"Why not?" said Jeannie. "It"s only a pity, I think, that you couldn"t have known it at the time. They say we don"t know when we"re happiest; and we _can"t_ know when we"re prettiest; so where"s the satisfaction?"
"That"s part of your mistake, Jeannie, perhaps," returned her sister.
"If you had been there you"d have spoiled the picture."
"Look at that!" exclaimed Leslie, showing her beryl. "That"s for Miss Craydocke." And then, when the first utterances of amazement and admiration were over, she told them the story of the child and her misfortune, and of what Miss Craydocke had done. "_That_"s beautiful, I think," said she. "And it"s the sort of beauty, may be, that one might feel as one went along. I wish I could find--a diamond--for that woman!"
"Thir garnits on Feather-Cap," put in Jim the driver.
"Oh, _will_ you show us where?"
"Well, "t ain"t nowhers in partickler," replied Jim. "It"s jest as you light on "em. And you wouldn"t know the best ones when you did. I"ve seen "em,--dead, dull-lookin" round stones that"ll crack open, chock--full o" red garnits as an egg is o" meat."
"Geodes!" cried Dakie Thayne.
Jim Holden turned round and looked at him as if he thought he had got hold of some new-fashioned expletive,--possibly a pretty hard one.
They came down, now, on the other side of the Cliff, and struck the ford. This diverted and absorbed their thoughts, for none of the ladies had ever forded a river before.
"Are you sure it"s safe?" asked Mrs. Linceford.
"Safe as meetin"," returned Jim. "I"d drive across with my eyes shot."
"Oh, don"t!" cried Elinor.
"I ain"t agoin" ter; but I could,--an" the hosses, too, for that matter."
It was exciting, nevertheless, when the water in mid-channel came up nearly to the body of the wagon, and the swift ripples deluded the eye into almost conviction that horses, vehicle, and all were not gaining an inch in forward progress, but drifting surely down. They came up out of the depths, however, with a tug, and a swash, and a drip all over, and a scrambling of hoofs on the pebbles, at the very point aimed at in such apparently sidelong fashion,--the wheel-track that led them up the bank and into the ten-mile pine woods through which they were to skirt the base of the Cairn and reach Feather-Cap on his accessible side. It was one long fragrance and stillness and shadow.
They overtook the Routh party at the beginning of the mountain-path. The pine woods stretched on over the gradual slope, as far as they would climb before dinner. Otherwise the midday heats would have been too much for them. This was the easy part of the way, and there was breath for chat and merriment.
Just within the upper edge of the woods, in a comparatively smooth opening, they halted. Here they spread their picnic, while up above, on the bare, open rock, the young men kindled their fire and heated the coffee; and here they ate and drank, and rested through the noontide.
Light clouds flitted between the mountains and the heavens, later in the day, and flung bewildering, dreamy shadows on the far-off steeps, and dropped a gracious veil over the bald forehead and sun-bleak shoulders of Feather-Cap. It was "weather just made for them," as fortunate excursionists are wont to say.
Sin Saxon was all life, and spring, and fun. She climbed at least three Feather-Caps, dancing from stone to stone with tireless feet, and bounding back and forth with every gay word that it occurred to her to say to anybody. Pictures? She made them incessantly. She was a living dissolving view. You no sooner got one bright look or graceful att.i.tude than it was straightway shifted into another. She kept Frank Scherman at her side for the first half-hour, and then, perhaps, his admiration or his muscles tired, for he fell back a little to help Madam Routh up a sudden ridge, and afterwards, somehow, merged himself in the quieter group of strangers.
By and by one of the Arnalls whispered to Mattie Shannon,--"He"s sidled off with her, at last. Did you ever know such a fellow for a new face?
But it"s partly the petticoat. He"s such an artist"s eye for color. He was raving about her all the while she stood hanging those shawls among the pines to keep the wind from Mrs. Linceford. She isn"t downright pretty either. But she"s got up exquisitely!"
Leslie Goldthwaite, in her lovely mountain dress, her bright bloom from enjoyment and exercise, with the stray light through the pines burnishing the bronze of her hair, had innocently made a second picture, it would seem. One such effects deeper impression, sometimes, than the confusing splendor of incessant changes.
"Are you looking for something? Can I help you?" Frank Scherman had said, coming up to her, as she and her friend Dakie, a little apart from the others, were poising among some loose pebbles.
"Nothing that I have lost," Leslie answered, smiling. "Something I have a very presumptuous wish to find. A splendid garnet geode, if you please!"
"That"s not at all impossible," returned the young man. "We"ll have it before we go down,--see if we don"t!"
Frank Scherman knew a good deal about Feather-Cap, and something of geologizing. So he and Leslie--Dakie Thayne, in his unswerving devotion, still accompanying--"sidled off" together, took a long turn round under the crest, talking very pleasantly--and restfully, after Sin Saxon"s continuous brilliancy--all the way. How they searched among loose drift under the cliff, how Mr. Scherman improvised a hammer from a slice of rock; and how, after many imperfect specimens, they did at last "find a-purpose" an irregular oval of dull, dusky stone, which burst with a stroke into two chalices of incrusted crimson crystals,--I ought to be too near the end of a long chapter to tell. But this search and this finding, and the motive of it, were the soul and the crown of Leslie"s pleasure for the day. She did not even stop to think how long she had had Frank Scherman"s attention all to herself, or the triumph that it was in the eyes of the older girls, among whom he was excessively admired, and not very disguisedly competed for. She did not know how fast she was growing to be a sort of admiration herself among them, in their girls" fashion, or what she might do, if she chose, in the way of small, early belleship here at Outledge with such beginning,--how she was "getting on," in short, as girls express it. And so, as Jeannie Hadden asked, "Where was the satisfaction?"
