At first Mary insisted on sending away Huldah, the faithful woman who had been the maid of all work in her absence, protesting that “a penny saved was a penny earned,” and that she herself was amply able to do the work, and that she could economize even if she couldn’t bring in any money to the family treasury.  But she was soon persuaded of the wisdom of keeping her.  The nurse was to leave as soon as Jack was able to sit up, and Mary would have her hands full then.  He would need constant attendance at first, the nurse told her, and since he could never take any exercise, only daily massage would keep up his strength.

“I shall begin teaching you how to give it just as soon as he rallies a little more,” the nurse promised, “You will have to be both hands and feet for him for many a week to come, poor boy, and feet always.  It is good that you are so strong and untiring yourself.”

For awhile Mary went about feeling like a visitor, since there was little for her to do either in kitchen or sick-room.  Jack had not yet reached the stage when he needed amusement.  He seemed glad that she was home, and his eyes followed her wistfully about the room, but he did not attempt to talk much.  Sometimes the emptiness of the hours palled on her till she felt that she could not endure it.  She wrote long letters to Joyce and Betty and all the school-girls with whom she wanted to keep up a correspondence.  She mended everything she could find that needed mending, and she spent many hours telling her mother all that had happened in her absence.  But for once in her life her usual resources failed her.

The little mining camp of Lone-Rock was high up in the hills, so that April there was not like the Aprils she had known at the Wigwam.  There were still patches of snow under the pine trees above the camp.  But the stir of spring was in the air, and every afternoon, while Mrs. Ware was resting, Mary slipped away for a long walk.  Sometimes she would scramble up the hill-side to the great over-hanging rock which gave the place its name, and sit looking down at the tiny village below.  It was just a cluster of miners’ shacks, most of them inhabited by Mexicans.  There were the Company’s stores and the post-office, and away at the farther end of the one street were the houses of the few American families who had found their way to Lone-Rock, either on account of the mines or the healthful climate of the pine-covered hills.  She could distinguish the roof of their own cottage among them, and the chimney of the little, unpainted school-house.

She wondered what the outcome of all their troubles was to be.  She couldn’t go on in this aimless way, day after day.  She must find something to do that would pay her a salary, and it must be something that she could do at home, where she would be needed sorely as soon as the nurse left.  Then she would go over and over the same little round.  She might teach.  She knew that she could pass the examination for a license, but the school was already supplied with a competent teacher, of many years’ experience, whom the trustees would undoubtedly prefer to a seventeen year old girl just fresh from school herself.