Whistling Jimps

Chapter I

Y OU boy ! Look out ! ’ ’ Mrs. Harvie called wamingly.

Page Ruffin, curled up with a book in the hammock, glanced around and saw a ragged youngster at the upper end of the camp-ground. Without the slightest attention to Mrs. Harvie, he kept on his way.

“Look out! Stop there !” she called again. “He ’s awfully cross, really. vicious; he ’ll not make friends with any one.”

The boy did not answer, even by a look. Nor did he pause. He went close to the parrot’s cage, although the bird, regarding all humankind as its foes, was seconding its mistress’s warning; it ruffled its feathers, flapped its wings, squawked harshly, and made futile, furious pecks at the firm bars of its prison. “Well, if you will — ” Mrs. Harvie gave the hard-headed fellow up to his punishment.

For a minute or two the boy stood perfectly still, staring at the strange, gorgeous bird. Then he gave a sweet, coaxing call. The parrot perked its head sideways and listened. It uttered a short cry that was less fierce, but still belligerent; it could not forget the bars between it and the gay summer world.

The boy repeated the call. It began with a low, clear whistle 1 , and rippled and gjurgled into a liquid note that melted into the stillness as if it were a part of it. It was a quite indescribable sound, as if a bird's song had blended with, had changed into, the plashing of a stream, the rustle of summer sunlit woods — all the freshness and fragrance and color of outdoors.

Page caught herself with perked-up lips trying to echo the whistle. And the bird fixed its bright beadlike eyes on the boy’s face, slowly dropped its wings and smoothed its angry plumage, then gave a sharp but friendly whistle in reply. The boy laughed and thrust a sunburnt hand between the bars of the cage. And the parrot, Grossest and most vicious of all its race, laid its head against the hand and gave a soft, friendly little note.

“0 Mrs. Harvie! Isn't that wonderful?” cried Page, dropping her book and jumping out of the hammock. ‘ 4 That 's the first person Zillo has not fought — claw, beak, and voice. — What did you do to him?”

The boy did not answer. Page looked at his intent face, and laughed.

“You look like I feel when I 'm reading a book I love,” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder. “What on earth did you do to Zillo?” she demanded. “I want to know, for he 's nipped my fingers a dozen times, and me trying to feed him and be friends! What did you do?”

“Nothin'.” The boy's voice was slow and sweet. He had a trick of screwing up his flexible lips before and after he spoke that made it seem as if his native speech were a whistle from which he turned with effort to the language of humans. “I nuver see a bird like him. Thar ain't none sich in the woods hereabouts.”

“It 's a parrot. It came from South America. Mrs. Harvie’s brother sent it to her,” Page informed him, smiling as she looked at him.

There was a quaint charm about the boy. He was a barefooted, ragged, dirty little fellow of about thirteen, with a wild, friendly, sunbrowned face. The tip of his nose had a comical uptilt, and his eyebrows ran up in peaks over his eyes, which were deep-set and had long, dark lashes. When he looked up at the parrot, Page saw that his eyes were a clear light gray and as bright and quick as the bird’s.

‘ ‘ Come on, Jimps!” a voice called sharply. “ Don’t stand thar bewitchted with that bird. Mammy say for us to go to the hotel an’ sell them minnows an’ come home.”

Page, looking in the direction of the voice, saw a group of young mountaineers. They had just come up the path from the chestnut woods into the main road. They were all barefooted, ragged, and dirty, and all of them had bright, wild, dark faces. In front was a girl of about fifteen, carrying her baby brother on her hip. At her heels trudged a ten-yearold girl, bearing with grave caution a bucket

What did you do to Zillo?” she demanded of minnows. There were two younger children, a girl and a boy, with bunches of wild flowers clutched in their fists.

“-Come on, Jimps!” the eldest girl repeated impatiently. “Don’t keep us waitin’.”

“You go on, Minta. Leave me be.” The boy flung his answer to his sister without moving or looking toward her.

“I ain’t. I ain’t goin’ to stir a step without you go,” she declared. “You jest lief stay thar till dark, gazin’ at that bird. You come on, Jimps.”

While Minta was arguing with her loitering brother, the smaller children scattered about the camp-ground like so many roaming puppies.

“0 Mrs. Harvie!” cried Page. “That little girl is eating an apple-paring. Mayn’t I give them some apples ?”

“Give them bread and meat, too,” answered Mrs. Harvie. “And there are some honeycakes in the tin box.”

