"Buried alive!" Mrs. Bunker looked around triumphantly, enjoying the sensation her words had occasioned. Indiana had thrown down her book which she was reading, lying on her back. Glen stopped thrumming pensive snatches of melody. Mrs. Stillwater gave her mother a startled glance and Stillwater threw the handkerchief from his face and raised himself to a sitting posture.
"Well, I never saw such a woman! Buried alive! Buried—why, you have the camp filled with company. Didn't I have to put up tents for them last year; the place looked as if there was an army bivouacing on it—"
"Oh, yes; I can make a good time for myself wherever I am—but when we're alone there—it's so still, I'm afraid of the sound of my own voice, and jump for joy if I see a chipmunk peeping out of its hole. There's something spry about them, at all attempts. The natives would do well to imitate them. Such a slow lot—and those guides with their drawling voices. The world just stops, when you get up to the Adirondacks."
"I'm never so happy," remarked Glen, "as when I'm in the forests and on those lakes. It's the real thing. City life goes against my grain, somehow."
"I always feel quite natural in the woods," said Indiana. "Just as though I belonged there, with the other wild things."
"When did those English friends of yours say they were coming up, grandma?" inquired Mr. Stillwater, in a muffled voice, having again taken shelter under the handkerchief, after recovering from the last of the many shocks he was in the habit of receiving from his mother-in-law.
"They said September, but I have a shrewd idea they'll get tired of travelling before then. They may arrive the latter part of August. They'll be glad to see a little home life once more."
"Friends of yours, Mrs. Bunker?" inquired Glen, with a slight frown.
"Yes; Lord Canning and his uncle, Lord Nelson Stafford. They belong to a representative noble English family. I met them at Cannes last year—"
"Lord Canning is a very distinguished looking gentleman," said Mrs. Stillwater.