Several square tents, with a flooring of boards, had been raised amid the trees. When the door-flaps were drawn back, Japanese mats were to be seen, and, behind dainty screens, little brass bedsteads and rocking-chairs and toilet furniture.
The tent for Will and Phil had its beds concealed under Algerian rugs, which made lounges for the daytime. It served as a smoking-room for the dining-tent, which was set up alongside very simply, with an abundance of flowers in rustic vases. Farther back, hidden in the shrubbery, were the kitchen and offices. Near by there was an immense water-butt, ingeniously made to furnish each tent with an inexhaustible supply of fresh water. There was also a tent for the auto and for the saddle-horses, when needed.
“It is perfect, Ethel!” grandma said, looking around.
“I am well pleased with it, my dear grandma,” Ethel acknowledged. “It is not as good as Tent City, on Coronado Beach at San Diego,” she added, laughing, “but we shall be more at home here and the view is superb. How do you find it, Phil? Will, are you pleased?” And she waved her hand to the horizon.
From their hilltop, across the river which wound below, they saw an immense plain. Its calm beauty impressed Ethel, fresh from noisy Paris. France had never seemed so large to her. Among the trees there were bell-towers rising above red roofs, and here and there high factory-chimneys crested with smoke. It was “the province,” wide and active and silent.
In the distance, fields stretched away to the horizon. It was like an immense sea, with waves forever motionless. Wagons moved across it and boats glided along the waters of the river, and on the roads and in the fields members of the human ant-hill were stirring everywhere.
“It is beautiful,” Phil said, “and I am grateful to you for having invited me. Here I shall paint from nature, and you, Miss Rowrer, ought to do delightful water-colors.”
“What do you think of my landscape, Will?” Ethel asked her brother, who was examining the auto.
“It’s all right—there’s something wrong with my carbureter,” answered Will. “I’ll have to see to it at once. I’ll look at the landscape later.”
“That’s just like Will!” Ethel remarked. “You talk landscape to him and he answers with carbureters and floaters and all the rest. If you only listened to him you’d think him the most earth-bound of mechanicians. And in his heart he is a poet—yes, a poet! He has a little blue flower in his heart; perhaps it’s a forget-me-not!”