ds appeared
strange rock shapes of red and pink and pale yellow, which looked like
castles with towers and pinnacles, or like primitive fortifications.
Clover thought it all strangely beautiful, but Mrs. Watson found fault
with it as "queer."

"It looks unnatural, somehow," she objected; "not a bit like the East. Red
never was a favorite color of mine. Ellen had a magenta bonnet once, and
it always worried--But Henry liked it, so of course--People can't see
things the same way. Now the green hat she had winter before last
was--Don't you think those mountains are dreadfully bright and distinct? I
don't like such high-colored rocks. Even the green looks red, somehow. I
like soft, hazy mountains like Blue Hill and Wachusett. Ellen spent a
summer up at Princeton once. It was when little Cynthia had
diphtheria--she's named after me, you know, and Henry he thought--But I
don't like the staring kind like these; and somehow those buildings, which
the conductor says are not buildings but rocks, make my flesh creep."

"They'd be scrumptious places to repel attacks of Indians from," observed
Phil; "two or three scouts with breech-loaders up on that scarlet wall
there could keep off a hundred Piutes."

"I don't feel that way a bit," Clover was saying to Mrs. Watson. "I like
the color, it's so rich; and I think the mountains are perfectly
beautiful. If St. Helen's is like this I am going to like it, I know."

St. Helen's, when they reached it, proved to be very much "like this,"
only more so, as Phil remarked. The little settlement was built on a low
plateau facing the mountains, and here the plain narrowed, and the
beautiful range, seen through the clear atmosphere, seemed only a mile or
two away, though in reality it was eight or ten. To the east the plain
widened again into great upland sweeps like the Kentish Downs, with here
and there a belt of black woodland, and here and there a line of low
bluffs. Viewed from a height, with the cloud-shadows sweeping across it,
it had the extent and splendor of the sea, and looked very much like it.

The town, seen from below, seemed a larger place than Clover had expected,
and again she felt the creeping, nervous feeling come over her. But before
the train had fairly stopped, a brisk, active little man jumped on board,
and walking into the car, began to look about him with keen, observant
eyes. After one sweeping glance, he came straight to where Clover was
collecting her bags and parce