history, but she had
to quote the motto to show how triumphantly it had worked out in their