“Yes, Susan; and I thought I would like to make a home there, where I and Pony could come and rest sometimes, ‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot.’ In a word, before I left the neighborhood I had purchased the barren island for a mere trifle, but all that it was worth at the time. It would never have paid as a plantation, Susan; but it was well adapted to the metamorphosis I made of it, by the three potent genii—Labor, Time and Money. Fifteen years ago it was a barren rock. You see what it is now.” “It is a paradise now,” said Susan with enthusiasm. “Yet a paradise that could not hold my restless spirit long. After spending one year here I left it in careful hands and resumed my travels, this second time accompanied only by Pony and such stranger guides and couriers as I could pick up _en route_.” Emolyn here paused so long that Susan Palmer inquired: “And where did you go, Miss Emolyn? Seems to me as you had seen all the world before.” “Not a hundredth part of it, Susan. But I did not go over the same ground. I sailed for Glasgow and then, without even landing, took ship for Christiana, Norway, and traveled over the extreme northern part of Europe, dwelling in the huts of the Lapps and Finns and making reindeer journeys from place to place. I saw the midnight sun.” “THE MIDNIGHT SUN, MISS EMOLYN!” exclaimed Susan in open-mouthed amazement. “Yes, Susan—it is a sublime and wonderful sight in those regions of eternal snow.” “Oome, I feared the poor lady was just a little demented, and now I know it,” thought Susan mournfully. “I passed through Russia and into Siberia, a voluntary exile. I spent a long summer on those savage steppes——” “Steps!” muttered Susan to herself with a sigh. “And then I moved southward without stopping until we reached Alexandria, in Egypt.” “‘Alexandria, in Egypt!’ Ah, dear, dear, how her mind wanders. Everybody knows Alexandria is in old Virginy,” moaned Susan to herself. “I am fatiguing you,” said Mrs. Lynn, perceiving her companion’s uneasiness. “I must be brief, Susan, and tell you in a few words that since that time, with the exception of an occasional summer of rest on the island here, I have spent all my days in travel. I have been all over the civilized and uncivilized world. I have been where few men and no women have ever gone before me—from Greenland to Terra del Fuego; from Behring Straits to Bermuda Isles on this hemisphere; from Cape North to Cape Colony, and from the coast of Guinea to the Sea of Kamtschatka on the other.” “What a life!” exclaimed Susan with a great sigh. “But of all the countries and the people that you saw, which did you like the best, Miss Emolyn?” “You will be surprised when you hear—I liked best to dwell among the Lapps and Finns!” Susan was not surprised, for she had got so “mixed in her mind,” as she said, that she really did not know but that the Lapps and Finns were the most enlightened of European people instead of being northern barbarians.