way. They were not ambitious and they were not adventurous and they hated letting go of their children. It was bad enough to have a son marooned in a mining camp without losing a daughter in the same way. Only downright persuasion by the daughter, combined with remembrance of quite unalarming letters from the son resulted in the desired permission.

“After all, if Emma’s parents let her go down there, I suppose we needn’t be afraid,” said Mrs. Street, who disliked argument.

“In my opinion, Emma’s parents are fools,” replied Mr. Street, sternly. “Or else, like us, they’ve raised a daughter they can’t control.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way, Elbridge!”

“I would. You might as well look things in the face.” 31

31

“But, Father, you know Bob’s part of the country has been very calm; and I never get a chance to do anything interesting! You sat down on me when I wanted to drive a motor truck in France——”

Any father can continue this lament from memory. The discussion had ended as discussions with spoiled children usually end. There had been a hurried packing and the familiar trip across the continent. It was only when she alighted at a border town and after some anxious hours waiting to have her passports viséd and her transportation arranged, embarked on the shabby south-bound train on the other side, that Polly fully realized the expedition to which she was committed.

Up to this time her thoughts had been of the life she was leaving, and, it must be admitted, of Joyce Henderson. From Illinois to Texas she told herself exactly what she thought of a man who could so boldly and plainly and with such an evident relief accept his dismissal at the hands of the girl he had claimed to love; but by the time the train had jogged through miles of queer brownish yellow country, dotted with mesquite and punctured with cactus, relieved here and there by foothills, and frowned upon by distant mountains, her meditations assumed a more cheerful complexion.

The outlook, monotonous as it was, fascinated her. There were adobe houses with brown youngsters playing in the scanty shade, much as one sees them in New Mexico and Arizona; there were uprooted rails and the ruins of burned cars—evidences of 

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