Hazel was the picture of health and fast becoming what Chi had predicted, "an A Number 1" beauty. Her dark eyes sparkled with the joy of life; on her rounded cheeks there was the red of the rose; the skull-cap had been discarded, and a fine crop of soft, silky rings of dark brown hair had taken its place.
"Never, no, never, have I had such good times," she wrote to her Cousin Jack at Newport. "We eat on the porch, and make believe camp out in the woods, and we ride on Bess and Bob all over the Mountain. We've about finished the preserves and jams, and Rose has only burnt herself twice.
The chickens, Chi says, are going to be prime ones; it 's awfully funny to see them come flying and hopping and running towards us the minute they see us--March says it's the 'Charge of the Light Brigade.'
"I wish you could be up here and have some of the fun,--but I 'm afraid you 're too old. I enclose the song Rose sings which you asked me for.
I don't understand it, but it's perfectly beautiful when she sings it."
Hazel had asked Rose for the words of the song, telling her that her Cousin Jack at Harvard would like to have them. Rose looked surprised for a moment.
"What can he want of them?" she asked in a rather dignified manner; and Hazel, thinking she was giving the explanation the most reasonable as well as agreeable, replied:--
"I don't know for sure, but I think--you won't tell, will you, Rose?"
"Of course I won't. I don't even know your cousin, to begin with."
"I think he is going to be engaged, or is, to Miss Seaton of New York.
All his friends think she is awfully pretty, and papa says she is fascinating. I think Jack wanted them to give to her."
"Oh," said Rose, in a cool voice with a circumflex inflection, then added in a decidedly toploftical tone, "I've no objection to his making use of them. I 'll copy them for you."
"Thank you, Rose," said Hazel, rather puzzled and a little hurt at Rose's new manner.
This conversation took place the first week in August, and the verses were duly forwarded to Jack, who read them over twice, and then, thrusting them into his breast-pocket, went over to the Casino, whistling softly to himself on the way. There, meeting his chum and some other friends, he proposed a riding-trip through the Green Mountain region for the latter part of August.
"The Colonel and his wife will go with us, I 'm sure, and any of the girls who can ride well will jump at the chance," said his chum. "It's a novelty after so much coaching."
"I 'll go over and see Miss Seaton about it," said Jack, and walked off singing to himself,--
"'--the stars above Shine ever on Love'--"
His friend turned to the others. "That's a go; I 've never seen Sherrill so hard hit before." Then he fell to discussing the new plan with the rest.
Jack was wily enough, as he laid the plan before Maude Seaton, to attempt to kill two birds with one stone. He had had a desire, ever since the first letter of Hazel's, to see his little cousin in her new surroundings, and this desire was immeasurably strengthened by his curiosity to see a girl who sang Barry Cornwall's love-lyrics on Mount Hunger. Consequently, in planning the high-roads to be followed through the Green Mountains, he had not omitted to include Barton's River, as it boasted a good inn.
"Here 's Woodstock,--just here," he explained to pretty Maude Seaton, as they sat on the broad morning-porch of the palatial Newport cottage, with a map of Vermont on the table between them. "We can stop there a day or two, and make our next stop at Barton's River; I 've heard it's a beautiful place, with glorious mountain rides within easy distance.
Suppose we arrange to stop three or four days there and take it all in?
I 've been told it's the finest river-valley in New England."
"Oh, do let's! The whole thing is going to be delightful. I 'm so tired of coaching; I believe nobody enjoys it now, unless it's the one who holds the reins, and then all the others are bored. But with fine horses this will be no end of fun. We can send on our trunks ahead, can't we?"
"Oh, yes, that's easily arranged. By the way, what horse will you take?
Remember," he said, looking her squarely in the eyes with a flattering concern, "it's a mountain country, and we can't afford to have anything happen to you."
"No danger for me," laughed Maude, meeting his look as squarely. "And I can't worry about you after seeing the polo game you played yesterday,"
she added with frank admiration.
"It was a good one, was n't it?" said Jack, his eyes kindling at the remembrance. "It was my mascot did the business--see?" He put his hand in his breast-pocket, expecting to draw forth a ribbon bow of Maude's that she had given him for "colors;" but, to his amazement, and to Miss Seaton's private chagrin, he drew forth only the slip of paper with Barry Cornwall's love-song in Rose Blossom's handwriting.
