“I promised your sister that I would take care of you,” said he one day, when he found it necessary to insist on helping her, as well as the others, over some difficulty in the way.
“Eunice?” said Fidelia, startled. “Eunice knows that I am quite able to take care of myself.”
“But I thought you had been taken care of all your life?” said Dr Justin as she slowly followed the others up the steep ascent.
“By my Eunice! Yes.”
It would not have been easy for either of them to say much of Eunice, so they were silent as they went slowly on.
This was one of the marked days of that happy time to them all. The young people had made their arrangements for a blackberrying excursion; but when it proved that Dr Everett had a day of leisure, and could go with them, it was proposed that the blackberries should be left for another day, and that they should all go to the Peak to see the view. The young Austins were still there, and all the Everetts were to go except the mother. Jabez and young Mr Fuller, who had been teacher of last winter’s school, and a few others, made up the party. To climb “the Peak” was a thing to be done at least once or twice in the lifetime of every dweller in Halsey, and it was worth the trouble it cost.
At the last moment Mrs Stone declared her intention of joining the party—“just to see how it would seem to be there again;” and Deacon Ainsworth for a minute or two entertained the idea of going also, but thought better of it. He had serious doubts as to the moral effect of so much tramping up hill and down again, just to look at things, in a world where there is so much work that needed to be done. Blackberrying parties and fishing expeditions he could understand; but to give so much time to pleasure which generally turned out to be hard work that did not pay, was a doubtful matter to him.
All this was said to Jabez, who would have done better, he declared, to stick to the work he had undertaken. It would pay better.
“Well, but I don’t seem to have anything that needs to be done just to-day, grandpa. And it will pay to go there. Oh, yes, it will pay to go up there with the two doctors! They’ll have something to say about a good many things we’ll see up there—botany, geology, mineralogy, and all the rest of it. Why, you would enjoy it, grandpa! If it wasn’t for your rheumatism, I’d say, ‘Go.’ I expect to have a real good time.”
So did they all. They made an early start, driving as far as horses could be taken; then, taking an irregular course northwards along the western side of the mountain, they gradually reached a point from which could be seen the commencement of the two mountain ranges which extend through two neighbouring states. It was early still, and here they were to rest for awhile. The real climbing of the day was still before them. The view which they had come to see, was the view eastward from the Peak—the view of a long reach of the river, and the valley and the cultivated hill country beyond. Here they sat in the shadow of a great rock, looking northwards to the mountains.