Out into the clinging mist, onto a long wooden platform, tumbled the travelers; Caleb in the first rank. There, drawn up to halt their onset, comic opera chorus-like, were ranged the vociferating station clerks of the lake’s various hotel-camps. A breath of keen balsam-tinged air bit to Conover’s very lungs. Instinctively he threw out his chest drinking in great gulps of strange ozone. From out of the swirling mist before him rose of a sudden a slight, girlish figure that ran forward with a glad little cry and caught both his hands.
“Oh, you’re here! You’re here!” rejoiced Desirée, careless of bystanders. “Mrs. Hawarden said I’d catch my death if I was on the lake so early. But I got up at the screech of dawn, and came. Isn’t it all wonderful? This mist will burn up in a little while and then you’ll see! And do Billy and Aunt Mary still like farm life? Oh, it’s so good—so good—to see you! Come. The Antlers launch is around the other side of the station.”
Clinging gleefully to one of his big arms, the girl piloted him through the scurrying groups and the luggage heaps, to a nearby dock where a half score of waiting launches panted. From one of the largest fluttered a dark blue flag with the name “Antlers” picked out on it in white. Into the launch they piled; Desirée still talking in pretty, eager excitement.
“This is the south end of the lake,” she was explaining. “There’s the store over yonder—that farthest red building—and there’s the Raquette Lake House. We had a dance there one night. And out there—” with a wave toward the wall of shining vapor, “is where we’re going. It’s only a mile. We’ll start as soon as the rest can get aboard. Oh, I wish the mist was gone, so you could see the islands, and old Blue Mountain keeping guard over—”
“It’s pretty damp on the water for you, ain’t it?” he interrupted, drawing her mackintosh closer about her shoulders. “This fog’s wet.”
“Nobody ever catches cold, up here on the top of the world!” she disclaimed. “And it isn’t fog. It’s just a little mountain mist. In another half-hour it will rise.”
“Just the same,” he argued, “I wish you had come in a carriage, instead of bein’ on the water so early.”
“A carriage!” she scoffed merrily. “Where do you think you are? These,” pointing to the docked rowboats, canoes and launches clustering about them, “are the ‘carriages’ of the Adirondacks. Why, except for the white trunk-chariot steed at the Antlers, there probably isn’t a horse within three miles of here. It’s Venice all over again, in that. Aren’t you at all glad to see me?” she continued, dropping her voice and noting the man’s puzzled, unenthusiastic mien. For an instant, some of the happy light ebbed in the eyes that had been so brimful of joyous welcome.
Caleb roused himself with an impatient shake at his own seeming apathy.
“Glad to see you!” he echoed. “Glad? Well, say, you little girl, it’s the gladdest thing that’s happened to me since the day you left Granite. An’ I’d be just as glad even if it was in some worse place than a wet boat all stalled up with mist. Gee! But the tan makes you look prettier’n a whole picture album!”