The second day at Halcyon was celebrated by a picnic at Jasper Falls. After breakfast the girls busied themselves in preparing their luncheon. Jean came out of the kitchen with a small guide-basket on her back, a frying-pan in one hand and an iron spoon in the other, followed by Cecily with a fishing basket.
“Jean Lennox, what on earth are you doing with that frying-pan?” called Betty.
“Ask Cece,” said Jean.
“Don’t you wish you knew what I’ve got in here?” said Cecily, and when Betty and Frances tried to peep through the opening in the cover Jean whacked them with her spoon.
“We’re going to have flapjacks!” guessed Betty. “Cecily has the flour and Jean has the maple-syrup.”
“Which she will proceed to spill down the waterfall, while composing an ode to Jasper Brook,” added Carol.
“There’s lettuce inside there; I saw it through the hole,” said Frances. “We’re going to have lobster salad!”
“You don’t catch lobsters in lakes, or fry salad, my dear,” returned Cecily. “And you might as well stop guessing, for I won’t tell you a thing about it.”
“Oh! My rifle! I must have it to fire salutes from the top of the falls! I’d better carry it loaded, in case we should meet a catamount,” said Carol, mischievously, as she picked up her treasure under the very nose of Fräulein Bunsen.
“Nein, Carolchen! You leave dat gun at home,” said Fräulein with decision. “Mrs. Brook, please lock up dat weapon where she cannot find it. She vill kill us all and herself too!” Carol laughed and good-naturedly laid down the alarming instrument of destruction.
With Cecily and Roderick Dhu as guides the campers started on their walk along the wooded edge of the lake. At every step there was something to make lovers of nature look or listen with delight. Green velvet cushions of moss and “hairy-caps” bordered the trail. Wild strawberries, nestling among the cool leaves, kept the girls swooping down like birds of prey. Tiny hats and umbrellas of fungus, red, yellow, creamy and brown, dotted the way; and even every old decaying stump was in gala dress, decked with scarlet-tipped Cladonia, or its sister with the fairy goblets. Overhead the thrushes were in glorious voice, and the air was full of sweet bird-calls.
After skirting the lake for about a mile they came to a blazed beech-tree with a sign saying, “To Jasper Falls.” The trail which ran from the foot of the tree led deep into the woods away from the lake. Following the little path they came to the most winsome and enchanting brook that ever parched one’s throat by the mere sound of its rushing. The girls filled the tin cups which hung from their belts and drank, or lay on the margin and put their lips to the swift-flowing stream; and the pure cold water would have been worth a journey through the desert of Sahara, Eunice said.
Jasper Brook had won its name from the polished rocks that glowed ruddy and golden brown in its bed. Sometimes these formed a path of stepping-stones, and sometimes they broke the stream into little rapids that eddied and foamed and swirled. Sometimes they lay, smooth and shining, at the bottom of a mirror-like pool, and sometimes they rose in boulders over which the girls had to scramble as they made their way up the brook.
Beyond a bend the falls stood revealed in all their beauty. First and lowest of all, a miniature Niagara, the color of jade where it slipped smoothly over a great rock, and a cloud of sparkling foam where it broke. Then, above, a ledge of the living rock, over which the brook glided clear as glass. Higher yet, a cascade, hanging in a shimmering silver veil over a cliff at the right—a Swiss Staubbach, as Fräulein called it. This was Jasper Brook, as it descended over a natural staircase of rock. With much scrambling and slipping and laughing the trampers made the ascent along the very edge, and sometimes, indeed, in the stream itself.
“Isn’t it beautiful! I’d like to stand right under those darling falls and let them come down on top of me!” cried Jean, climbing upon a rock near the “Staubbach.” “Come up here where you can feel the spray! It’s as good as a shower-bath!” From the ledge above, the cascade fell in a shower of mist to the pool at her feet, the cool drops sprinkling her face. The rest of the vanguard scrambled up beside her.
“What are you tying a knot in your handkerchief for, Joan of Arc?” Cecily asked presently.
“‘Curiosity killed the cat,’” quoted Jean.
“I know what it’s for,” said Carol. “That knot’s a reminder to write a poem on the ‘Staubbach.’ I knew the Muse was awake when I asked Jean if she wasn’t getting soaked in the spray, and she smiled seraphically and dreamily answered, ‘Um!’ I haven’t had the honor of two visits from a poet without learning to read the signs. Excelsior! Let’s scramble on!”
“Let’s name all the different falls and rocks and things we come to,” Jean proposed. “Let’s name this, ‘Silver Sword Falls,’ and that can be ‘Golden Shield Pool.’ It’s quite a goldy color, and it’s shaped like a shield.”
“I think it’s shaped much more like a dishpan,” said practical Cecily.
“Let’s name the places for ourselves,” Betty suggested, resuming the march up the stony path.
“All right! We’ll call this ‘Betty’s Toboggan Slide,’” replied Cecily. For Betty suddenly slipped backward on the slippery incline.
