Elizabeth Weston Timlow

“ THE DIAMOND RING. The short days of the girls’ visit flew by on wings.
“Only till to-morrow!” sighed Cricket, as they got up from the luncheon table. “This time to-morrow you’ll be gone, and we’ll be left forlorn! I wish people who come here to visit would stay for always, and never go away.”
“What an India-rubber house you’d have to have,” said Archie, sweeping all her curls over her face with a nourish of his arm, as he passed her.
“Archie, when you get to heaven, you won’t be happy unless you can muss my hair up,” said Cricket, resignedly, shaking it back. ”

“ Sometimes all the accretions of life, which are not true growth, need to be stripped away. Men saw not my foundation rock, until flame and flood stripped them bare. War has stripped bare the souls of men, and beneath—if they choose—they will find their feet are upon a Rock. The Rock of a faith in the power of Good itself. . . . It is beyond reason. Only feeling can apprehend it. . . It is only when your soul is utterly still that it can hear God speak—and He speaks not with the tongue of humanity. . . . When the storm breaks, let it rage. ”

“ As she raised him his golden head fell back heavily, and his eyes were closed.
"Oh, girls, girls!" shrieked Eunice. "Kenneth is dead! he's killed! he's killed!"
Cricket and Edna were already by her side.
"Run, Zaidee—Edna—run for Eliza. Get some water, Cricket. Oh, baby, speak to me," poor frightened Eunice cried, half beside herself at the gruesome sight of the baby's white, still face, and that dreadful blood welling up so fast, and staining everything with its vivid red. Cricket flew to the edge of the beach, dipping water up in the crown of her sailor hat. ”

“ The huge and rosy thunder-caps that had lain all the morning to the southwest in their thrilling beauty were creeping somewhat higher in the ineffable blue and were drifting slowly north. It was high noon, and the climber now threw himself down for prosaic luncheon purposes near the brink of the precipice where grew a green bit of mountain-grass against a rock, with a storm-battered spruce cuddled close against it By him lay a clear and icy little pool with a sandy bed—the water blue as the sky above and amber in the shadows. ”

“ FOURTH OF JULY. Of course, with such a troop of children as there was at Kayuna, Fourth of July was a wildly exciting time. They were always up at unearthly hours in the morning, and used up, before breakfast, an immense supply of giant torpedoes and fire-crackers, by way of opening the day. Later, they were allowed free range of the back-kitchen, in order that they might carry out, all by themselves, the grand performance of the day. This was making and freezing a great can of ice-cream, with no interference, even to the extent of a suggestion, from the cook. ”

“ My goody, doesn't it seem as if we had been here a week?"
"Don't let's come again till it's high tide in the middle of the day," said Eunice. "Here, now we have the things all in."
"Isn't this boat a spectacle?" said Eunice, surveying its mud-splashed sides. "Won't the boys give you a blessing, Miss Scricket!"
"A blessing is a good thing to have," answered Cricket, quite undisturbed, as she yielded the oars to Eunice, and sat in the stern with Edna. ”

“ There was a shout of laughter that nearly drowned Marjorie’s astonished protest that she never sang anything so sepulchral.
“You certainly do, often,” insisted Doctor Ward. “This very afternoon, not long before dinner, I heard you and two or three of your friends, in the music-room, singing, and one of the things you sang was that very song, only you sang it this way: ‘Repack my body to me,—same old body.’”
There was another shout.
“Oh, papa, you funny!” cried Marjorie. “It isn’t body at all. It’s ‘Bring back my Bonny to me.’ It’s a girl’s name. ”

“ Onward swept beckoning cairns, leading across to where the Upper Trail to the Great Pasture dipped again into the woods, the path which drops with romantic abruptness down ledge after ledge, till it reaches at last the Great Pasture lying far below, tapestried with its blueberry bushes and grassy tufts. But the climber kept to the upland, twisting his way up and up, scrambling across the rock-faces as best he might. He could not now see the Giant for he was hidden for the moment behind the nearer height of Monte Rosa, but it was beyond and ever beckoning. ”

“ At last they reached the cider mill. What fun it was to run around the apple-smelling place, and to suck, through a straw, the sickishly-sweet juice dropping from the press.
Kenneth was lost once, to be discovered leaning over one of the low vats, splashing his hands in the pale, yellow liquid with great enjoyment. Of course he was soaked to his shoulders.
“You bad boy,” scolded Eunice, fishing him out. “Look at your dress!” for it was drenched with cider and black with dirt. His face was grimy and his curls sticky and odourous.
“My! won’t ’Liza scold!” commented Zaidee, very comfortingly. ”

“ After a time Zaidee and Helen, with Kenneth lagging after, came disconsolately around to the front piazza. Zaidee's soft, silky, black hair lay in wet streaks, plastered down on her forehead, while Helen's golden locks were as tightly curled as grape-tendrils.
"We can't find Cricket any more, for she's runned away," announced Zaidee, aggrieved.
"We've hunted and hunted," said Helen. "We heard her calling once, but when we got where she was, she wasn't there any more."
"She'll be back in a moment," said Eunice, mopping off the little hot head with a practised hand. "You sit still and get cool. ”

