Rathfelder's Hotel

by Annie E. Bosworth

"Oh, now, don't you call this pleasant, Lotty?" I exclaimed as we wandered together in the garden at the back of the hotel after dinner, uncle and aunt preferring to remain on the broad balcony surrounding that portion of the house allotted entirely to visitors. The garden lay at a distance quite out of sight of the house, and was shaded by fruit trees, while the banks of a stream which rippled over a pebbly bed skirting one side of the ground were brilliant with arum blossoms and other flowers, making the entire scene a very inviting one.

"Yes, it's very well in its way," answered Lotty, glancing about her with a careless air, "but I think we've had enough of it now; I should like a little change, shouldn't you? Can't we get upon those Flats, as they call them, I wonder?"

"Oh, but do you not remember," I urged, "that uncle so particularly warned us not to go beyond the garden this evening, as the hour is so late, the country so new to us, and daylight leaves this part of the Cape more suddenly than it does ours, because the sun goes down, you know, on the other side of the mountain. Just fancy losing our way out on those wild-looking Flats!"

"Losing our way!" repeated Charlotte, contemptuously; "as if that was possible in such a flat country as this. You are always such a coward, Mechie, that's the truth; and then you take refuge in a pretended obedience to uncle and aunt's wishes."

"Oh, Charlotte!" I exclaimed as I felt the blood rush to my face and brow, "you cannot mean what you say."

"Well, there! don't be offended," rejoined my sister, not attending to my vexed words, but passing through an opening which she spied out in the hedge beside us.

"Oh, Mechie," she continued in a delighted tone, "here is just the thing we want, nothing more nor less than a charming little rustic bridge which opens a way out of this stupid garden for us at once!"

I followed Lotty, who stood on a broad plank looking down into a deep, wide space which formed the bed of a much more pretentious stream or brook than that in the garden, this last being evidently an offspring of the first. Very reluctantly I followed my wayward sister, resolving just to look about for a minute or two on the confines of the Flats and then return to the garden. Ah, that weak or sinful first stop on the wrong road! After crossing the bridge and a large sort of enclosed field in a half-cultivated state, we clambered over some bars of wood serving as a gate at the farther end, and found ourselves out on the Flats.

But now it needed little more persuasion on Charlotte's part to induce me to proceed. Every step of the way teemed with attractions for me in the shape of flowers, beautiful and varied to a degree of luxuriance I had never seen before; and thus tempted, I became oblivious alike of dear uncle's advice and of time and path, and heedlessly followed Lotty, who wandered on ahead, every now and then gathering a blossom as its bright hue caught her eye, and as quickly casting it from her when curiosity was gratified.