Elizabeth did not pretend that she enjoyed the idea of being left with only the older people, but as Jacqueline Ralston was the only one of the ranch girls for whom she deeply cared, she made no objection, particularly as no one waited for her to speak. For Jean fairly bounced from her chair with relief, Jessica Hunt rose immediately and Olive soon after, feeling that she would surely turn to stone if she were obliged to remain another moment in the room with the old mistress of “The Towers.”
Once out in the hall, the party of young people appeared suddenly to have been released from prison. Jean danced a two-step, Jessica clapped her hands softly together and Olive laughed, while Donald straightway plunged head first up the dark mahogany steps. “Do come on upstairs,” he begged, “for there isn’t much time and Miss Hunt knows the house well enough to tell you that it is the tower room where we have the great view that is most interesting. Please save your breath, for we have rather a long climb.”
Immediately after Donald, Jean climbed and then Olive and then Jessica. Of course, the first two flights of stairs were like those in any ordinary house, but the third was a queer spiral resembling the steps in a lighthouse. About midway up these steps Jessica noticed that Olive paused, pressing her hands to her eyes as though to shut out some idea or some vision that assailed her, and that she wavered as though she felt faint.
“What is the matter, Olive, are you ill?” Jessica inquired, knowing that climbing to unexpected heights often has this effect on sensitive persons. And though Olive now shook her head, moving on again, Jessica determined to watch her.
To Jean’s openly expressed surprise the tower room was not a small, closet-like place as she had supposed, but a big, spacious apartment out of which the little gabled windows winked like so many friendly eyes. The room was fitted up as a boy’s room with a bed apparently just ready to be slept in, there was a trapeze at one end and a punching bag, but the bookcases were filled with books of all kinds and for all ages, French, Spanish and German books and plays from the days of the miracle plays down to the English comedies. Olive looked at these books for a long time and then went over to a far corner of the room which seemed to be a small museum, for rusty swords and old pistols were hung on the walls, a shield and a helmet and the complete figure of a knight in armor stood in one corner. Curious why these masculine trophies should interest a girl, and yet for some reason they did interest Olive, for she waited there alone; Jessica, Jean and Donald having gone over to one of the windows were gazing out over the countryside made famous the world over through its history and legend, “Sleepy Hollow, the Land of Dreams.”
Jean beckoned to Olive. “Come over here, dear, if you wish to see the view,” she begged, “for the sun will be going down in the next few minutes.”
And in a moment, taking tight hold of Jean’s hand, Olive also looked out the window. She saw the little brook and a bit of the bridge over which they had lately passed, with the stretch of woodlands to one side and the autumn-colored hills rising in the background. Very quietly she began to speak:
“Not far from the village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley, or rather lap of land, among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.”
These words Olive repeated with her eyes still on the landscape and her lips moving as though she were reciting a verse of poetry long ago forgotten and now brought back to mind by the objects that inspired it.
It was so utterly unlike Olive to be drawing attention to herself by reciting that Jean stared at her in blank amazement, but neither Donald Harmon nor Miss Hunt appeared in the least surprised and after a moment, as though again striking the strings of her memory, the young girl went on: “If ever I should wish for a retreat, whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.” And then her recitation abruptly ended.