“Oh, nothing.”  Mary V took off her hat, but she was too fagged to fan herself with it.  Her one emotion, at that moment, was an overwhelming regret that she had come.  If Johnny Jewel had the nerve to think that she wanted to see him—­

“You must love the sun,” Johnny observed apathetically.  “Lizards, even, have got sense enough to stay in the shade such weather as this.”  He rumpled his hair to let the faint breeze in to his scalp, and looked at her.  “You’re red as a pickled beet at a picnic,” he told her ungraciously.

Mary V pulled together her lagging wits, marshaled her fighting forces, and flaunted a war banner in the shape of a smile that was demure.

“Well, one must expect to make some sacrifices when one is working in a good cause,” she replied amiably, and paused.

“Yeh?” Johnny’s eyes lost a little of their dullness.  It is possible that he recognized that war banner of hers.  “One didn’t expect to see one down here—­on a good cause.”

“No?  Well, you do see one, nevertheless.  One is at work on an exhibit for one’s school, you see.  Each of us girls was assigned a subject for vacation work.  Mine is ’Desert Glimpses’—­a collection of pictures, curios and so on, representing points of interest in the desert country.  I’ve a horned toad at home, and a blue-tailed lizard, and some pictures of jack rabbits, with their ears attached to the frame, and quite a few rattlesnake rattles.  So to-day,” she smiled again at him, “I rode down here to take a picture of you!”

“Thanks,” said Johnny, apparently unmoved.  “I didn’t know I was a point of interest in your eyes; but seeing I am, I’m willing the girls should have a picture of me framed.  If you’ll go out and sit in the shade of the shack while I shave and doll up a little, you may take a picture.  And I’ll autograph it for you.  Five years from now,” he went on complacently, “you’re going to brag about having it in your possession.  One of those I-knew-him-when kind of brags.  And if you’ll bring the girls around some time when I’m pulling off an exhibition flight, I’ll let ’em shake hands with me.”

“Well, of all the conceit!” By that one futile phrase Mary V owned herself defeated in the first charge.  “Of all—­”

“Conceit?  Nothing like that!  When you thought it was a good cause to ride all these miles on the hottest day of the year, just to get my picture—­” Johnny smirked at her in a perfectly maddening way.  He knew it was maddening to Mary V, for he had meant it to be so.

“I did not!” Mary V’s face could not be any redder than the heat had made it, but even so one could see the rise in her mental temperature.

“You said you did.”

“Well—­I merely want your picture to put with my collection of donkeys!  You—­”

“You said points of interest,” Johnny reminded her.  He had lost all his moroseness in the interest of the conversation.  He had forgotten what a tonic his word-battles with Mary V could furnish.  “You better stick to it, because it will sure pan out that way.  You’ll hate to admit, five years from now, that you once took me for a donkey.  Besides, you can’t have my ears to pin to the frame; I’ll need ’em to listen to all the nice things some real girls will be saying to me when I’ve just made an exhibition flight.”