One morning, early in September, he forgot his memorandum book and pencil, and did not discover the fact until he was ready to note some measurements which he could not trust to memory.  It was no matter, she assured him cheerfully, as he stood peering helplessly around over his spectacles and slapping his pockets in vain.

“You know Lysander says, ’Where the lion’s skin will not reach it must be pieced with the fox’s,’ I’ll find some kind of a substitute for your pencil, somewhere.”

After a few moments’ absence she came up the hill again with some broad sycamore leaves which she laid on a flat rock.  “There!” she exclaimed.  “You dictate, and I’ll write on these leaves with a hair-pin.  Hazel Lee and I used to write notes on them by the hour, playing post-office back at the Wigwam.”

Several times during the dictation he looked at her as if about to make some personal remark, then changed his mind.  What he had to say needed more explanation than he felt equal to making, and he decided to send Mrs. Levering as his spokesman.  Being a relative, she understood the situation he wanted to make plain, and he felt she could deal with the subject better than he.  So that afternoon, Mrs. Levering came over on his errand.  Mrs. Ware and Mary were sewing, and she plunged at once into her story.

Professor Carnes had been left the guardian of a fifteen-year-old niece, who was born into the world with a delicate constitution, an unhappy disposition and the proverbial gold spoon in her mouth as far as finances were concerned.  The poor professor felt that he had been left with something worse than a white elephant on his hands, for he knew absolutely nothing about girls, and Marion, with her morbid, super-sensitive temperament, was a constant puzzle to him.  She had been in a convent school until recently.  But now her physicians advised that she be taken out and sent to some place in the country where she could lead an active out-door life for an entire year.  They recommended a climate similar to the one at Lone-Rock.

The Professor could make arrangements for her to board in Doctor Gray’s family, quite near the Wares, and felt that she would be well taken care of there, physically, but he recognized the necessity of providing for her in other ways.  She had no resources of her own for entertainment, and he knew she would fret herself into a decline unless some means were provided to interest and amuse her.  He had been wonderfully impressed with Mary’s ability to make the best of every situation, and after he had once been awakened to the fact that she was an unusual specimen of humanity, had studied her carefully.  Now he confided to Mrs. Levering his greatest desire for Marion was that she might grow up to be as self reliant and happy-hearted a young girl as Mary.