“Well, grace and growing to ye!”
Andrew, bareheaded, stood beside his car and waved his cap to the hikers, the brave band of hiking girls.
“Grace and growing! There, you’ve given us a ‘motto’,” said the Guardian, smiling at him.
“We’re ‘gracie’ without, as well as within.” Pemrose danced up to the gray-haired chauffeur, with the humorous eye—her own blue as the wild chicory, that wayside friend, by the mountain highroad. “How do you like our hiking rig—Minute Girl costume?” Thus she challenged him, thrusting out a bloomered knee.
“No flick-ma-feathers about it, but it’s ‘snod.’” Andrew stroked his shaven chin. “The mountains an’ ye will be fit-for-fit, I reckon.”
“Oh! if that isn’t a lovely compliment,” the response came with laughter—a perfect heart-shot, as the girl’s eyes danced off to timbered hills, the Green Haystack, Moose Horn Mountain, summits of the lesser Taconic Range, upon the threshold of the Green Mountains—to one dim giant, Mount Anthony, in the hazy distance.
“Fit-for-fit—chums, yes!” she caroled:
“Serene, aloof and calm they stand,
The gateway of our summer land,
Does one, unheeding, pass them by,