And, oh, Mammy dear, the best is to come! To-morrow Douglas and Jack are to take us up the splendid old Gothics, if Mrs. Brook will let us go. It will be the biggest climb we have had.
Good-night, Mother darling,
Your own little girl.
So closed the journal letter that Jean had been writing in her spare moments. Camp Huairarwee had lately divided its forces. While the majority of the girls had gone with Miss Hamersley on a trip to Montreal, the Silver Sword quintette and Nanno, with Carol and Eunice, Fräulein and Mrs. Brook, had taken the two days’ drive to the beautiful St. Hubert’s region, to enjoy a taste of mountain climbing. A friend of Mrs. Brook’s had offered them—for as long as they should desire it—Chipmunk Lodge, a tiny cottage in the woods; and here a week had passed, with glorious climbs up Noonmark, Indian Head, and the great Giant himself, and finally a night in camp on the wild shore of Upper Ausable Lake.
Meanwhile, Court and some college friends, with Jack and Douglas, had set out on a walking trip, and had reached St. Hubert’s in time to join the girls in a climb or two. To-morrow would be the last day at Chipmunk Lodge. The young men were booked for a hard, all-day’s tramp, the “round trip” of the principal peaks, but the boys had planned to spend the day on the Gothics, and as Jean’s aspiring soul longed to conquer one more mountain, they had begged the girls to go with them. Douglas had been over the trail once, and, as he said, he knew “where to go to go on.” Mrs. Brook was afraid that her charges would be too tired for the drive back to Halcyon, but though she had not yet given her consent, the boys had promised to stop on their way to the Gothics, to see whether she had relented. As Jean was addressing her letter, in came Douglas to return her sweater, which, having been packed away in his guide-basket, he had absent-mindedly carried all the way to his lodgings. He took her letter to mail, and Stella, the stay-at-home on tramping days, followed him to the door.
“I hope you won’t get lost on those Gothics to-morrow, without any guide!” she called after him. Lingering awhile, gazing out into the dusk, she caught the sound of footsteps, and saw a man slip out from behind the corner of the porch and disappear among the trees.
“Oh, dear! Maybe he wanted to steal something!” Stella retreated indoors, and peeped through the window. But in the shadows no one was to be seen.
The girls awoke next morning fresh as mountain thrushes, and as Fräulein, too, was ready to spread her wings again, Mrs. Brook yielded.
* * *
“Well, how’s this for a sky-scraper mountain?” Douglas asked Jean, as, after the long steep climb, they stood at last on the summit.
“I’m sure it’s as good as an Alp!” Jean declared.
The climbers were standing deliciously near to danger, looking down over the precipitous mountain-side; and beneath them, on the breast of the steep incline, stretched the glory of the Gothics, the beautiful, perilous slides! Great, bold expanses of rock they were, colored with green and rose, traced with wavy ripples, and leading to the dark forest that swept downward to the Lower Ausable Lake.
“Wouldn’t that be a corking place to shoot the chutes!” exclaimed Jack. “Want to try, Frances?”
“All right,” she agreed. “Come on!”
“Nein, mein kindchen, dat vill you not!” said Fräulein decidedly.
“Why not? Douglas says he’s been down,” said Frances.
“Ach, Frances! eemposseeble!” cried Fräulein. “None but an Alpine guide could go down dere!”
“Yes, he did go down last year, with his father. Didn’t you, Douglas?” said Jean proudly.
“That’s what we did!” answered Douglas.
“How did you ever do it without breaking your necks?” asked Cecily.
“Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” replied Douglas. “We didn’t take the top slide—that’s almost straight up and down. We started in through the trees over there on that side, and kept on till we came out on the big middle slide. We had tennis shoes, so we could walk all right. But you can’t take a step without rubber soles. We got in some pretty tight places, too, I can tell you!”
“Suppose you had slipped?” said Eunice.
“We’d have been goners!” answered Douglas. “See those slides way down there, where the bushes are? That’s the place to get smashed up! There are awful pitch-off places down there, and it’s full of broken rocks.”
“What did you do when you got down to the end of the slides?” asked Carol.
“We struck Rainbow Brook and followed it down to the Falls. Come over this way and I’ll show you where we started.” Douglas led the way along the edge to the bushes on the right of the rocky incline. “There!” he said, “we went down through those balsams. The ground’s all full of big holes.”
“We’ll be blown off if we stay in this wind any longer,” said Eunice. “Let’s have luncheon. I’m starving.” A sheltered rock was found for a table, the baskets unpacked, fuel gathered, and a fire built. A pail of chocolate was heated, ears of corn were roasted, and the merriest of picnics began.
