Across the street was a little patch of green corn. I went to the house and asked the woman if she would sell me a few ears. She told me that they were leaving the next morning--moving away--as her husband could not make a living. He was a professor of languages from Massachusetts, a cultivated gentleman! When he rode up on horseback I went out and shook hands with him, and laughingly said: “I am your long-lost sister from Massachusetts.” He was off his horse and bowing in a Chesterfieldian manner. “You are most welcome, madam; but, alas! we have nothing to offer you.” “Oh, but you have, sir--the pleasure of meeting you both and some of your green corn.” He picked me a half-dozen ears, and when I offered to pay him, he said, “Please, no!” He asked where we were from. “The East sounds very far away. I wonder if I shall ever see it again.” I gave one of the children a dollar, and returned with my precious corn, which the good-natured Irish cook boiled to a rock for our supper. There was a small piazza in front of our room, the only place to sit except in the street or in the private parlor of the family. The moon was coming up over the distant mountain, red as blood and big as a cart-wheel. While we were getting cool and enjoying the scene, Mary appeared with the remainder of the raw meat, saying: “We put it out here to keep cool; there ain’t no ice in this hole of a place. I’m going to leave first of September. Gee, but I’ll be glad! They couldn’t hire me to stay here any longer for fifty dollars a month!” (She evidently felt that it was up to her to entertain us.) “Nothing but work and heat--and not even a movie!” “How early can we get breakfast?” “Seven o’clock. I wouldn’t get up before that for President Wilson.” (The picture of President and Mrs. Wilson in that place made us smile.) “Try a little vamping on Mary,” I suggested to friend husband. It worked. She called us at five, and by six we were out again on the desert, with the sun rising behind us, and Montello, the next town, 115 miles to the west.