"You never knew anything like it," said Jeannie to her friend Ginevra, talking it all over with her that evening in a bit of a visit to Mrs.
Th.o.r.esby"s room. "I never saw anybody take so among strangers. Madam Routh was delighted with her; and so, I should think, was Mr. Scherman.
They say he hates trouble; but he took her all round the top of the mountain, hammering stones for her to find a geode."
"That"s the newest dodge," said Mrs. Th.o.r.esby, with a little sarcastic laugh. "Girls of that sort are always looking for geodes." After this, Mrs. Th.o.r.esby had always a little well-bred venom for Leslie Goldthwaite.
At the same time Leslie herself, coming out on the piazza for a moment after tea, met Miss Craydocke approaching over the lawn. She had only her errand to introduce her, but she would not lose the opportunity. She went straight up to the little woman, in a frank, sweet way. But a bit of embarra.s.sment underneath, the real respect that made her timid,--perhaps a little nervous fatigue after the excitement and exertion of the day,--did what nerves and embarra.s.sment, and reverence itself will do sometimes,--played a trick with her perfectly clear thought on its way to her tongue.
"Miss Graywacke, I believe?" she said, and instantly knew the dreadful thing that she had done.
"Exactly," said the lady, with an amused little smile.
"Oh, I _do_ beg your pardon," began Leslie, blushing all over.
"No need,--no need. Do you think I don"t know what name I go by, behind my back? They suppose because I"m old and plain and single, and wear a front, and don"t understand rats and the German, that I"m deaf and blind and stupid. But I believe I get as much as they do out of their jokes, after all." The dear old soul took Leslie by both her hands as she spoke, and looked a whole world of gentle benignity at her out of two soft gray eyes, and then she laughed again. This woman had no _self_ to be hurt.
"We stopped at the Cliff this morning," Leslie took heart to say; "and they were so glad of your parcel,--the little girl and her aunt. And Prissy gave me something to bring back to you; a splendid specimen of beryl that she has found."
"Then my mind"s at rest!" said Miss Craydocke, cheerier than ever. "I was sure she"d break her neck, or pull the mountain down on her head some day looking for it."
"Would you like--I"ve found--I should like you to have that, too,--a garnet geode from Feather--Cap?" Leslie thought she had done it very clumsily, and in a hurry, after all.
"Will you come over to my little room, dear,--number fifteen, in the west wing,--to-morrow sometime, with your stones? I want to see more of you."
There was a deliberate, gentle emphasis upon her words. If the grandest person of whom she had ever known had said to Leslie Goldthwaite, "I want to see more of you," she would not have heard it with a warmer thrill than she felt that moment at her heart.
CHAPTER XI.
IN THE PINES.
It was a glorious July morning, and there was nothing particular on foot. In the afternoon, there would be drives and walks, perhaps; for some hours, now, there would be intensifying heat. The sun had burned away every cloud that had hung rosy about his rising, and the great gray flanks of Washington glared in a pale scorch close up under the sky, whose blue fainted in the flooding presence of the full white light of such unblunted day. Here and there, adown his sides, something flashed out in a clear, intense dazzle, like an enormous crystal cropping from the granite, and blazing with reflected splendor. These were the leaps of water from out dark rifts into the sun.
"Everybody will be in the pines to-day," said Martha Josselyn. "I think it is better when they all go off and leave us."
"We can go up under our rock," said Sue, putting stockings and mending cotton into a large, light basket. "Have you got the chess-board? What _should_ we do without our mending-day?"
These two girls had bought new stockings for all the little feet at home, that the weekly darning might be less for the mother while they were away; and had come with their own patiently cared for old hose, "which they should have nothing else to do but to embroider."
They had made a sort of holiday, in their fashion, of mending-day at home, till it had come to seem like a positive treat and rest; and the habit was so strong upon them that they hailed it even here. They always got out their little chess-board, when they sat down to the big basket together. They could darn, and consider, and move, and darn again; and so could keep it up all day long, as else even they would have found it nearly intolerable to do. So, though they seemed slower at it, they really in the end saved time. Thursday night saw the tedious work all done, and the basket piled with neatly folded pairs, like a heap of fine white rolls. This was a great thing, and "enough for one day," as Mrs.
Josselyn said. It was disastrous if they once began to lie over. If they could be disposed of between sun and sun, the girls were welcome to any play they could get out of it.
"There they go, those two together. Always to the pines, and always with a work-basket," said Leslie Goldthwaite, sitting on the piazza step at the Green Cottage, by Mrs. Linceford"s feet, the latter lady occupying a Shaker rocking-chair behind. "What nice girls they seem to be,--and n.o.body appears to know them much, beyond a "good-morning"!"
"Henny-penny, Goosie-poosie, Turkey-lurky, Ducky-daddles, _and_ Chicken Little!" said Mrs. Linceford, counting up from thumb to little finger.
"Dakie Thayne and Miss Craydocke, Marmaduke Wharne and these two,--they just make it out," she continued, counting back again. "Whatever you do, Les, don"t make up to Fox Lox at last, for all our sakes!"