“This is ‘Carol Cascade,’” said Jean, as they stood on a flat rock watching a wild little cataract foaming and boiling.
“It does look like her,” said Eunice. “That’s just the way she rushes pell-mell into things. Those little curly rapids do for her hair—it’s always in a wild fly.”
“We’ll name that puddle ‘Una Pond.’ It’s so absent-minded, it’s forgotten to move down the brook! It’s you all over, Una,” returned Carol.
“What’s the use of lugging this basket myself when I can hitch it on Roderick?” said Frances. Charmed with this idea she lashed her basket on the chieftain’s back, at which act of oppression he showed his resentment by worrying the strap until he had slipped his badge of servitude off into a small whirlpool, and the Mouse returned from crawling into a cave in time to see her pretty new basket spin round and round and then sail down the waterfall.
“Catch it! catch it! Frisky’s basket! It has all our Saratoga potatoes!” shrieked Betty to the girls below. But the runaway swept past the hands that snatched for it till it reached a quiet pool, from which Marion Gaylord rescued it. The basket was intact, but Frances mournfully spread out upon a stone its once crisp contents, now water-soaked and limp, and fit only to nourish the minnows that lived below the falls.
“You’re a horrid old thing, Roderick Dhu!” said she, slapping the dog, as he applied an interested nose to the ruined delicacy. “Go away! You needn’t think you’re going to have any, just because you’ve spoilt it for us!”
“Well, Frisk, it was your own fault!” said Cecily. “Rod isn’t used to carrying baskets, are you, old petsy?”
Adventures, mishaps and frolics all along the climb were commemorated in the names chosen for boulders, pools and rapids. There was “Roderick’s Roll,” where the collie charged a chipmunk up a land-slide in a bank and tumbled down with an avalanche of earth and stones; then “St. Cecilia’s Organ,” where the rocks looked like slender organ-pipes; and “Nancy’s Nest,” a little shelf, cushioned with moss, where Nancy found violets and harebells growing. By the time the top of the falls was reached all the members of the party had had their names immortalized in woodland monuments.
A broad, flat ledge of stone at the head of Jasper Falls was selected for the dining-table.
“Come and see the boiling spring before we unpack our luncheon,” said Cecily.
“Boiling spring!” cried Pamela Kirkland. “Now, St. Cecilia, you haven’t a geyser here!”
“Is it a hot spring, really?” asked Gladys Pearson. “Do let’s see it!”
“Hot? It’s a boiling spring!” Cecily declared. She led the way to a little pool with a sandy bed, hidden away in the woods. A tiny jet of water bubbled up through the sand, and she dipped in her cup and held it out to Pamela with the warning, “Don’t burn your mouth!” Pamela blew to cool the boiling draft and tasted it gingerly.
“Why, it’s icy cold!” she exclaimed. “Cecily Brook,—the idea of your telling such a whopper! Take off your shield of truth this instant!”
“I told the truth,” St. Cecilia answered serenely. “It is a boiling spring. It bubbles! They always call bubbling springs boiling. Oh, Pam! It was too funny to see you blow!”
“I don’t care—they do have hot springs,” said Pamela.
“Never mind, Pamela. We’ll fool the others when they come up,” said Gladys.
Three of the girls had slung tin pails on their shoulders, and Helen Westover had carried a bottle of lemon juice. The boiling spring was colder than the brook, so here the pails were filled, and going back to their rock-table the girls spread out their luncheon and brewed their lemonade.
Then Cecily opened her mysterious basket, and Jean recited in sepulchral tones:
“They are neither man nor woman,
They are neither beast nor human,
They are—”
“Fish!” cried an enraptured chorus, as Cecily unrolled from the lettuce leaf in which it had been swathed, a silvery little perch.
“Court and Jack brought them before breakfast,” said Cecily, unpacking the basketful of fish, each one enveloped in a fresh lettuce leaf. “They went fishing before sunrise, and they thought we’d like some perch and bass for our picnic, so they brought us their whole catch. Aren’t they cousins worth having?”
Court and Jack were given three cheers immediately, and voted the first batch of candy made at Camp Huairarwee. Then came the fire-building and fish-frying. The girls collected sticks, and Cecily being skilled in wood lore, a scientific fire was soon blazing. She dropped little lumps of butter into the frying-pan, and when they were melted and sizzling in went the first half dozen of fish, to be deftly turned with the iron spoon, and sprinkled by Frances with pepper and salt.
The first panful being done to a turn, the fish were doled out upon lettuce leaves held up by starving maidens. No one missed the saratoga chips at the banquet. There were those good old picnic standbys, sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and for dessert, large, sweet summer apples, generous slices of maple-sugar cake and ice-cold lemonade.
“This would be a royal spread even if we were eating it in the Hazelhurst dining-room,” said Nancy. “But there isn’t anything like a fine old rushing, roaring waterfall for giving your luncheon a flavor!”