•Page dispensed a bountiful supply of food to the young mountaineers, who sat down on the ground and ate greedily — all except the boy called Jimps. He stood beside the parrot’s cage, munching the sandwich that Page thrust into his hand, and giving the bird bits of bread and apple, which it accepted with friendly little chirps.

Page went back to her book and to the hammock under a great chestnut-tree beside the camp-ground — “Starwink Camp” it was called by the young folk who had camped there every summer for several years.

No lovelier site could be found than the grassy, tree-encircled glade at the lower end of Hilltop Lake, which is set like a jewel in the crest of the Virginia Alleghanies. And Starwink Camp never looked more beautiful than it did on that late August afternoon, with the sunlight gilding the glade and lying in streaks and patches in the surrounding woodland.

All the young people except Page Ruffin — Mary Watkins, Elinor Lane, Anne Lewis, Harrison Ruffin, and three Harvie boys, Christopher and David and Alexander — had gone rowing on the lake. Page had stayed at camp with a book she was eager to finish. She snuggled down now m the hammock where sunbeams, flickering through the chestnut foliage, found her out and danced over the brown face, kissed the rose-red lips, brightened the fair hair into spun gold, and twinkled in the gray-blue eyes under the dark lashes. She read on, and the chirping and whistling of the boy and the parrot made themselves a part of the harmony of the summer day.

But there came an alien note. A woman’s high-pitched voice called: 1 1 Good afternoon, Mrs. Harvie! Oh! What have you in that great basket V 9

The speaker was Mrs. Candler, a vivid, vivacious little woman who was staying at the hotel at the upper end of the lake. She came strolling down the road, with her small son Reginald hanging to her hand. His pert young voice followed his mother’s shrill tones.

“Say! what you got in that basket V 9 he demanded.

“Mushrooms,” replied Mrs. Harvie; “chantarelles and russulas and some violet cortinarius ; beauties they are, and they ’ll make a delicious dish.”

“Mushrooms! Where did you get them?” asked Mrs. Candler.

“Back there.” Mrs. Harvie nodded toward the woods. “There are quantities around here. We gather some nearly every day.”

“And you eat them?” asked Mrs. Candler, with a little shudder. “Why, I wouldn’t dare eat mushrooms except out of a market-basket or a can.”

“Some one has to gather them to put into baskets and cans, you know,” said Mrs. Harvie, laughing. “I ’d as soon trust my hands and eyes and wits as the market-gardener’s. We .gather only a few varieties, ones we are perfectly sure are good. Look at the lovely cobweb veil of this cortinarius. ”

At first Mrs. Candler touched the mushrooms with gingerly fingertips; but presently she became interested and began to help sort them. And then, with an impatient exclamation, she stripped off the rings that weighted her slender fingers and tossed them upon a near-by stone.

Reginald stood for a while picking at the mushrooms; then he tugged impatiently at his mother’s hand. “Aw, come on, Mama!” he* said. “Let ’s find some hop-toads to throw stones at. I bet I oan squush every one we find.”

“In a minute, darling,” said his mother. “Clever, high-spirited children are so restless, aren’t they, Mrs. Harvie? Look, sweet pet! See that pretty poll parrot.”

Reginald, disregarding Mrs. Harvie’s warning “Take care! He ’ll peck you!” ran to the cage, and promptly had his fingers nipped.

“I ’ll pay you for that, you horrid bad bird ! ” he bawled.

He jerked up a stick and began to hit at the parrot, which in turn screamed and struck at him.

Jimps caught the angry youngster firmly by the arm.

“Stop that,” he said, without raising or hurrying his voice.

“Let me alone. You got nothing to do with me, you dirty poor boy!” Reginald cried angrily, kicking fiercely at the boy’s bare shins.

“I ain’t goin’ to let you pester that bird,” Jimps said quietly. “Get away.”

Reginald backed off to a safe distance. “I will if I want to !” he shouted. ‘ ‘ You ain’t my boss. Who ’s afraid of you? I ain’t.”

But, for all his bold words, he did not venture again within reach of the mountaineer’s sturdy young arm. For a while he vented his spite by throwing pebbles at Jimps; then he wandered to the shed that served as a kitchen and banged furiously with a frying-pan on pots and kettles. When he saw the Starwink campers coming up the path from the lake, he dropped the pan and ran and caught Sandy Harvie by the hand.

