"No, that was a cloud we dipped through," laughed her companion. "Are you cold?"
"Cold? I don"t know! I have no sensation but joy."
The young man smiled. There was something about Nan"s drawl that made persons want to smile anyhow.
"You forgot your hat and goggles," she said as she noticed his blue eyes and the closely cropped brown hair that looked as though it had to be very closely cropped to keep it from curling.
"That"s so! Some day maybe I shall go back after them. Now shall we fly to "Frisco? How about High Olympus? Remember we are on Pegasus now and he can take us wherever we want to go."
"Breakfast first," drawled Nan. "Come with me and I can feed you on nectar and ambrosia."
"Oh what a wonderful wood nymph! She understands that mortal man cannot feed on poetry alone."
They glided to the plateau and landed again by the great rock.
"This is a wonderful place to light," said the birdman. "And now, fair mountain nymph, please tell me who you are when you are not a nymph--and what you are doing on the top of a lonely mountain before the sun is up."
"Nan Carter! And if you think this is a lonely mountain, you ought to try to get by yourself for a few minutes on it. Before sunrise, on the tip top point, is the only place where one can be alone a minute----"
"And then great creatures come swooping down out of the clouds and carry you off. It was very kind of you to go with me."
"Kind of me! Oh, Mr. Bellerophon, I never can thank you enough for taking me. I have never been so happy in all my life. It is perfect, all but the noise-- I do wish it wouldn"t click and buzz so. I know Pegasus did not make such a fuss--only the swish of his wings could be heard and sometimes, as the maiden said, the brisk and melodious neigh."
"Don"t you want to know my name, too, Miss Nan Carter? I have a name I use sometimes when I am not mounted on Pegasus."
"I don"t want to know it at all, but perhaps my mother, who is chaperoning the camp and who is rather particular, might think Mr.
Bellerophon sounded rather wily Greekish."
The young man laughed. Such a nice laugh it was that Nan could not help thinking it sounded rather like a melodious neigh. He was possessed of very even white teeth and a Greek profile, at least it started out to be Greek but changed its mind when it got to the tip of his nose which certainly turned up a bit. On the whole he was a very pleasant, agreeable-looking young man, tall and broad-shouldered, clean-limbed and athletic-looking. What Nan liked most about him were his eyes and his hands.
"I hate to tell you my name, wood nymph. It sounds so commonplace after what we have done this morning. I am afraid when you hear it you will simply knock on one of these great oak trees and a door will open and you will disappear from my eyes forever."
"Not before breakfast," drawled Nan. "But you must tell me your name before breakfast because I shall have to introduce you to the others."
"What others? Not more wood nymphs!"
"More Carters--and week-enders!"
"You don"t mean I have actually landed at Week-End Camp? Why, that is what I have been looking for, but I had no idea of striking it the first thing, right out of the blue, as it were. I heard about the camp at the University, and want to come board there for a while."
"Well, I am the one to apply to," said Nan primly.
"Apply to a wood nymph for board! Absurd!"
"Not at all! Of course, I can"t take you to board without knowing your name and--er--number."
"Well, if you must, you must--Tom Smith is my name--as for my number--there is only one of me."
"I mean by your number, where you live."
"Oh, I live in the air mostly. Sometimes I come down to have some washing done and to vote--at least, I came down once to vote--that was last June, but as no elections were going on just then and as my having arrived at the age of twenty-one did not seem to make them hurry, I went up in the air again. When I do vote, though, it will be out in Louisville, Kentucky. That"s where I have my washing done. You don"t say what you think of such a name as Tom Smith."
"It is not very--romantic, but it must have been a nice name to go to school with."
"Great! There were so many of us that the lickings didn"t go round."
The girl was leading the way down the mountain path and they came to the spring where she had performed her ablutions earlier.
"This is the fountain of Pirene."
"Ah! I fancied we would come to it soon," and he stooped and drank his fill, shaking the drops from his crisp curls as he got up.
"I love to drink that way," cried Nan. "I had a big deep drink as I went up the mountain."
"Of course you drink that way! How else could a wood nymph drink? You might make a cup of your little brown hand, but even that is almost too modern. Ah, there is the camp! How jolly it looks! Are there any people there? It looks so quiet."
"Any people there? Quiet! It is running over with people. They are all asleep now, that is the reason it is so quiet. There will be noise enough later."
As she spoke there were shouts from the shower bath where some of the youths from the camp had a.s.sembled for a community shower, and as the cold mountain water struck them they certainly made the welkin ring.
"There is father! Come, and I"ll introduce you."
Mr. Carter was coming from the kitchen bearing a cup of coffee for his wife, who stuck to the New Orleans habit of black coffee the first thing in the morning, and Mr. Carter loved to be the one to take it to her bedside.
"Father, this is Mr. Bel--Smith. He flew over here this morning," and Nan suddenly remembered that she was not a wood nymph and that this mountain in Albemarle was not Helicon. Also that it was not a very usual thing for well-brought-up young ladies to go flying with strange young men before breakfast, even if strange young men did almost have Greek profiles. For the first time that morning Nan blushed. Her shyness returned. She could hardly believe that it was she, Nan Carter, who had been so bold. Her Bellerophon was plain Tom Smith and Pegasus was a very modern flying machine lying up in Josephus"s pasture, that pasture on top of a prosaic mountain in Albemarle County and not Mount Helicon.
The fountain of Pirene was nothing but the spring that fed the reservoir from which they got the water supply for the shower bath where those boys were making such an unearthly racket. She was not a wood nymph--there were no wood nymphs--but just a sentimental little girl of sixteen who no doubt needed a good talking to and a reprimand for being so very imprudent. What would her mother say to such an escapade?
With all of Mrs. Carter"s delicate spirituelle appearance there was nothing poetical in her make-up. She would never understand this talk of forgetting that one was not a wood nymph. There was more chance of the father"s sympathy. Nan took the bull by the horns and plunged into her confession.
"Father, I have been up in Mr. Bel--Smith"s flying machine. I don"t know what made me do it except I just--it was so early--I--I forgot it wasn"t a flying horse."
Mr. Carter looked at his little daughter with a smile of extreme tenderness. He had taken flights on Pegasus himself in days gone by. He seldom mounted him now--the burden of making a living had almost made him forget that Pegasus was not a plough horse--not quite, however, and now as his little girl stood in front of him, her hair all ruffled by her flight, her cheeks flushed and in her great brown eyes the shadow of her dream, he understood.
"It is still early in the morning, honey, for you--no doubt the aeroplane is Pegasus. I envy you the experience. Everyone might not see it as I do, however, so you and Mr. Belsmith and I had better keep it to ourselves," and he shook the birdman"s hand.
"Smith is my name--Tom Smith," and the young man smiled into the eyes of the older man.
"I am very glad to see you, and just as soon as I take this coffee to my wife, I will come and do the honors of the camp," and Robert Carter hastened off, thinking what a boon it would be to be young again in this day of flying machines.
Nan found her tent about as she had left it. The inmates were still asleep. "How strange," she said to herself, "that I should have been to the top of Helicon and taken flight with Bellerophon on Pegasus while these girls have slept on not knowing a thing about it! I wonder where their astral bodies have been! Douglas looks so happy, poor dear, I fancy hers has been in heaven."
Aloud she cried: "Get up, girls! Wake up! It is awfully late--the camp is stirring and there is a lot to do. I have found a new boarder! He dropped from the clouds and is starved to death."
CHAPTER XII