n o'clock, and we gave the
chambermaid a dollar next morning, and nobody's been the wiser since.
And then we walked to the upper village and bought that extraordinary
chintz, and frilled and cushioned our trunks into ottomans, and
curtained the dress-hooks; and Lucinda got us a rocking-chair, and Maud
came in with me to sleep, and we kept our extra pillows, and we should
be comfortable as queens if it wasn't for Graywacke."

"Now, Sin Saxon, you know Graywacke is just the life of the house. What
would such a parcel of us do, if we hadn't something to run upon?"

"Only I'm afraid I shall get tired of it at last. She bears it so. It
isn't exactly saintliness, nor Graywackeiness, but it seems sometimes as
if she took a quiet kind of fun out of it herself,--as if she were
somehow laughing at us, after all, in her sleeve; and if she is, she's
got the biggest end. _She_'s bright enough."

"Don't we tree-toad her within an inch of her life, though, when we come
home in the wagons at night? I shouldn't think she could stand that
long. I guess she wants all her beauty-sleep. And Kate Arnall can
tu-whit, tu-whoo! equal to Tennyson himself, or any great white
_American_ owl."

"Yes, but what do you think? As true as I live, I heard her answer back
the other night with such a sly little 'Katy-did! she did! she did!' I
thought at first it actually came from the great elm-trees. Oh, she's
been a girl once, you may depend; and hasn't more than half got over it
either. But wait till we have our 'howl'!"

What a "howl" was, superlative to "tree-toading," "owl-hooting," and
other divertisements, did not appear at this time; for a young man did,
approaching from the front of the hotel, and came up to the group on the
piazza with the question, "At what time do we set off for Feather-Cap
to-morrow?"

"Oh, early, Mr. Scherman; by nine o'clock."

"Earlier than you'll be ready," said Frank Scherman's sister, one of the
"Routh" girls also.

"I shan't have any crimps to take down, that's one thing," Frank
answered. And Sin Saxon, glancing at his handsome waving hair, whispered
saucily to Jeannie Hadden, "I don't more than half believe that,
either;"--then, aloud, "You must join the party too, girls, by the way.
It's one of the nicest excursions here. We've got two wagons, and
they'll be full; but there's Holden's 'little red' will take six, and I
don't believe anybody has spoken for it. Mr. Scherman! wouldn't it make
you happy to go an