He said, 'If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbours, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten track to his door,' If you want company as bad as all that, you _shall_ have a beaten track to your door.

We'll build something better than the neighbours ever dreamed of, and it won't be a mouse-trap, either.
There's enough old lumber here to build half a dozen cages, and if you'll pay for the wire netting out of your share of the garden profits, I'll help you put up a menagerie that P.T.Barnum himself wouldn't have been ashamed of." Norman's answer was a whoop and a double somersault, and he came up on his feet again remarking that she was worth all the fellows in Lone-Rock put together.
"According to what you've just said that isn't very much of a compliment," laughed Mary.

Still it gratified her so much that presently she was planning a side-show for the menagerie.

There were all her mounted specimens of trap-door spiders and butterflies and desert insects.

She would loan the collection occasionally, and her stuffed Gila monster and the arrow-heads and rattle-snake skins that she and Holland had collected.
As she hammered and sawed she told Norman the story of _The Jester's Sword_.