4 ‘What made you not be here when I came?” he demanded. “Why weren’t you here to play with me ? ”

“I didn’t know you were coming,” Sandy said politely. He was the youngest of the Harvies, the twelve-year-old petted “baby” of the camp. “0 Mother! we ’ve had the bestest time ! ” he exclaimed.

“I got a lovely picture of the Portal; the light ’s just right,” said Elinor Lane, whose bright, ugly face looked like a comic picture.

“We had a jolly boat-race,” said Mary

Watkins, a vivid brunette, coming up arm in arm with fair-haired Anne Lewis. “Anne and I raced against Chris and Harrison; and we almost beat them — didn’t we, Anne?”

Christopher Harvie set his head nodding like a Chinese idol’s, and chanted teasingly, “A miss is as good as a — ”

“As a boy, to be sure!” interrupted a merry voice.

“Come now, Page ! You might at least have said a mister!” retorted Harrison Ruffin, a brown-faced, tawny-haired youngster, very like his cousin Page.

“Here, Pagie! leave your old book and let me tell you about my picture,” said Elinor, starting toward the hammock. Suddenly she stopped. “Oh, how lovely!” she exclaimed, pointing to Mrs. Candler’s rings lying on the stone. “Look, girls! Did you ever see anything so exquiss? Those gorgeous colors ! fairly blazing in the sunlight !”

“Precious!” “Lovely!” “Scrumptious!” exclaimed the other girls.

“Huh!” said a slow voice. “They ain’t nothin’ to make sich a fuss over.”

The young campers stared at the boy — barefooted, in dingy overalls and torn shirt — who had turned from the parrot and was gazing over Pagers shoulder at the rings.

‘ ‘My word! You look like a judge of gems!” Christopher said, laughing.

Jimps stood calm and unabashed. “I got sparklers prettier ’n them little few things; lots of ’em, an’ all colors, like a rainbow.’ ’

There was a shout of laughter in which matter-of-fact, truth-loving Elinor did not join.

“Why, boy!” she exclaimed. “Those are diamonds and rubies and emeralds — perfect beauties and worth ever so much money. One little diamond costs — oh! a hundred dollars; and big ones cost ever so much more. I don’t reckon you ever saw such jewels before, and as for having any — What makes him talk such nonsense!” she asked Minta, who had come nearer, again impatiently summoning her brother.

“Ef he say it ’s so, I ain’t got no call to say it ain’t so,” Minta answered stolidly. “You come on, Jimps.”

“Oh, he ’s found some crystals like those we got in the cave, or some bits of broken glass,” said Harrison Ruffin.

“They ain’t glass, my sparklers ain’t,” declared Jimps.

“Show them to us,” said Elinor; “show us your ‘ sparklers,’ as you call them, and let us see — ”

“I won’t. You got nothin’ to do with ’em.”

“Then I don’t believe you have — anything. I don’t believe a word you say,” Elinor said severely.

“Suit yoreself. B’lieve it or don’t b’lieve it,” Jimps answered indifferently, turning back to the parrot.

“Oh! everybody stop spatting,” cried Page. ‘ ‘ Let me tell you the most wonderful thing ! You all know how cross Zillo is? Well, this boy — ” And she proceeded to tell about his making friends with the parrot. “Who is he, anyway?” she asked, lowering her voice. “Do you know, Harrison? That girl — his sister, I suppose — calls him Jimps, and her name is Minta.”

“They are the Farlans,” answered Harrison, who had spent his early boyhood in these mountains. ‘ ‘ That Jim Farlan — ‘Whistling Jimps,’ they call him — roams the woods like a wild thing. The others are Minta and Nance and Looey and Sam. I don’t know the baby’s name. They are squatters, and live here, there, anywhere. They ’ve just moved to a cabin at the foot of Deer Mountain.”

“Can you really put your finger in that cage? Won’t Zillo peck you?” Alexander asked the young mountaineer. ‘ ‘ See where he bit me; and when I was putting seeds in his cage,” he said in an aggrieved little voice.

“Here, you Jimps!” said Minta, catching her brother roughly by the shoulder. “You come on an’ le’s sell them minnows.”

‘ ‘ Sell minnows ! ’ ’ laughed Chris. ‘ ‘ I did n ’t think he ’d deal in anything smaller than whales. He ’d better be seeing about his jewel-mine. Is it anywhere near Bear Bluff? We ’d like to look it up — we ’re going there for a picnic to-morrow, and we might bring back a handful of ‘sparklers.’ ”

“I don’t think it ’s any laughing matter to tell such stories,” Elinor said solemnly. “He ought to be ashamed of himself.”

