“It’s the Green Mountains that we see first, girls, then the White Mountains. The conductor said so.” Jean was looking at the map in her folder. “And we’re not in the United States right away after crossing the St. Lawrence.”
As Hawthorne’s Tales of the White Hills are usually read in that department of school work known as “English”, these girls were quite interested in finding, among post cards bought on the train, a photograph of the “Great Stone Face”. “I hadn’t thought of it myself,” said Patty, “that these are Hawthorne’s White Hills at last.”
“This scenery is the most lovely of all we have seen,” said Lilian.
They had been watching the clouds floating about the hill-tops, little cascades leaping down the rugged heights, pretty glens, little streams, lakes and rocky cliffs. Yet beautiful as the scenery was, no one could keep in a state of rapture all the time. At intervals Cathalina read her French papers. Other papers and magazines were passed around, or the girls chatted happily about many things. It was a day to be remembered, and interesting to have celebrated “Dominion Day” in Canada, this “glorious Fourth”, or most of it, in New England.
“What do you think about it, girls?” asked Miss West of a few near her, as they were nearing Portland. “Was it worth the trouble to take the trip?”
“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” cried Marjorie, and seemed to express the general sentiment.
A sight-seeing trip in Portland the next day showed them its buildings and parks, and Casco Bay with its schooners, sail-boats and freighters of all sorts. On Congress Street they saw the home of Longfellow, “next to Keith’s!” This struck the girls as particularly funny. “‘From the sublime to the ridiculous’ both literally and figuratively,” said Hilary.
The journey to Bath seemed incredibly short in comparison with the long trips which they had been having. It was the Maine country, with its buttercups, daisies, wild roses, evergreens, and the aged rocks peeping out here and there,—and now they had arrived at Bath, with nothing but a boat ride between them and camp!
CHAPTER IV
CAMP AT LAST
“Our luck has turned, girls; it poured at Portland and is drizzling here!”