"Mary Jane," said she to the good-tempered, red-elbowed help in the kitchen, "you take up this plate o' gingerbread to the children. Pretty dears, they must be nigh starving!" And a goodly heap of gingerbread chunks travelled upstairs to the play-room, the door of which was unlocked.
It was over this welcome interruption that a wonderful new game was hatched.
"Clary, tell us about the mountain railway," said Oliver, seating himself on the edge of the table to munch contentedly.
His little sister had spent the previous winter with her ailing Mother in the Alps, at an hotel built on purpose for sick folk as high up in the air as was possible. And the boys were never tired of listening to her descriptions of the life so far up in the clouds and snows that the sun was nearly always shining hotly.
"I shouldn't mind being sick myself if it was only just to wear those funny snow-boots and walk over the hard snow up and down the mountain-sides," said Mark, reaching out for another piece of gingerbread.
"Oh, I'd like the tobogganing—the 'luging,' Clary calls it. Fancy spinning down in the moonlight!" cried one of the smaller boys, Johnny.
"No! Give me the riskiest of all—that queer railway up and down the great mountain. Tell us about it again, Clary," urged Oliver.
"That's called the funicular!" Very proud of being able to say the long word, Clary propped up her every-day doll beside her in the rocking-chair and, folding her mites of hands, proceeded to explain.
"It's quite a little young railway, y' know. It's only to take people up to the hotel on top of the Mont, where Mother and I lived last winter." Then she told the boys how the little train toiled up the sheer face of a great mountain to the clouds. And it had to descend, also, which was worse far. Clary shuddered and hid her blue eyes as she described that coming down, while the eyes of the boys fairly bolted over the mere thought of a journey so full of risks and perils.
"It must have been prime!" calmly observed Chris, always to the front if danger were in the air. "What did you think about, Clary, when the funicular came jolting down the steps hewn out for it in the steep mountain? What did it feel like? Come now, tell us," persisted Chris curiously.