all Lombardy poplars were throwing
long shadows on the green sward of the terraces, and from the window she
could see the garden, lying so sweet and still in the drowse of the late
afternoon that she longed to be down in it. She hurried to change the
rumpled shirt-waist in which she had finished her journey and done her
unpacking, for a fresh white dress. It was proof that the room was
exerting some influence to make her like her model, that even in her
haste she made a careful toilet. Remembering how dainty and
thorough-going Lloyd always was in her dressing, she scrubbed away until
every vestige of travel-stain was gone. All fresh and rosy, down to her
immaculate finger-tips, she scanned herself in the mirror, from the
carefully tied bow in her hair to the carefully tied bows on her
slippers, and nodded approvingly. She could stand inspection now from
the whole row of them--all those girls on the other side of the
looking-glass, who somehow seemed so near and real to her.

As she turned away from the mirror, her glance rested on the little
group of home pictures she had put up over her bed. The tents and tiny
two-roomed cottage that they called Ware's Wigwam looked small and
cramped compared to this great Hall with its wide corridors and spacious
rooms. It had always seemed to Mary that she was born to live in kings'
houses, she so enjoyed luxurious surroundings, but a homesick pang
seized her now, as she looked down on the picture and remembered that
she could never go back to it.

"It doesn't seem as if I have any home now," she sighed, "for I didn't
stay long enough in the new place at Lone-Rock to get used to it. I know
I shall always love the Wigwam best, and when I think of it standing
empty or maybe turned over to strangers, it makes me feel as if one of
my best friends had died. I'm glad we took so many pictures of it, and
that I kept a record of all the good times we had there. Oh, that
reminds me! There's one more thing I must do before sundown--bring my
diary up to date. I haven't written a line in it for six weeks."

The out-doors was too alluring to waste another moment in the house,
however, so gathering up her diary and fountain-pen, she went down
stairs and out into the garden, feeling as the gate swung to behind her
that she was stepping into an old, old English garden belonging to some
ducal estate. Coming as she did straight from the edge of the desert,
with its burning stretches of sand, its cact