she is the best swimming teacher they’ve ever had here at camp.  Once they had an instructor who had a special liking for a certain girl who couldn’t manage to learn to swim, and because that girl was wild to go in a canoe on one of the trips the instructor pretended that she had given her an individual test on the afternoon before the trip, and told Mrs. Grayson the girl had passed it.  The girl was allowed to go in a canoe and on the trip it upset and she was very nearly drowned before the others realized that she could not swim.  Tiny isn’t like that,” she continued.  “She would lose her best friend rather than tell a lie to get her a favor that she didn’t deserve.  I hate cheats!” she burst out vehemently, her fine eyes flashing.  “If girls can’t win honors fairly they ought to go without them.”

This random conversation upon one and another of the phases of camp life, illustrating as it did Mary’s rigid code of honor, was destined to recur many times to Agony in the weeks that followed, with a poignant force that etched every one of Mary’s speeches ineradicably upon her brain.  Just now it was nothing more to her than small talk to which she replied in kind.

They stopped after a bit to drink from a clear spring that bubbled up in the path, and sat down to rest awhile under a huge tree.  Mary leaned her head back against the trunk and drawing a small book from her sweater pocket she opened it upon her knee.

“What is the book?” asked Agony.

“The Desert Garden, by Edwin Langham,” replied Mary.

“Oh, do you know The Desert Garden?” cried Agony in delighted wonder.  “I’ve actually lived on that book for the last two years.  I’m wild about Edwin Langham.  I’ve read every word he’s ever written.  Have you read The Silent Years?”

Mary nodded.

“The Lost Chord?  I think that’s the most wonderful book I’ve ever read, that and The Desert Garden. If I could ever see and speak to Edwin Langham I should die from happiness.  I’ve never felt that way about any other author.  When I read his books I feel reverent somehow, as if I were in church, although there isn’t a word of religion in them.  The things he writes are so fine and true and noble; he must be that way himself.  Do you remember that part about the bird in The Desert Garden, the bird with the broken wing, that would never fly again, singing to the lame man who would never walk?  And the flower that was so determined to blossom that it grew in the desert and bloomed there?”

“Yes,” answered Mary, “it was very beautiful.”

“It’s the most beautiful thing that was ever written!” declared Agony enthusiastically.  “It would be the greatest joy of my life to see the man who wrote those books.”

“Maybe you will, some day,” said Mary, rising from her mossy seat and preparing to take the path again.

It was not long after that that they came to the edge of the woods, and saw before them the scattered houses of the little village of Atlantis.  Mary’s old nurse was overjoyed to see her, and pressed the two girls to stay and eat big soft ginger cookies on the shady back porch, and quench their thirst with glasses of cool milk, while she inquired minutely after the health of Mary’s “ma” and “pa.”