Christopher laughed again. “ Pshaw, Elinor !” he said. “Be reasonable! Any one that can charm Zillo — why should n ’t he have a diamond-mine or a pearl-fishery on top of the Alleghanies ? ”

“Oh! he ’s an absurd little liar,” said Mrs. Candler. “Come, Reginald; come, my sweet pet ! Let ’s go back to the hotel and put on a white sailor suit. Mama wants her precious boy to be the prettiest, sweetest thing in the dining-room this evening.”

“I ain’t going to the hotel, and I ain’t going to dress up,” replied Reginald. “I ’m going down the road, to throw stones at hop-toads!”

“Not now, sweet pet; it ’s nearly suppertime,” coaxed his mother. “Let me get my rings and we — Why, I laid them — didn’t I lay my rings — ”

“On the stone by the camp-chair you were in,” called Mrs. Harvie, who was putting the mushrooms in a pan on the alcohol-stove.

“But they are n’t here.”

“Of course they are. On that flat stone,” Mrs. Harvie insisted. “I saw you put them there.”

“Yes; but — they aren’t!”

“We were looking at them there a minute ago,” said Elinor.

< ‘ They may have rolled down into the grass,’ ’ said Mrs. Harvie. “Chris! Harrison! David! find Mrs. Candler’s rings.”

They looked carefully — combing the grass; searching on the rock over and over again, as if the rings had gone away with a vagrant sunbeam and might now come back ; feeling the ground, as if the jewels might be there, invisible but tangible. All in vain!

Mrs. Candler was increasing her loss by recounting the value and association of each gem: “The solitaire was my engagement-ring. Aunt Mary paid three hundred dollars for the ruby. And I gave nine hundred, Cousin Tom’s legacy, for the diamond cluster; my husband always said diamonds were such a good investment. The emerald was my mother’s. And they ’re lost — every one — all lost and go-one!” She sobbed.

“Maybe you moved them,” said Harrison.

‘ 1 1 have n ’t touched them since I put them here,” answered Mrs. Candler, placing her hand on the rock for the fortieth time. “Oh! I know what ’s become of them!” she exclaimed, turning suddenly and fiercely toward Jimps. “That boy stole them. Of course he did. He ’s been hanging round here ever since 1 came. — You little thief! Give me my rings ! ’ ’

Jimps looked at her and made a grimace; then he chirruped to the parrot, gave it a final pat, and joined the other young Farlans at the roadside.

Mrs. Candler ran after him. “If you don't give back my rings — at once, I say! — I’ll have you arrested and put in jail,” she threatened.

“Now, Jimps! See what a mess you ’re in, meddlin’ with things you ’ve got no business with,” said Minta, who had been watching from a distance the search for the jewels.

Page looked thoughtfully at the boy. Was Mrs. Candler right in her surmise? The rings had certainly been on that stone. And now they were gone. Where else could suspicion fall ? And yet, she could not feel that this gay, quaint urchin was a thief, even though his own sister seemed to accuse him. She went up to him and spoke in an undertone.

“That lady put four rings on the stone,’ ’ she said. “I saw her. If — if you picked them up, now give them back.”

Jimps’s clear eyes met hers for a second.

“I ain’t teched her rings,” he said.

“You did,” cried Mrs. Candler. “You took them, and you ’ve got to give them back!”

Jimps laughed. He sprang like a chipmunk upon a big rock at the edge of the camp-ground, and began to eat an apple Page had given him. He finished it calmly while the excited little woman stood hurling threats at him. Then he caught a hemlock branch, swung back and forth, and, suddenly letting loose the branch, made a flying leap that landed him far up the road.

“Come back, you thief, and give me my rings. Stop him, boys; stop him!” called Mrs. Candler, scuttling after Jimps as fast as high heels and narrow skirt would permit.

The boy stood poised ready for flight, and grinned at her with impish glee.

“Uh, Jimps! quit yore prankin’,” commanded Minta. “Ef hotel folks git down on us, old man Pursilot won’t leave us come thar to sell minnows. Mammy 11 beat you; she 11 beat you to a frazzle. Come back an’ behave yoreself.”

Jimps scowled and stamped his feet and shook his head and gibbered angrily, but he returned to the edge of the camp-ground.

“ I ain’t teched her old rings; I ain’t been to that rock,” he muttered.

‘ ‘Of course you took them. They couldn’t walk away. And no one else has been near here. You crept behind us and slipped over there and took them.” Mrs. Candler had now firmly convinced herself of the truth of her surmise; she was so sure the boy had stolen her rings that she was almost ready to think she had actually seen him take them.

