“Oh, isn’t she though?” Babs was enthusiastic. “She’s the sweetest, dearest, lovablest young teacher in this school. Mrs. Martin is a darling, but of course she is elderly.” Then, as she suddenly thought of something, the impulsive girl exclaimed. “Here comes Virg from Pine Cabin this very minute. Wouldn’t you like to see her, Benjy? She just loves to see people who are her neighbors out on the desert. Sometimes she gets powerfully homesick.”
A slight expression of disappointment crossed the face of the boy. He had called just to see Babs, whom he thought the sweetest, prettiest girl in all the world, but since she was eagerly awaiting his reply, and expecting it to be in the affirmative, he could do not less than say, “Why, yes, of course I would like to see Virginia.”
Barbara was already skipping to the long French window near which Virg was passing. Lifting the sash, she called, “Benjy’s here and he’d just love to see you a minute.”
Virginia soon appeared, although she well knew that Babs had exaggerated the lad’s desire to see her.
Throwing back her Papago blanket of many colors on which snow flakes, lightly fallen, quickly melted, she advanced, her hand outstretched. “Benjy, but it’s good to see someone from home!” Then, standing back, she looked him over admiringly. “You don’t resemble a cowboy or a sheep herder much, do you?”
The boy was about to protest that he had no such ambition, when Babs exclaimed, “Oh, but he will, won’t you, Benjy, next summer when we are all together on the desert? I’d rather look like a real cowgirl than anything else.”
The listeners smiled as they gazed at the dainty, Dresden China girl whose gold and pink and white prettiness suggested a fairy queen far more than a rough-riding cowgirl.
“We often wish to be what we aren’t,” Virginia began, then turned brightly to Benjy to exclaim: “Dean Craig arrived at Pine Cabin while I was there, and he was so interested in the Manuscript Magazine. He asked if he might borrow our one lone copy, and he said that, if we would trust it to him, next week he would send it back, and that it would be accompanied by as many more copies as we might request.”
Babs’ eyes were round and inquiring. “What is he going to do; set Benjy and the other boys to copying it, do you suppose?”
The lad laughed. “Indeed not. Drexel Academy is now the proud possessor of a printing press and your Manuscript Magazine will be the first thing in book form that we have made.”