Ruth shivered and turned pale. “Oh,” she shuddered, “it makes me horribly nervous! I am ashamed of it, so I don’t often mention it, but I simply can’t look down from great heights. It even makes me a little sick to look out of a high window, and I’m a miserable climber, I get so dizzy. Let us go back. Do you mind, Bab?”
“No, Ruth,” Bab answered. “I suppose I am a tomboy; I used to play hare and hounds with the boys at school, and I learned to climb like a goat over the rocks at Kingsbridge; but these Newport cliffs are a different matter.”
Barbara’s powers were to be tested, but neither she nor Ruth thought anything more of their talk. Miss Sallie and the other two girls had joined them, and they made their way along the narrow, winding path that dipped in hollows and curves, and stretched for two miles ahead of them.
“How hard it is,” said Miss Sallie, “to tell which view is the more beautiful!”
On the inland side of the cliffs, beautiful, shaded lawns, luxuriant with flowers, ran down to the edge of the path. Set in their midst were the marble palaces of Newport’s millionaires. Toward the sea, great points of land jutted out into the harbor, where the water was violet with the shadows of the closing day.
“Miss Stuart! Miss Stuart!” Aunt Sallie heard a gay voice calling her.
Running across the lawn, and waving her scarf at them, came Mrs. Cartwright.
“Were you coming to see me first?” she asked.
Miss Stuart confessed that she had not the shadow of an idea which house belonged to Mrs. Cartwright.
“You must see it for a minute, since you are already here,” urged Mrs. Cartwright, and led the way up the graveled path to her veranda.