"I can't help picturing things out beforehand, the way I'd like to have them be. I've done it all my life. The rehearsing is always more fun, though, than the actual happening. Now when I went away to school last year, every time I'd wake up that last night in the sleeping-car, I'd plan just what I'd say and how I'd act to make my entrance to Warwick Hall imposing. I could actually see myself sweeping in to make a good impression on Madam Chartley, and you know what happened! My hat was cocked over one ear, the wire sticking out through the loops of ribbon, and Madam caught me jumping up and down to try every seat in the reception-room, one after the other." Jack chuckled, glad to see some of Mary's cheerfulness returning. "And then," she continued, "you remember when we met Phil and Elsie Tremont on the train, as we were going out to Arizona to live?" Jack nodded. "I was only nine years old then, but for weeks I thought of Phil as a sort of young god--a regular Apollo, and I pictured all sorts of scenes in which I should be a prominent personage at our next meeting. And when he _did_ come I was sprinting down the road in a cloud of dust, hatless and breathless and purple in the face, crying, and crazy with fright, because I thought that a harmless old Indian who chanced to be riding down the same road, was chasing me. How Phil does laugh every time that is mentioned!" Mary was sitting up straight on the boulder now, her face dimpling as she recalled these various predicaments. "Then there's the time the Little Colonel visited us at the Wigwam. Hadn't I dreamed of that first meeting for weeks--what we'd say and what she'd say? Me in my rosebud sash and best embroidered white gown. But she caught you and Joyce at the wash-tub, and I had to take my first peep at her, crouched down in an irrigating ditch on my way home from school, all inky and dirty and torn. "But I don't think I've done quite so much romancing since Betty gave me my Good Times book and preached me that little sermon on being self-conscious," Mary chattered on. "She said that my always thinking of the impression I was making on people, and being so eager to please was what made me miserable when I fell short of my expectations. She said that I ought to copy Lloyd. That her greatest charm was her utter unconsciousness of self. I think that is Betty's too. She's _such_ a darling."