Lucy stood back and looked at their work. “What else are you going to do up here?” she asked.
“Next we’re going to start weekly hikes,” Kit told her. “You girls have lived here for years, haven’t you—”
“We just came up a while ago,” Ingeborg corrected.
“I know, and so did Hedda, but Etoile and Tony and Lucy and the rest of you all grew up right here, didn’t you? Well, then. What do you know about the country for ten miles around?” Kit paused dramatically. “Do you know every wood road and cow path through the woods? Where does Little River rise? Have any of you followed the rock ledge up into the hills?”
“Nobody but the hunters go there, and they don’t come till fall,” said Hedda gravely. She hardly ever smiled, this transplanted little daughter of far-off Iceland. Her manner and expression always seemed to the girls to hold a certain aloofness. Up at her home, later on, they saw a finely carved model of a Viking ship which her father had made back in the home island, and Jean declared after that she always pictured Hedda standing at its high prow, facing the gale of the northern seas, her fair hair blowing behind her like a golden pennant, her blue eyes fearless and eager.
“But we’ll go. We’ll pack a picnic lunch. Hey, kids, are there any snakes up here?”
“Lots,” said Lucy. “But mostly black snakes. They’re ugly to look at, but they don’t hurt you. And little garter snakes, and green grass snakes. I never think about them.”
“Are you afraid of anything out here, Lucy?” Doris asked interestedly. She had eyed Lucy admiringly from the first moment of their acquaintance, and privately Doris held many fears. It was all very well to say there wasn’t anything to worry over, as Kit did, but one may step on toads in the dark, or hear noises in the attic that make one shiver even if they turn out to be just chipmunks after corn and nuts.
“Nothing that I know of,” Lucy replied serenely. “I never felt afraid in the dark. Just as soon go all over the house, upstairs and down, and when I go down into the cellar, I yell ‘look out, rats, here I come!’ Guess the only thing I’m really afraid of is a bat.”
“Everybody’s afraid of something,” Etoile said, her eyes wide with mystery. “I have the fear too, oh, but often. I am most afraid of those little mulberry worms, you know them? They come right down at you on little ropes they make all by themselves, and they curl up in the air and then they drop on you. Ugh!”