“But I should like to chase summer,” went on Polly. “Just keep following the trail of summer in a gypsy wagon. Yes, and I think one could, too. Girls, let’s take a gypsy-wagon cruise next year.”
“Over the world, and under the world,
And back at the last to you,”
quoted Ruth.
“Now, girls, girls, fill up good, for we’ve a long stretch ahead, and no lagging behind,” called out Mr. Murray, going over to look after the ponies. “We want to make the Soup Bowl to-night.”
“What is the Soup Bowl?” asked Ted, as they all helped to pack up the dishes after they had washed them in the brook.
“A place up in the hills that is sheltered, and has good feeding ground for the horses,” Jean told her. “We’re to camp there to-night.”
Steadily ahead they went, with the wall of the mountains fronting them. Not a break could they see in it, but Mr. Murray held as steadily to his trail as a sailor does to his course, and the wall grew ever nearer.
“I can’t get used to the trees here,” said Ruth once. “There doesn’t seem to be anything worth speaking of as you go higher excepting these funny, straight, skinny-looking pines.”
“The trees grow smaller as you go higher,” Jean answered. “Even these slender lodge-pole pines are shorter towards the heights. You can tell the spruce, girls, because it looks blue at a distance. And both the hemlock and Alpine fir love the banks of the trout brooks up here in the hills. Oh, to-morrow we’ll get splendid trout.”