"I'll do it," she said promptly. "When do you want us to start?"
"Can you be ready for an early morning train from New York?"
"We can!" was the instant reply of every person in the room.
CHAPTER XVI
FAIRYLAND
All day long the train pulled its length across across the state of Pennsylvania, climbing mountains and bridging streams and piercing tunnels. All day long Mr. Emerson's party was on the alert, dashing from one side to the other of the car to see some beautiful vista or to look down on a brook brawling a hundred feet below the trestle that supported them or waving their hands to groups of children staring open-mouthed at the passing train.
"Pennsylvania is a beautiful state," decided Ethel Brown as they penetrated the splendid hills of the Allegheny range.
"Nature made it one of the most lovely states of the Union," returned her grandfather. "Man has played havoc with it in spots. Some of the villages among the coal mines are hideous from the waste that has been thrown out for years upon a pile never taken away, always increasing. No grass grows on it, no children play on it, the hens won't scratch on it. The houses of the miners turn one face to this ugliness and it is only because they turn toward the mountains on another side that the people are preserved from the death of the spirit that comes to those who look forever on the unlovely."