Where the dickens was that bow? Jack felt the absurdity of hunting in all his pockets for something he had intended should express one phase, at least, of his sentiments. He felt the blood mounting to the roots of his hair, and, laughing, put a bold face on it.
He held out the slip of paper. "It looks innocent, doesn't it?" he said mischievously, and enjoyed to the full Maude's look of discomfiture, which, only for a second, she could not help showing. "She 'll know now how a fellow feels when he has sent her flowers and sees her wearing another man's offering," he thought. He turned to the map again.
"Well, what horse will you ride?"
"I 'll take Old Jo; he 's safe, and splendid for fences. Of course you 'll take Little Shaver?"
"Yes, he and I don't part company very often. So it's settled, is it?"
he asked, feeling cooler than he did.
"So far as I am concerned, it is; and I know the Colonel and Mrs.
Fenlick will go; it's just the thing they like."
"Well, I 'll leave you to speak to the other girls, and I 'll go over and see Mrs. Fenlick. Good-bye." He held out his hand, but Miss Seaton chose to be looking down the avenue at that moment.
"Oh, there are the Graysons beckoning to me!" she exclaimed eagerly.
"Excuse me, and good-bye--I must run down to see them." As she walked swiftly and gracefully over the lawn, she knew Jack Sherrill was watching her. "Yes, it's settled," she thought, as she hurried on; "and something else is settled, too, Mr. Sherrill! You 've been hanging fire long enough--and the idea of his forgetting that bow!"
The Graysons thought they had never seen Maude Seaton quite so pretty as she was that morning, when she stood chatting and laughing with all in general, and fascinating each in particular. The result was, the Graysons joined the riding-party in a body, and Sam Grayson vowed he would cut Jack Sherrill out if he had to fight for it.
It was a glorious first of September when the riding-party, ten in number, cantered up to the inn at Barton's River, and it was a merry group in fresh toilets that gathered after dinner and a rest of an hour or two in their rooms, on the long, narrow, vine-covered veranda of the inn. It had been a warm day, and the afternoon shadows were gratefully cooling.
"Will you look at that load coming down the street?" said Mrs. Fenlick.
"I never saw anything so funny!"
The whole party burst out laughing, as the vehicle, an old apple-green cart, apparently filled with bobbing calico sunbonnets and straw hats, shackled and rattled up to the side door of the inn.
"I shall call them the Antediluvians," laughed Maude Seaton. "Do you know where they come from?" she said, speaking in at the open office-window to the boy.
"I guess they come to sell berries from a place the folks round here call 'The Lost Nation,'" he replied, grinning.
"'The Lost Nation!' Do you hear that?" said Sam Grayson. "Let's have a nearer view of the natives." They all went to the end of the veranda nearest the cart. Sam Grayson and Jack went out to investigate.
Two boys in faded blue overalls and almost brimless straw hats jumped down before the wagon stopped, and began lifting out six-quart pails of shining blackberries from beneath an old buffalo robe. Jack, with his hands in his pockets, sauntered up to the tail of the cart.
"Buy them all, do--do!" cried Miss Seaton, clapping her hands. "We need them to-morrow for our picnic; and pay a good price," she added, "for the sake of the looks. I wouldn't have missed it for anything?"
"How do you sell them?" said Jack to the tall boy who stood with his back to him, busied with the berries.
The boy turned at the sound of the pleasant voice, and lifted his brimless hat by the crown with an air a Harvard freshman might have envied. Jack, seeing it, was sorry he was bareheaded, for he hated to be outdone in such courtesy.
"Ten cents a quart, sir."
"What a handsome fellow!" whispered Mrs. Fenlick. "You rarely see such a face; and where did he get such manners?"
"How many quarts have--halloo, Little Sunbonnet! Look out!" said Jack, laughing, as he caught the owner of the yellow sunbonnet, who, perched on the side of the wagon, suddenly lost her balance because of Bess's uneasy movements in fly-time.
"Well, you are an armful," he laughed as he set her down and tried in vain to peer up under the drooping bonnet and discover a face.