"You were very nearly right, Margery," she said. "We are going to tramp home, but not the way we came. We're going to take the long way round. We're going straight up and through the mountains and down the other side, and then we'll have a long trip on fairly level ground, but we won't go straight home."
"Where, then?" asked Dolly.
"Why, we'll combine everything on the one trip, Dolly, and we'll wind up at the seashore. By the time we've had a little swimming and sailing there it'll be time to think about what we're going to do in the autumn—school, and, work, and all the other things."
"Oh, that's splendid!" cried Margery, her eyes shining. "I've always wanted to go up in the real mountains, where you were so high that you could see all around the country. We'll do that, won't we? Here we're in the mountains, really, but it doesn't seem like it. Everything's so high, you can't see over."
Eleanor pointed to the distant hills, blue in the haze that hung over them.
"Do you see Mount Grant, the big one in the center, there?" she said. "And do you see that other mountain that seems to be right next to it? That's Mount Sherman. And right between them there's a little gap. Really, it's quite wide, though you can't tell that from here. Well, that's Indian Notch, and we get through the mountain range by going through it. It's a fine, wild country, but there's a good road through the notch now, and sometimes one meets quite a lot of automobiles going through. I think it will be a glorious trip, don't you, girls?"
"I certainly do!" said Bessie King. "I'm like Margery. I've always wanted to see the real mountains. I used to dream about them, and sometimes I'd think I'd really been there. But I guess it was just because I dreamed so much that I got to thinking so."
Eleanor looked at her curiously.
"Maybe your people came from the mountains, Bessie," she said. "It's very strange that some natural things seem to get into the blood of peoples and races. Like the mountains, and the sea, and great rivers. Sometimes all the men in a family, for generations, will be sailors, even if their parents have planned something else for them. The sea is in their blood, and it calls them."
"Sometimes I think the mountains are calling me just that way," said Bessie. "But I never really understood that before."