To change the subject, he said something about prairie-dogs, and the girl from Dakota was called upon for an offhand description of these interesting animals, which she gave soberly enough, though making the others laugh with her quaint characterizations and clever mimicry.
Having crossed several fields and followed a farm lane to its end, Ethan let down a “pair o’ bars,” and the company climbed a rocky pasture knoll, where Yellow Star’s quick eye caught something gleaming like dull fire among the dead brown of the bare bushes.
“What is that? It is like a sunset!” she exclaimed, and Cynthia echoed her.
“Oh, what is it? Oh, how beautiful!”
“Bitter-sweet, and the finest I ever saw!” declared Miss Morrison, with enthusiasm. “Oh, oh! was there ever such a mass of it before? Have you a knife about you, Ethan? I simply must have some for my school-room; it will make a dream of a decoration, and last all winter.”
Cynthia and Doris ran about and exclaimed and unwound the most splendid branches, but the Indian girl stood quite still and let the beauty of it all sink deep into her heart. Years later, the sight of a red-gold spray, or even the very name of “bitter-sweet,” brought up that riot of color on the rocky knoll, and the wordless sadness of those veiled and lonely hills.
“Now, girls, we simply must get on, or it will be dark before we can walk to Wolcott’s Woods and back again,” declared Ethan resolutely, shutting his knife with a snap. The whole party followed his lead past a fringe of hemlock, maple, hornbeam and white birch, on to a wild and deep glen that suddenly opened at their very feet, with a foaming brook in its heart. Scrambling down the steep sides of the miniature canyon, they followed the stream to its outlet in a tiny pond, which is flanked on one side by the finest grove of pine in Laurel township.
“This is Uncle Si’s ice-pond,” announced Doris, proudly, “and these are Wolcott’s Woods!”
It was so mild that Ethan insisted upon taking off his coat, cushioning a giant log where the girls might sit and rest after their three-mile tramp, while the sun already glowed red through the autumn haze, near to the western horizon.
“Aren’t you glad we came, Jibby?” urged Sin, ecstatically.