“What are the principal parts of gingerbread?” Douglas inquired, as Cecily was cutting a loaf of that delicacy.
“Molasses and flour and butter and spices,” replied Cecily, who had made the loaf.
“Wrong,” said Douglas. “It’s conjugated, ‘Jingo, gingery, gingerbread, gimme some!’”
“Not much ginger in that!” scoffed Jack. “Plant Scotchy’s jokes and what’ll come up? A grove of chestnuts.”
“Plant Jack, and what’ll come up? Something young and green,” Douglas retorted.
“Plant Douglas, and what’ll come up?” asked Jack. But what was to sprout no one ever learned. Another climber had arrived on top of the Gothics, some distance from them; and just then Douglas, presenting his tin cup for Jean to fill, looked up and saw the shabbily dressed newcomer. The man’s face was turned away, but there was something striking about his slight, active figure. Douglas let his hand drop and gazed intently.
“What are you staring at?” asked Jean, and she turned her head. “Why, that looks like Tony!” she exclaimed. The other girls started. Jack, who was lying down at the feast like an ancient Roman, glanced up lazily over his shoulder.
“It does look like him!” cried Cecily.
“It is. I know it is!” Jean insisted.
“Why, you silly things! What would Tony be doing here of all places?” laughed Carol.
“That’s just what I’d like to know,” said Douglas. “He was back at Halcyon, the last I knew. But it does look mighty like him!”
“Hi, Tony!” said Jack. “Come here and say howdy! He’s got a grouch on him—he won’t look around.”
“If we could only have seen his face!” said Jean.
“If you want to see his face, I’ll bring him back,” said Douglas.
“No, don’t! Don’t go for anything!” she begged. “If it’s Tony he might attack you! He’s your enemy!”
“Oh, he’s not my enemy!” said Douglas, laughing. “I’m going after him;” and he started up.
“Oh, now, Douglas, do leave him alone!” pleaded Eunice.
“Don’t go after him—please!” Betty implored.
“Scotchy, sit down! You’re frightening the ladies,” said Jack.
Douglas good-naturedly returned to his sandwiches, and the man disappeared over the brow of the mountain.
“I’m perfectly certain it was Tony,” Jean declared.
“He had a slouch hat just like Tony’s,” said Betty.
“Oh, I hope he hasn’t bothered Mother!” said Cecily.
“I hope Stella hasn’t seen him,” added Eunice.
Carol burst out laughing. “You think that man must have been Tony because he had black hair and was thin and was dressed something like him,” she said. “It’s too ridiculous! And you act as if you thought he was going to murder you!”
“He hustled off as if he thought we were going to murder him,” said Douglas. “I don’t suppose it really was Tony, though.”
“It was, too!” declared Frances. “It was just his wicked looking back!”
“Well, he’s gone now, whoever he is,” said Jack.
The man did not return to disturb the luncheon again, nor the fun that followed it, as the party explored the mountain-top, penetrated a small cave, took snapshots of each other, and played “talking games” as they lounged among the balsams.
“Somebody think up a new game,” said Cecily, when all the favorites had been exhausted.
“I know what would be fun,” said Jean. “Let’s all make up rhymes. And we must make them up in five minutes or pay forfeits.”
Groans followed this proposal.
“That’s all very well for you, Miss Poet, but I couldn’t make up a rhyme if you gave me a year,” said Betty.
“Oh, yes, you could!” Jean assured her. “This is only fun—not really poetry.”
“Make it ten minutes, and maybe I can wring out two lines from my tortured brain,” said Carol. “We must have paper and pencils, though. Bunny, dear, may we steal from you?”
Fräulein, who was sketching the distant view, sacrificed half a dozen pencils, as well as several pages from her drawing book, and the boys produced two more pencils from their pockets.
“One, two, three—go!” said Douglas, watch in hand, and for ten minutes there was scribbling and sighing for words. “Time’s up!” he called.
“Oh, pshaw! I was just thinking of a second verse,” complained Cecily.
“Eunice, you begin,” said Carol.
“No, you read—I haven’t the face to,” said Eunice. And Carol read:
“Oh, girls of Huairarwee, pray where are we now?
Under the sky, on the Gothics’ broad brow.
And here’s a charade that I beg you to guess,
Lest your brains should grow rusty with long idle-ness.
My first on your shoulder you never should carry.
My second must solemnly vow not to marry.
My third in a wilderness vast was once sighed for.
My whole through next winter will often be cried for,
When sadly for mountains and valleys we yearn,
And long for the free forest life to return!”
