broke in “Copper-nob” triumphantly. “Look Pem, I’m down to ‘skimmings’ now,” as the milk thinned to a frothy trickle, “but the pail is three-parts full. Hove—lady! You’re a winner,” in grateful compliment to the Jersey cow.
CHAPTER X
Hidden Valley
“The night is heavy-hearted,” said the Guardian.
“It’s ‘up to us’, then, to put a good face on its heavy heart by being extra chipper,” laughed Dorothy Bush—a fair-haired girl. “We’ll be in luck if it doesn’t rain more than it has done,” she shrugged herself together, witch-like, “just little ‘neezly-noozly’ showers, that fit into each other even-end-ways,” with a brooding pout, “at the moment when you think each one is going to be over—bah! beastly.”
“The clouds have been following us all day,” wailed Frances. “And I don’t believe they’ve done with us yet. Who’s to light the fire?”
“Pemrose. I believe she could light a fire with a piece of damp bark and a snowball, as the saying is.” Madeline Fitch threw a chuckling glance in the direction of the girl with the blue-lit face, who was “ilka body’s body”, a general favorite. “Hereditary ingenuity, I suppose.” Madeline pursed up her lips. “If I had a father like hers.... Well! never mind, a fire will drive the dumps from Hidden Valley. There, I’ve named it!”
“I don’t like Hidden Valley. Gloomiest old place we’ve struck yet!” murmured Una glancing up and down the heart-shaped glen, hoarding the evening shadows between its narrowing head-walls.
“You—you won’t know it when we get a blaze going.” Pemrose was chopping away with a light axe—the handle symbolically carved—at a dead limb of a larch tree, to strip off outside layers, damped by the ‘noozly’ showers and get at the dry wood, inside.
Already she had her roll of curly birch bark, stripped from a withering bough, on the hike, before afternoon rain came on—and kept dry in her pack.
Soon the fire was lighting up the tall walls of the V-shaped valley, between two ragged mountains which seemed, at some time or other, to have thrust their heads up, promiscuously, out of the earth—just to have a look around. A peculiarity of most of the hills through which the girls had passed!