"It strikes me, young man," she said, a trifle sarcastically, "that the
more some people get the more they want. Your wishes seem to be on the
Jack's Bean-stalk scale. They grow to reach the sky in a single night.
Suppose you did have those things, you wouldn't be satisfied. It would
be a zebra and a giraffe and a jungle tiger next."

"No, it wouldn't," he declared. "I wouldn't know how to take care of
them, but I do know how to feed the things that live around here."

"What do you want them for?"

"Well, you know what Huldah said about summer campers. There's always a
lot of boys along, and if I had a sort of menagerie they'd want to come
over and play circus, and then they'd let me in on their ball-games and
things. It's awful lonesome with school out and Billy Downs gone back
East. There's so few fellows here my age, and Jack won't let me play
much with the little Mexicans. They aren't much fun anyhow when I can't
talk their lingo."

Mary straightened up, hammer in hand, and squinted her eyes
thoughtfully, a way she had when something puzzled her. It had not
occurred to her that Norman had social longings like her own which
Lone-Rock failed to satisfy. He watched her anxiously. That preoccupied
squint always meant that interesting developments would follow.

"Norman Ware," she said, slowly, "I didn't give you credit for being a
genius, but you are as great in one way as Emerson. You've hit on one of
his ideas all by yourself. He said, 'If a man can write a better book,
preach a better sermon or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbours,
though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten
track to his door,' If you want company as bad as all that, you _shall_
have a beaten track to your door. We'll build something better than the
neighbours ever dreamed of, and it won't be a mouse-trap, either.
There's enough old lumber here to build half a dozen cages, and if
you'll pay for the wire netting out of your share of the garden profits,
I'll help you put up a menagerie that P.T. Barnum himself wouldn't have
been ashamed of."

Norman's answer was a whoop and a double somersault, and he came up on
his feet again remarking that she was worth all the fellows in Lone-Rock
put together.

"According to what you've just said that isn't very much of a
compliment," laughed Mary. Still it gratified her so much that presently
she was planning a side-show for the menagerie. There were all her
mounted spec