curiously.

[39]“Why, you’re not going along, are you, Doctor?” asked the girl.

[39]

“If I’m welcome, I am,” he stated.

“Why, of course you’re welcome!” cried Andy. “But—but I’m surprised, Doctor.”

“Don’t let it affect you too seriously, Andy,” said Shonto, with his quiet smile. “Don’t you suppose that I am interested in a project like this one?”

“But you weren’t the other day,” his friend pointed out.

“The other day is not to-day,” said the doctor. “In other words, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll be frank. I wouldn’t consider going at all if Mrs. Reemy weren’t taking the matter up. I think she’ll need my mature judgment in many things; and I mean to go along—if she wants me to—and give her the benefit of it.”

“Nothing would delight me more than to have you go, Doctor,” Charmian said quickly. “But can you spare the time?”

“I can,” he replied. “I haven’t had a real vacation in the past ten years. And it strikes me that a fellow might run across some new medicinal herbs up in your Valley of Arcana. For all we know, there may be valuable scientific phenomena in that valley that only await discovery. Your valley, Mrs. Reemy, tempts me more than the opal mines. But to find the location of the valley, it seems, we must tackle the mines. So if everything turns out satisfactorily when we get to the Shinbone Country, I’ll go partners with you on the opal project.”

[40]“Let’s make it a triple partnership,” Andy suggested.

[40]

“That suits me,” said Charmian. “To be frank, I hardly wanted to go into the thing alone. This is going to be my life’s big adventure—the adventure that I have been planning for and longing for and waiting for for several years. This looks like the big opportunity at last—and I’m going to take a chance.”

And here a new voice piped up.

“Charmian Reemy,” said Mary Temple, “you are not going down into that hideous country with the hideous name 

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