“Well, we certainly couldn’t help the delay,” said Margery. “At Lake Dean the fire held us—and I wouldn’t think very much of any crowd that could see the trouble those poor people were in and not stay to help them.”
They slept well in the early part of that night in the rough quarters at the Gap House, and, while it was still dark, they were routed out to catch the funicular railway on its first trip of the day up Mount Sherman.
At first, when they were at the top of the mountain, there was nothing to be seen. But soon the sky in the east began to lighten and grow pink, then the fog that lay below them began to melt away, and, as the sun rose, they saw the full wonder of the spectacle.
“I never saw anything so beautiful in all my life!” exclaimed Bessie with a sigh of delight. “See how it seems to gild everything as the light rises, Dolly!”
“Yes, and you can see the sea, way off in the distance! How tiny all the towns and villages look from here! It’s just like looking at a map, isn’t it?”
“Well, it was certainly worth getting up in the middle of the night to see it, Bessie. And I do love to sleep, too!”
“I’d stay up all night to see this, any time. I never even dreamed of anything so lovely.”
“We were very fortunate,” said Eleanor, with a smile. “I’ve been up here when the fog was so thick that you couldn’t see a thing, and only knew the sun had risen because it got a little lighter. I’ve known it to be that way for a week at a time, and some people would stay, and come up here morning after morning, and be disappointed each time!”
“That’s awfully mean,” said Dolly. “I suppose, though, if they had never seen it, they wouldn’t mind so much, because they wouldn’t know what they were missing.”
“They never seemed very happy about it, though,” laughed Eleanor. “Well, it’s time to go down again, and be off for Windsor. And then to-morrow morning we’ll be off for the seashore. We’re to camp there, right on the beach, instead of living in a house. That will be much better, I think.”