ndians, was brightened to living fire by the
Puritans from over the sea who called the world they found New England.
Somehow, the combination is unique, and the same curious sense of
personality runs through everything, linking all together as a golden
thread might link many different coloured beads. The cedars crowning the
hills could be only American cedars. "Joe Pye weed" (whose Indian name
is lost, but whose pinky purple colour is ever present) is so patriotic
a plant that it would perish rather than grow in foreign parts. The
ponds crusted with water-lily pads and ringed round with young trees
like children dancing hand in hand seem to sing "We are of _New_
England!" And even the apple trees--immense domed tents of green and
pink brocade--are like colonial ladies dressed in their hoop-skirted
best.

New London, on the contrary--when we came to it at last--struck us as
being like some town of England, or of Scotland. That was only a first
impression, however, and a superficial likeness. We soon began to find
out the differences, for New London was our night stop, and we had hours
before dark to criticise and admire. It hadn't been a long run, as runs
go, from New York, and at New Haven we heard motor fiends at luncheon
near us in the hotel talk of "pushing on to Boston." Just such a fiend
would Caspian be if he could, because he so hates the stops devoted to
sight-seeing; but Jack and Peter are, after all, powers behind the
throne, or, rather, behind the engines. They don't drive, yet
unostentatiously they direct less determined or less firmly
concentrated minds. Nobody except your Molly realized that we were to
spend an afternoon and night at New London because Jack Winston and
Peter Storm wished it, but so, indeed, it was. Nobody but your Molly
guessed that a sight-seeing plot was hatching against Caspian
and--incidentally--against Mrs. Shuster. Idonia Goodrich had been
carefully incited to keen interest in New London because of the Yale and
Harvard boat races, and though nothing was going on, she wanted to see
the place where such things _did_ go on. Where Idonia goes, the fickle
Larry likes to go just now, for when a good-looking girl flags him with
the signal, "I'm ready to flirt if you are!" he simply can't resist,
which means that where Idonia and Larry go, thither goeth Lily also. As
for Pat, she knows that actively seeing sights is her one hope (if any)
of escape from Caspian. Consequently she had listened