‘ 4 Jimps, why n’t you give the old woman her rings?” asked Minta. It w'as no harm, she thought, to pick up things you saw lying around; the harm was in not returning them when some one who had the power to do it threatened to make trouble for you. “ Why n’t you give ’em back?” she repeated.

“I can’t give what I ain’t got,” Jimps answered sullenly.

The campers stood on the edge of this controversy, gazing uncomfortably at one another and recalling what Jimps had said about “sparklers.” Did he indeed have jewels, the real things, that he had stolen?

“He must have taken them,” Mary said in an undertone. “There 's no one else.”

“I don't believe he did,” Page said slowly and thoughtfully. Suddenly her face brightened. “0 Mrs. Candler!” She ran up the road and put her hand on the little woman's arm. “Jimps Farlan didn't take your rings. I 've been thinking it over, and I remember just where he went and what he did. You see, he was standing by that chestnut-tree. He came and looked over my shoulder, and then he went, back that way, to Zillo's cage. He didn't — he couldn't — get the rings, for I was between him and them all the time.”

“Of course he took them,” snapped Mrs. Candler. “I put them there; now they are gone. What else could have become of them?”

“I just know he didn't go to that rock,” Page repeated positively.

“I cert'n'y ain't been thar,” said Jimps.

“Ef mammy beats me to death, ef they hang me or jail me — I ain’t took them old rings.”

“I know yon didn’t,” said Page, giving him a reassuring smile. “You didn’t do it, and they shan’t hurt you. I am going to stand by you.”

“As Page says, she would have seen him if he had gone to that rock,” said Mrs. Harvie. “Let ’s look again. Perhaps — ”

“She was not noticing,” Mrs. Candler interrupted. “He slipped by her. You boys must go with me and march the little thief straight to Mr. Pursilot to be searched.”

“We must, eh!” muttered Harrison.

“He ’s got to give back my rings. And I am going to ask Mr. Pursilot to forbid these little wretches ever, ever coming again to the hotel grounds.”

“Then we can’t sell no more minnows,” wailed Nance.

“We can’t git no more nickels for weeds,” cried Looey, looking dolefully at the wild flowers she had hoped to sell to a hotel guest.

“0 Mrs. Candler! That isn’t fair,” protested Page. “You have n’t any right to make these poor children suffer because you suspect Jimps — ”

“ Suspect! I know,” Mrs. Candler said angrily. “He may have hidden my rings. If I ne-ever get them back” — her voice trembled at the thought — “I shall always believe and know he took them. Come, boys, take him to Mr. Pursilot. Here, Reginald. Don’t give me your fist like that; what have you in your hand?”

4 4 Nothing.”

* ‘ Don’t annoy me when I am worried to death already,” she said sharply. “Take my hand. You ’ll fall on these stones and get hurt.”

As she jerked at his fingers, he suddenly opened his fist and threw down something that, falling in a patch of sunlight, glittered and twinkled like impish eyes mocking her anger and suspicion.

The lost jewels!

Mrs. Candler gasped and stared, and scrambled to seize them.

“Here they are, all of them!” she exclaimed. Then she wheeled toward her son. 4 ‘ Reginald !

Reginald Candler! And yon had my rings all that time, and saw me looking for them — distressed, wretched — Oh! you naughty, naughty boy! Aren’t you ashamed — ”

Reginald interrupted his mother’s reproof by throwing himself flat on the ground and howling at the top of his voice.

‘ 4 It — it wasn’t a nice thing for you to do, my son , 9 9 Mrs. Candler said in an apologetic tone. “But don’t cry.”

Reginald howled the more loudly, emphasizing his screams by kicking and pounding the ground with his fists.

His mother tried to lift him up, saying soothingly: “Why, son! sweet pet! Are you so grieved at having annoyed mama? Don’t cry, darling; don’t cry. You ’ll make yourself ill. Get up and let ’s go home, dear. It ’s all right now; it ’s all right.”

“It surely isn’t ‘all right,’ Mrs. Candler,” said Page’s severe young voice. “You believed that boy stole your rings and you accused him of it. Don’t you think you owe him an apology?”

