Alta liked Sally, but they could never be chums. They both were playful and pure, but there was one strikingly essential difference in their natures that held them apart. Sally’s joys were found almost entirely in sensuous pleasures, such as dancing and feasting and riding the range; a good mince pie was more satisfying to her than a mountain sunset. She cared little for books and music. Alta thought her over bold with the boys. Their natures could never blend. Mary was nearer to Alta’s inner nature, a gentle little lass, who clung closely to her mother. She was too shy and dainty for the rugged ranch life. Alta wanted someone who liked the out-of-doors. Mary preferred to sit at home doing fancy work. They couldn’t find their fun together; and after all, fun and friendship are largely one and the same thing. Alta Morgan’s early life had cultivated in her a taste for something better than picnics and dances and beaux. She enjoyed such pleasures, but she found a richer enjoyment in books and in nature. The warblers that twittered and trilled their morning lays out of the breezy willows, the flush of crimson in the dawning sky, the mighty mountains in their many mystic moods--all gave to her soul such feelings as often brought tears. Her heart’s eyes were always open to the wonders of the world about her. And she found them everywhere, from the tender pale-blue flaxflower at her feet to the proud eagle, sailing with the winds in the clear blue above her. Life was joyous, full of riches, to this responsive, natural girl, developing day by day into queenly womanhood. Every day brought her new and interesting experiences that set her chattering with expressions of delight and appreciation. In these moods she would run home at first to Aunt ‘Liza; but she got only “Law me! child, that’s nuthin’,” so often that she gradually grew discouraged and closed her inmost heart to the practical-minded old lady. Her uncle tried to respond to her delight over the beautiful flower, or butterfly, or bird’s eggs she would bring to him; but somehow he couldn’t make his old bachelor’s heart be a child’s again, and Alta instinctively felt that he thought of it all as foolishness. Sally made fun of her for “talking so silly about the sunsets.” She found no comfort among these friends. Her heart grew lonely. She was longing for true companionship, for some one who could understand and share her delight in things really delightful, when Fred came into her life. He loved the things she loved. That was their bond of sympathy. His heart’s eyes were open, too, to the glories of the wonder-world; and he, too, had found the “open sesame” to another world--the world ideal hidden in the covers of great books.