True, our day of great things is over.

We no longer lay large plans, and sweep the heavens with a telescope, looking for pleasure on a large scale, among the stars.

But it is wonderful how many little things we find now that we used to let slip unheeded, since we've gone to looking for them with a microscope." Two days later another letter was sent post-haste to Joyce, written in a hurried scrawl with a pencil, clearly showing Mary's agitation.
"Something exciting has happened at last! The Leverings brought a friend to call this afternoon, who has just arrived in Lone-Rock to spend the rest of vacation with them; a grumpy, middle-aged, absent-minded, old professor from the East, who seemed rather bored with us at first.

But when he was taken out to the side-show in the 'Zoo,' he waked up in a hurry.

His very spectacles gleamed and his gray whiskers bristled with interest when he saw my assortment of pressed wild-flowers from the desert, and the collection of butterflies and trap-door spiders and other insects in my 'Buggery,' as Norman calls it.