fragrant cat-claw bushes for the gold they stored in their wild treasure-houses in the cliffs. Not far away a gambrel partridge gallantly assured his plump gray mate, who sat on the nest in the shelter of a tall mescal plant, that there was no danger. A Sonora pigeon, from the top of a lone sahuaro, called his soft, deep-throated mating call. And a vermilion flycatcher sprang into the air from his perch near-by and climbed higher and higher into the blue and then, after holding himself aloft for a moment, puffed out his red feathers, and, twittering in a mad love ecstasy, came drifting back like a brilliant-colored thistle bloom, or an oversized and fiery-tinted dandelion tuft.

Marta’s teacher had not forgotten that the Pardners had trusted him to tell their girl the things that they—Saint Jimmy and his mother—were agreed she should know. And Saint Jimmy meant to tell her. But somehow this did not seem to be the time. He stole a look at the girl lying on the rocks. No, this was not the time. He could not tell her{64} just now. He would wait. Some other time, perhaps, it would be easier.

{64}

“Jimmy,” said the girl at last, and her words came slowly as if she spoke out of the haze of her dreams, “when you went to school—I don’t mean when you were just a little boy, but when you were almost a man—was it a big school?”

Saint Jimmy did not answer at once, then, without taking his eyes from what ever it was that he was looking at in the distance, he said:

“Why, yes, it was a fairly large school.”

“And were there both men and women students?”

“Yes, there were a good many women in the University, and a few in the medical school, where I finally finished.”

“I expect you had lots of friends, didn’t you, Jimmy? I should think you would—men and women friends both. And I suppose there were all kinds of good times—parties and dances and picnics.”

Doctor Burton turned suddenly to look at her. “What in the world are you driving at now?”

“Please, Jimmy,” she said wistfully, “I want to know.”

And something made him look away again.

“I suppose I had my share of friends,” he answered. “And there was a reasonable amount of fun, as there always is at school, you know. 

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