Carol went directly to her husband.

“David, I am learning lots of perfectly wonderful things.  If I live to be a thousand years old,—­oh, David, I believe by that time I can love everybody on earth, and have sympathy for all and condemnation for none; and I will really know that nearly every one in the world is very good, and those that are not are pretty good.”

David burst into laughter at her words.  “Poorly expressed, but finely meant,” he cried.  “Are you trying to become the preacher in our family?”

“All packed up and ready to start,” she said thoughtfully, “and to-morrow night we leave our darling little manse, and our precious old mansers and turn cowboy.  Aren’t you glad you didn’t send me home?”

CHAPTER X

WHERE HEALTH BEGINS

In a little white cottage tent, at the end of a long row of minutely similar, little white cottage tents, sat David and Carol in the early evening of a day in May, looking wistfully out at the wide sweep of gray mesa land, reaching miles away to the mountains, blue and solemn in the distance.

“Do—­do you feel better yet, David?” Carol asked at last, desperately determined to break the menacing silence.

David drew his breath.  “I can’t seem to notice any difference yet,” he replied honestly.  “It doesn’t look much like Missouri, does it?”

“It is pretty,—­very pretty,” she said resolutely.

“Carol, be a good Presbyterian and tell the truth.  Do you wish you had gone home, to green and grassy Iowa?”

“David Duke, I am at home, and here is where I want to be and no place else in the world.  It is big and bleak and bare, but—­ You are going to get well, aren’t you, David?”

“Of course I am, but give me time.  Even Miracle Land can’t transform weakness to health in two hours.”

“I must go over to the office.  Mrs. Hartley said she wanted to give me some instructions.”

Carol rose quickly and stepped outside the cottage.

Crossing the mesa she met three men who stopped her with a gesture.  They were of sadly similar appearance, tall, thin, shoulders stooped, hair dull and lusterless, eyes dry and bright.  Carol thought at first they were brothers, and so they were,—­brothers in the grip of the great white plague.

“Are you a lunger?” ejaculated one of them in astonishment, noting the light in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks.

“A—­lunger?”

“Yes,—­have you got the bugs?”

“The bugs!”

“Say, are you chasing the cure?”

“Of course not,” interrupted the oldest of the three impatiently.  “There’s nothing the matter with her, except that she’s a lunger’s wife.  Your husband is the minister from St. Louis, isn’t he?”

“Yes,—­I am Mrs. Duke.”

“I am Thompson.  I used to be a medical missionary in the Ozarks.  How is your husband?”