"I guess I am. Why?" Johnny, his meditations disturbed by her coming, rose languidly and sat upon the side of his bunk, slouched forward with his arms resting across his strong young legs and his glance inclined to the floor.
"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.