There were a dozen interesting things to do everyday. A Mexican saddle with its high pommel and cantle, was fascinating after an English one. Foothills and arroyos were a charming part of one's walk after the boulevards and parks of Chicago. She hugely enjoyed chatting in sign language with the Mexicans and Indians on the place, and before a week had passed she had picked up a number of Spanish phrases which she used with delighted inaccuracy. She believed that of the men she liked Hard the best. He was the type of man she had always admired; the best type of an American gentleman, a man of good old family traditions, quiet and unassuming and yet full of a pleasant humor. She wondered what had brought him to Mexico--an unhappy love affair with the lady who sang? But Hard was not a man of whom one asked personal questions so she did not find out. Scott, however, was the man who really interested Polly Street though she did not realize it. Much of that interest was due to the fact that he apparently did not care whether he interested her or not. One moment they would be on excellent terms, and the next he would have forgotten her. "That young man," said Polly, sagely, "understands the art of making himself popular. He knows it irritates a woman to see a man absolutely indifferent to her. It's more than flesh and blood can stand. So he acts that way, for it's a pose, of course. Just for that I'm going to make him like me--if I can spare the time." In this she wronged Marc Scott, who was quite innocent of the art of posing, and whose mind was on other things these days than young women. One day, about a fortnight after Polly's arrival, she and Scott rode over to a little village hidden in the mountains some ten miles away. It was a warm day and they were long on the road. It was nearing sundown when they came within sight of Athens. Polly, as usual, was talking: "They're such queer people--Mexicans. They can't run their own country and they don't want anybody else to come in and run it for them." "I wouldn't call that queer," replied Scott. "Chances are that if they let someone else in, there wouldn't be enough country left for them to put in their eye, and they darn well know it." "Not necessarily," replied the girl, sturdily. "We didn't gobble up Cuba. We just helped them to get on their feet." "Cuba's a different proposition. Cuba was being coerced by an European power and, of course, we had to stop it. Mexico is in the hands of her own people and if you give them time they may make something of her. Then, there's the oil question. That's sort of soured the native population on us. You'd never persuade a live Mexican that the U. S. came over here for anything in the world but to grab the oil lands--whether the U. S. was innocent or not." "I suppose not, and a good many of us wouldn't be innocent, would we?"