“I have found,” she answered mysteriously, “the most beautifully secret place you ever beheld. It will be just the spot for us to write and study in when we want to be alone; or it will even do for a theatre; and it is scarcely more than half a mile up the cañon.”
“How did you find it?” asked Margery.
“As I was walking along by the brookside, I saw a snake making its way through the bushes, and—”
“Goodness!” shrieked Polly, “I shall not write there, thank you.”
“Goose! Just wait a minute. I looked at it, and followed at a distance; it was a harmless little thing; and I thought, for the fun of it, I would just push blindly on and see what I should find, because we are for ever walking in the beaten path, and I long for something new.”
“A bad instinct,” remarked Madge, “and one which will get you into trouble, so you should crush it in its infancy.”
“Well, I took up my dress and ploughed through the chaparral, until I came, in about three minutes of scratching and fighting, to an open circular place about as large as this tent. It was exactly round, which is the curious part of it; and in the centre was one stump, covered with moss and surrounded by great white toadstools. How any one happened to go in there and cut down a single tree I can’t understand, nor yet how they managed to bring out the tree through the tangled brush. It is so strange that it seems as if there must be a mystery about it.”
“Certainly,” said Margery promptly. “A tragedy of the darkest kind! Some cruel wretch has cut down, in the pride and pomp of its beauty, one sycamore-tree; its innocent life-blood has stained the ground, and given birth to the white toadstools which mark the spot and testify to the purity of the victim.”
“Well,” continued Bell, impressively, “I knew I could never find it again; and I wanted so much you should see it that I took the ball of twine we always carry, unrolled it, and dropped the thread all the way along to the brookside, like Phrygia, or Melpomene, or Anemone, or whatever her name was.”
“Or Artesia, or Polynesia, or Euthanasia,” interrupted Polly. “I think the lady you mean is Ariadne.”