“Lucia!” exclaimed Mrs. Tramlay.
“I know ’twas dreadfully impolite to say before company,” said Lucia, with a pretty affectation of penitence, “but everybody knows I can’t be there, and that ’twould be too cold for comfort; so it doesn’t do any harm to wish it. And I should like that canoe-trip over again: shouldn’t you, Phil?”
“I certainly should,” said Phil. “That pond is very pretty in summer, when everything around it is green. There are a great many shades of green there, on account of there being a great variety of trees and bushes. But you wouldn’t know the place at this season; and I think it’s a great deal prettier. The ground—the water, too—is covered with leaves of bright colors; there are a lot of blazing red swamp maples around it, in spots, and three or four cedar-trees, with poison-ivy vines——”
“Ugh!” ejaculated Mrs. Tramlay.
“Poison-ivy leaves, you know, are the clearest crimson in the fall,” Phil continued, “and they’re so large and grow so close together that they make a bit of woods look like a splendid sunset.”
“Oh, papa!” exclaimed Lucia, clapping her hands, “let’s go out to Haynton to-morrow, just for two or three days.”
“Lucia,” said her mother, severely, “you forget all your engagements for the next few days.”
“Her father’s own child,” said Tramlay. “She forgets everything but the subject before her. She would make a good business-man—if she weren’t a girl.”
“I saw some couples out canoeing at Mount Desert, last season,” drawled Marge. “It seemed to me dreadfully dangerous, as well as very uncomfortable for the lady.”
“Oh, our canoe wasn’t one of those wretched little things; was it, Phil? ’Twas a great long pond-boat, made of beech bark——”