“To be quite frank with you,” said the doctor, “I’m a little glad too that things have turned out like this. I hated to see Mrs. Reemy sink fifty thousand dollars in opal mines, so I offered to go in with her. So did Andy. But all three of us have about as much need for an opal mine as we have for two noses. Just the same, I was willing to put my shoulder under a third of the proposition to please Mrs. Reemy and help her out with her great adventure. But now, as I said, I’m rather satisfied that it has turned out as it has.” “You like to see the fire flash in her brown eyes when she talks about her big adventure, don’t you, Doctor?” Mary Temple shot at him. Dr. Shonto laughed, though by no means mirthfully. “What do you mean by that?” he asked. Mary’s faded eyes looked at him steadily, and the thin nostrils of her long nose twitched squirrel-like. “Oh, you know what I mean,” she lashed out. “I can read the signs. Well, I never was a body to hold my tongue. I say what I think. And now I’m thinking that I’d rather see you get her than your friend Mr. Jerome. He may be all right, so far as men go, but he’s too much like her to suit me. Too young and rattle-headed. You could tone her down a bit. But Jerome’ll get her--that’s plain. She’s in love with him this minute. But it won’t last, Doctor. There’ll be a divorce if they marry. Then you can step in. But for my part I’d rather see her single.” “I think,” said Shonto soberly, “that in your youth you must have sung an old ditty that comes to my mind-- “What are the little girls made out of? What are the little girls made out of? Sugar and spice and everything nice-- That’s what the little girls are made out of. “What are the little boys made out of? What are the little boys made out of? Rats and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails-- That’s what the little boys are made out of.” “You have a pretty good bass voice,” was all that Mary said, as she began slicing bacon on the bottom of a bucket. CHAPTER IX A CASE FOR REJUVENATION CHARMIAN REEMY received the news of the flight of Leach and the Morleys with equanimity. “I have been afraid for some time,” she asserted at breakfast, “that there was something wrong. Oh, well, it doesn’t greatly matter. I never should have considered buying the opal claims, anyway, if it hadn’t been necessary to do it in order to get the location of the Valley of Arcana. And Shirttail Henry ought to be able to at least show us how to get a peep at it.” “Charmian Reemy, you’re going home,” announced Mary stiffly. “Wrong again, Mary Temple. We’re going to find the Valley of Arcana and explore it.” “Then I’ll not move another foot, Charmian. That’s flat.” “So is the desert,” said Charmian demurely, “and to spend the remainder of your life on it, Mary Temple, would be frightfully monotonous.” “You know what I mean well enough,” snapped Mary. “I’ll find a way to get home without you.”