“ The Mountain-Lover began to think more and more concretely. He soon came to the Sweet Water Spring and knelt to drink of the tiny icy pool, protected by the loving care of other mountain-lovers. He went on his way to the left, still slowly winding around Monte Rosa, following the dim little path as it twisted around the out-jutting cliffs and through the woods till the maples and birches gave way as ever to the stunted and gnarled little spruces, leading with the usual suddenness out on the broad open rocks to the west. ”

“ Would you like to live there?"
"Oh, how lovely!" sighed Edna. "Let's go there! Think of having no one to tease you."
"Or pull your hair," said Cricket, feelingly.
"Or call you names," said Hilda, severely.
"Or hide your things," added Eunice, reproachfully.
"Or take you sailing, or teach you to wrestle, or write things for your old 'Echo,' or harness the ponies when Luke is not round, and look out for you generally," said Archie, in a breath. "If boys are barrelled in that place, girls ought to be—"
"Hung," said Edna, sweetly. "Please pass me the syrup." ”

“ Mamma, what can Hilda and I do this afternoon?”
“We girls are going to the museum again,” said Eunice. “Come with us.”
“No, we don’t want to. You like to see such disinteresting things. Mummies and all that. I only like the pictures and marbles, anyway.”
“We want something very nice,” put in Hilda, “because we kept house all day yesterday, and did very hard work.”
“Yes,” sighed Cricket, “I’ve learned two things lately. I don’t want to adopt a baby and have it keep me awake at night, and I don’t want to be poor and not have any books to read. Mamma, what can we do?” ”

“ Long the Mountain-Lover lay back against the rock, facing the calm breadth of the summit, gazing at it with love welling up in his heart and listening once more with freshly attuned ears to what the grave, mighty pile had to tell him. Wordless are its impressions as yet; but an indefinable calm slowly smooths out tangles in his tired brain and unties knotted mental muscles. He dreams—and is at rest. When he rises at last from the crisp moss, and stretches himself with lazy delight he feels years younger. ”

“ A wild stampede instantly followed, as they fled, screaming and shrieking. The few berries, the rest of the lunch, the napkins and the pail-covers flew in every direction, as the children sped wildly on, thinking that the snake was in full pursuit. Nor did they stop until Cricket, who, on her swift feet, led the band, went, head over heels, over a projecting root, and found herself sitting on the bank of the ever-present Kayuna.
Then they all brought up, panting and breathless, and rather shamefaced.
“Ho! what made you girls run so?” asked Phil, recovering himself first. ”

“ The dry seaweed draped the rough stones, and Kenneth's shells were arranged about it.
"Now we must begin to offer sacrifices," said Cricket. "We must have dishevelled hair, Eunice, as the women always do in stories. I can't muss mine up much more than it always is," regretfully, "but you can take your braid out, and throw your hair all around. Oh, that's lovely!" as Eunice loosened her heavy, dark braid, and threw the long, straight masses all about. "How beautifully dishevelled you are!" ”

“ Eunice was white with excitement. She, forming the rank and file of the attacking army, had less to sustain her courage than General Cricket had. Definite action is always easier than to await an issue. Then, also, Cricket’s sublime unconsciousness that any one was particularly interested or concerned in what she did, saved her from the wonder, “What will people think?” which so often nips one’s finest projects in the bud. ”

“ There are many approaches to the heart of this Monadnock. Those who climb the rough main trail, merely to look from the peak, do not grasp even the fringe of its mysteries. Even to the dwellers on the spreading plains below, though it may be to them a vision of artistic delight, or as it was to Kipling, a mute Teacher, even to these, manifold as may be the many lessons the granite pile may offer them, but a tithe of its joy is known. ”

“ Eliza sat in the doorway crocheting. The older girls climbed the ladder to a high beam, and then would shoot off on to the soft hay far below. Zaidee ambitiously tried to follow. But half-way up the ladder her courage invariably failed her, and she would sit still and shriek till one of her sisters came and carried her down.
"Zaidee, don't climb up this ladder again," said Eunice, sharply, after she had rescued her small sister for the tenth time. "If you do, I'll leave you there. It's too high for you, and you're always afraid." ”

“ They may know and love its ever-changing color and line and beauty; they may delight in its retreat and approach with the shifting whim of the atmosphere; they may see it now in the austere purity and remoteness of its winter garment of ice and snow, sparkling like a million diamonds, or now impalpable, mysterious, dimly vast in a shroud of cloud,—but they may not, cannot, understand what it grows to mean to the mountain lover who dwells close to its shrine and knows it as a lover knows the heart of his mistress. ”

“ Hilda did not realize that such an outbreak is seldom as sudden as it seems, and that many grievances will often smoulder for a long time, till some trifle fires the flame.
She walked along, miserable enough, half-crying, half-indignant. The rain had ceased, and the sky had cleared, so she stopped by the brook in the grassy lane, which the children used as a short cut, and sat down by the little bridge. She was ashamed to go on into the village street while she was crying.
Here she and Cricket had spent many happy hours, and had never, never quarrelled before. ”

“ In imagination the climber can see the needle-strewn way striking up some steep pitch, beside the frolicking stream, pausing now to take a loop and find the Spring that Will Hyde found, then sturdily again attacking the abrupt heights, up and up and up, the red cross steadily pointing out the way. Many a time has the climber taken that path and he retraces it in memory, looking down at the sunny, smiling valley below. ”