"May my surprises always be as agreeable. With Miss Clay's permission I shall do all in my power to make her visit a pleasant one. If she is fond of out-door sports, riding, fishing, boating and mountain-climbing, which we have a right to assume since she has come to the mountains, we can promise her a good time."
"That is just what I adore. I have brought my own saddle, fishing tackle and swimming suit. I wanted to bring a canoe, but Bradford said I could easily procure a dug out and refused to express anything but the paddles. I even thought of sending my horse, but father said that would scare Mrs. Neal to death, as she was expecting a visitor and had not offered to adopt me. I understand you have a fine saddle mare; I shall ride her and you can get a mule."
"You have mentioned just the things she loves. She constantly wants to be doing something or going somewhere. She rides, drives, swims, shoots, climbs cliffs and trees and is a good, all-round sportsman. I'm not sure, but I think she keeps several fox hounds. Her brother, Bradley, says they belong to him to save her reputation. As soon as she wrote she would visit me, I ordered some hob-nailed shoes and a bathing-suit from Louisville and sent to the drug store for a bottle of iodine, some surgeon's tape and several sheets of adhesive plaster. If you gentlemen can work in a dance in the evening after each mountain climb, her happiness is assured. Here comes father. Mr. Bradford, you are to sit beside me at dinner and you, John, with Rosamond."
After dinner Duffield and Miss Creech and Mr. Cornett and Miss Hall came in; and the time until eleven o'clock was spent in chit-chat on the porch or, when Mrs. Neal could be prevailed upon to play the piano, in dancing in the drawing-room.
Before the party broke up Bradford and Cornwall made an engagement to take Dorothy and Rosamond up the river fishing at 6:30 the next morning.
As the boys went home they stopped by the livery stable to hire three saddle horses. Finding this impossible, they engaged a light jersey wagon, which Cornwall and the girls were to use, while Bradford was to ride Cornwall's horse.
They had an early breakfast and left on time. When near the ford of Poor Fork, Bradley discovered that he had left his tackle at the stable. He rode back for it while the others, crossing the river, drove up the fork.
When they came to the creek, where it was planned they should seine their minnows, they waited some time for Bradford; then Cornwall tried to seine, but the stream was too deep and the seine too large for individual effort.
This Rosamond, the young and enticing Diana of the party, noticed and, gathering up the cotton lap-robe, a coffee sack and some twine, which she found in the box under the wagon seat, retired to a clump of elder bushes and in a few minutes came forth draped in the lap-robe and moccasined with coffee sacking.
Cornwall was a slave to her most fantastic command from the moment she stepped forth from her screen of elder bushes, topped with their white, pancake flowers, and, taking hold of one end of the seine, jerked and floundered him around while he attempted to retain possession of the other, dragging him barefoot over sharp pebbles and, when on a smooth ledge of rock, sat him down in water to his shoulders. He rejoiced at Bradford's absence and that no other man had seen her loveliness, half-hidden, half-revealed.