“I don’t care,” retorted Mary.  “I’m not proud, and I can stand the motley as long as it brings in the ducats.  It isn’t the career I had planned, but—­”

She broke off abruptly, and began hunting for her spool of thread which had rolled off into the grass.  When she found it she stitched away in silence as if she had forgotten her unfinished sentence.

“What career did you have planned, little sister?” asked Jack, gently, when the silence had lasted a long time.  She looked up with a start as if her thoughts had been far away, then said with a deprecatory smile, “I hardly know myself, Jack.  I don’t mind confessing to you, though I couldn’t to any one else, it was so big I couldn’t see the top of it.”

With her eyes bent on her sewing she told him about the Voice and the Vision that had come to her when she looked up at Edryn’s Window for the first time, and how she had been wondering ever since what great duty it was with which she was to keep tryst some day.

“I can always tell you things without fear of being laughed at,” she ended, “so I don’t mind saying that I believed at the time, it really was the King’s Call, and that some great destiny, oh far greater than Joyce’s or Betty’s awaited me.  It seemed so real I don’t see how I could have been mistaken, and yet—­now—­it does seem foolish for me to aspire so high.  Doesn’t it?”

There was a little break in her voice although she ended with a laugh.  Jack watched the brown head bent over her sewing for several minutes before he replied.  Then he said in a grave kind tone that Mary always liked, because it seemed so intimate and as if he regarded her as his own age, “Since I’ve been hurt, I’ve done a lot of thinking, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the highest thing a man can aspire to, and the blessedest, is ‘to ease the burden of the world.’  Either consciously or unconsciously that is what every artist does who paints a master-piece.  He helps us bear our troubles by making us forget them—­at least, as long as the uplift and the inspiration stay with us.  Every author and musician whose work lives, does the same.  Every inventor who creates something to make toil easier, and life happier, eases that burden to a degree.

“So I don’t think you were mistaken about that call.  Your achievement may be greater than the other girls, even here in Lone-Rock, as much bigger and better, as a whole life is bigger and better than a few books and pictures.  You’ve begun on me, and you’ll have Marion to try your hand on next.  No telling where you will stop.  You may be the Apostle of Cheerfulness to the entire far West before you are done.  Who knows?”

Although the last words were spoken lightly, Mary felt the seriousness underlying them, and looked up, her face shining, as if some mystery had suddenly been made clear to her.

“Oh, Jack!” she cried.  “You don’t know how easy that makes every thing.  I’ve looked at life at Lone-Rock as something to be endured merely as a stepping stone to better things.  But if you think that this is the beginning of my real tryst, I can answer the call in such a different spirit.  By the winged spur of our ancestors,” she cried, gaily waving, the ruffle she was hemming, “I’ll be ‘Ready, aye ready’ for whatever comes.”