“An apology? That little ragamuffin?”

gasped Mrs. Candler. “Why, why — he might have stolen the rings. I don’t donbt he would have done it if he had had a chance. Probably Reginald saved them by picking them up. The dear child is so observant and clever! I expect he saw that boy trying to sneak there and get them, and so he ran and picked them up.” She patted her son on the head. He had stopped screaming, and scrambled to his feet, allowing himself to be pacified as soon as he found he was in no danger of punishment. “Wasn’t that it, my darling!” she asked. “Didn’t you take mama’s rings just to keep them for her!”

“Yes,” replied Reginald; “I took them to keep for you. Come on, Mama. Come on away from these horrid mean folks.”

He tugged at her hand, and she went obediently up the road.

“Well! Wasn’t that a silly shame!” exclaimed Chris, looking after them.

The other campers laughed — all except Page, who was too indignant to see the ludicrous side of the affair. She ran up the road after the Farlan children. They were going on to the hotel, calmly accepting Mrs. Candler’s injustice and relieved that the threatened punishment had not fallen on Jimps and involved them all.

“Good-by,” Page said, giving Jimps ’s hand an impulsive, friendly clasp. “I am sorry Mrs. Candler was so unkind, so unfair. It was horrid of her not to apologize.”

“I didn’t mind nothin’ she said,” Jimps answered slowly. He started up the road, and then turned back. “Say!” He cocked his head sideways, with his eyes shining like a bird’s. “I would n’t mind lettin’ you see them sparklers o’ mine.”

Chapter II

T HE next morning the Starwink campers went picnicking. Ten o ’clock found them at Sweetwater Spring, which gurgled from under a great rock below the eastern crest of Lake Mountain. They drank and drank again of the delicious cool water.

* ‘ This spring ’s sure got the right name,” said little Sandy.

“Isn’t this perfect for a picnic?” exclaimed Anne Lewis. “Drinks close at hand, and this lovely rock table.”

“Oh, it is so lovely!” Elinor Lane sighed, as she fingered her camera and looked from the tangle and tumble of ferns and rocks down to sunlit Hemlock Hollow, across to tree-clad Treasure Mountain, and on to Indian Head and the parallel ridges beyond, lying in pale and paler blue lines along the horizon. “It ’s the color, the atmosphere, the — oh! everything I can ’t get in a picture, ’ ’ she mourned.

“Look at the picture we ’ve made here, Miss Crape-hanger, and cheer up,” counseled Christopher. “Our first job was sure a good one. Gee ! don't you wish Mr. Kinman could see it!”

Mr. Kinman was the friend who had inspired the Starwink campers to form a band of Flower Friends, the summer before, to protect and foster native flowers. Here were the first plants they had set out — green-veined grass-of-Parnassus, feathery white foam-flower, graceful jewel-weed, gorgeous Turk’s-cap lilies. What delicate and gay beauty they gave the place !

“This spring was always pretty,” said Anne Lewis.

“We Ve made it prettier by bringing these flowers here,” declared Mary Watkins.

“Yes,” Page agreed. She paused a minute, then went on hesitatingly: “There ’s one place — I don r t know that it ever could be pretty — but I do wish we could improve Squirrel Spring.”

There was a chorus of astonishment and dissent :

“Why, Page ! What could we do to that ugly old place?”

“It isn’t a spring, it ’s just an oozy hole in the mud.”

“It ’s so horrid I hate even to pass it,” declared Elinor.

Harrison did not like to see Page look disappointed, and so he gave her plan lukewarm approval: “If the spring were deepened and the channel dug out so the water would flow freely — ”

“The cattle would trample it down again,” said Chris.

“Oh! we could wall it round,” Page suggested, brightening. ‘ ‘ C ould n’t we, Harrison f ’ ’

“We ’d like to leave the mountains a souvenir of our happy summer,” said Mrs. Ilarvie; “a pleasant fountain instead of a muddy hole in that beautiful woodland.”

“We couldn’t.”

“We could.”

“Let ’s go there — say, Friday,” said Page, “and try — ”

“To gild a mud-hole and paint skunk-cabbage, as Shakspere would say.”

“Come, come!” laughed Mrs. Harvie. “When my son Christopher begins to misquote poetry it ’s time to change the subject. We ’ll go to Squirrel Spring on Friday and see what we can do to beautify — or unuglify — the place. Now I am going to gather some huckleberries for our lunch. Who ’ll go with me?”

“Oh! we don’t want huckleberries,” Page exclaimed. “Let ’s go to Bear Bluff and explore those holes and hollows. Maybe we ’ll find a real cave.”

“Wait till this afternoon,” said Mary. “Let ’s help Mrs. Harvie pick berries.”