“Won’t you come in and have a game of archery with us to-morrow afternoon? Father and mother will both be at home. We can tell you all of our plans for next week.”
“We’ll be happy to come,” laughed Ruth, “but none of us know how to use the bow. That is an English game, isn’t it? We shall be delighted to look on.”
“Oh, archery is all the rage at Lenox,” little Mr. Heller explained. “Perhaps you will let me show your friends how to shoot.”
Ruth shook her head. “We shall have plenty to learn if we are to take part in your queer races next week. If my friend, Miss Carter, is better to-morrow you may expect us.”
Grace came out on the porch. “I am well, already!” she apologized. “At least I decided that, headache or no headache, I couldn’t miss all the fun this afternoon. So here I am!”
“Now, we must positively say good-bye, Miss Stuart,” declared Mr. Latham, extending his hand. “I want to take you and your girls for a drive to Lake Queechy. Then you must see the place where the Hawthorne’s ‘little red house’ formerly stood. The house burned down some years ago, but the site is interesting, for Hawthorne lived in the Berkshires a number of years and wrote ‘The House of Seven Gables’ here. We have plenty of literary associations, Miss Stuart. My people have lived here so long that I take a deep interest in the history of the place.”
“Lake Queechy,” Miss Sallie exclaimed sentimentally, “is the lake named for Susan Warner, the author of ‘Queechy’ and ‘The Wide, Wide World.’ Dear me, I shed quantities of tears over those books in my day. But girls don’t care for such weepy books nowadays, do they? They want more fire and adventure. I am sure I should be ashamed of my ‘Automobile Girls’ if they fell to crying in the face of an obstacle. They prefer to overcome it. We shall be delighted to drive with you. Good-bye!”
“Curious, Reginald!” declared Mr. Winthrop Latham, when the two men had walked several yards from the hotel in silence. “That is a very remarkable story that your friends tell of the discovery of an unknown Indian child. Did they call her Eunice? That is strangest of all! You have been up on the hill with these girls a number of times. Have you seen this girl?”
Reginald mumbled something. It was not audible. But his uncle understood he had not seen the girl.
“Oh, well, the old woman is probably a gypsy tramp,” Mr. Latham concluded, “but I will look up the child, some day, for my own satisfaction. Reg, boy, the rudder of our airship will be repaired in the next few days. Do you feel equal to another aerial flight?”