"Humph!" ejaculated Happie with more sincerity than politeness.
The three hours and a half journey up to Crestville is pretty for the first half of the distance, and beautiful the last half. At eleven o'clock the jolly young group from the Patty-Pans was looking out of the windows with twenty eager eyes to see the approach to the Delaware Water Gap. Laura and Snigs were perching on the arms of the seats of those on the more favorable side, and Polly and Penny had crowded, one in with Happie and Ralph, the other with Gretta and Bob.
The train curved around the shining track like a snake, the locomotive plainly to be seen as it tugged along the bend that brought it into view from the rear cars. The river, swollen by snows, ran swiftly down its rocky bed and on either hand rose the dark mountains, snow-patched and pine-clad, through which in countless ages the Delaware had cut its way to the sea.
"We begin to be proud about here," Bob explained to Robert over the latter's shoulder. "From this point up we consider our feet upon our native heath and our name is MacGregor, of the purest Gregorian—if you doubt it, look at Gretta."
Robert laughingly turned. Gretta's eyes were dilated, they were darker than ever, and looked ready to leap across the intervening mountains to behold Crestville. Her cheeks were crimson, her lips parted by her quick breathing; joy radiated from her very hands.
"It's a beautiful country, Gretta," said Robert. "How you do love it! I don't quite see how you stay away, when it makes you feel like this to get back."
"I never was away to get back to it before," said Gretta. "I couldn't stay away with any one but these dear people. There isn't any one up here that really cares a bit what becomes of me, yet it seems as though all these trees knew me, and the mountains—oh, I can't tell you how the mountains look to me! Not a bit the way they look to any of you, I'm sure of that. I see the mountains, too, and how splendid they are, but I see them something as you see your mother—something that I saw when I first opened my eyes."
"Yes, I understand," said Robert gently. "Strange, and beautifully strange, the kinship we all feel for our mother bit of earth!"
The ride up the steep grade from the Water Gap to Crestville seemed long to the hungry and impatient "Archaics," as Bob had called the Ark occupants the previous summer. It took three-quarters of an hour for the train to wind up the fifteen miles, ascending sharply, and with the track curved and inclined so that the locomotive came in sight often, as it labored to get its charge up the grade.
"There's the solitary pine, Hapsie!" cried Bob, pointing to a landmark that stood out alone on a summit which they passed in the drive from the station over to the Ark.