“You did that in ten minutes! Good work!” said Douglas, and Carol’s audience clapped vigorously.
“Nuns have to vow not to marry,” said Cecily, as they studied the paper.
“So do monks,” said Jean. “Monk—chipmunk! Never carry a chip on your shoulder!”
“‘O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,’” quoted Eunice.
“Chipmunk Lodge!” said Betty. “I’m sure I’ll cry for it next winter when I’m digging away at school.”
“So say we all of us,” agreed Jack.
“I’m more ashamed of mine than ever,” said Eunice, and the valedictorian of Hazelhurst, from whom some wonderful flight of genius had been expected, gave them a single couplet:
“I really can’t think of a word to say!
The wind has blown my wits away!”
“Poor Una! If we’d only asked you to translate a page of the Iliad you’d have done it in one minute!” said Carol sympathetically. “Douglas, you come next.”
“I’m afraid my voice’ll tremble; mine’s very sad,” said Douglas. He read in pathetic tones:
“A chocolate pail up hill I bore;
Of sandwiches ten pounds or more,
Some corn, and all the ladies’ wraps—
But Jack, he carried the gingersnaps!
And when on top we had our spread,
Old Jacky he came out ahead!
The lunch I carried up, he ate,—
Since then, they say, he’s gained in weight!”
“I’ll sue you for libel!” Jack fiercely declared, amid the clapping.
“Now, don’t you boys get fighting till the rhymes are over,” laughed Cecily. “It’s your turn, Jack.”
“Ah! ahem! Mine’s called ‘An Ode to Saint Cecilia,’” said Jack. Cecily started, and grew rosier and rosier as her cousin read his ode:
“We are a party blithe and gay,
And we have a patron saint.
She does not on the organ play,—
Cecilia, here, doth paint.
A shining halo is her hair;
Her eyes are like the nut.
I mean they are than stars more fair,
And a beautiful hazel,—but
No rhyme for hazel do I know,
So I had to say nut instead.
Her cheeks like garden roses glow,—
A dainty pink, not red.
Her voice is like a silver chime,
We all of us adore her!
“I couldn’t get any farther,” explained Jack. “The time was up while I was trying to see how to bring in an arctic explorer to rhyme with ‘adore her.’”
“Jack, I think you’re perfectly awful! You make me feel so silly!” cried poor Cecily.
“Well, I like that! Is that all you can say when you have an ode written to you?” said Jack in an injured tone. “Never mind, the others appreciate it, if you don’t! They’re encoring! I’ll have to read it over again:
‘We are a party blithe and gay
And we have a....’”
Cecily tried to snatch the paper away, but Jack coolly rose and stood before the audience, and she was held by Frances while the ode was repeated. Her own turn came next.
“Mine’s too silly for anything, but you know I can’t write poetry,” she apologized, and she read:
“I love the beautiful Gothics,
With the view and the rocks and the trees.
The smell of the lovely balsam
My little nose doth please.”
“You dear little St. Cecilia, that’s just as dear as you are!” said Eunice.
“Now, Frances, it’s up to you,” said Jack.
“I couldn’t do it,” said the Mouse. “I couldn’t think of any words that rhyme but giraffe and laugh, and I promised never to call Jean ‘Giraffe’ again, so I had to give it up.”
“Read yours, then, Betsy,” said Cecily. And Betty replied:
“I shan’t
For I can’t.”
That was all she had written, but it was undeniably a couplet.
“Good for Queenie! She’s parodied ‘The Skeleton in Armor,’” said Carol, looking over Jean’s shoulder. Whereupon Jean read the last rhyme:
“Speak, speak, thou fearful guest,
Who, on the Gothics’ crest,
In shabby garments dress’t,
Comest to daunt us!
We’d rather, in the dark,
Meet a big, hungry shark,
Than have thee, wicked Mark
Antony, haunt us!
Break a leg, Tony, do!
Also an arm or two!
Then we shall feel less blue,
Horrible Harrel!
We girls would breathe more free
If thou in jail shouldst be;
We’re so afraid of thee,—
All except Carol.”
“How dare you make me rhyme with Harrel?” cried Carol, as she joined with a will in the applause.
“Jean, you’re great! Let’s mail that to Tony!” said Douglas.
“My poets, it is time to go home, before de night catch us,” said Fräulein, glancing at her watch.
“Oh, Fräulein, not yet!” they pleaded.
“Look at those people!” said Jean. “They’ve just come up. They don’t think it’s late!”
A guide and three young men had just appeared on the top, but if they considered it early, Fräulein could not be brought to agree with them. So the baskets were shouldered, and the young folks began their tramp down the trail.