“Rough, indeed! Who would expect divans and Turkish rugs at a camp? We are sure to like it and we are so grateful to you and Mr. Tinsley. But look at the view! Oh, Cousin Lizzie, just look at the view!”
“Now see here, Douglas, I said I would come and chaperone Cousin Robert Carter’s granddaughters if no one would make me look at views. Views do not appeal to me.” She couldn’t help looking at the view, though, as there was nothing else to look at.
“I’s jes’ lak you, Miss Lizzie. I don’ think a thing er views. I ain’t never seed one befo’ but I heard tell of ’em. Looks lak a view ain’t nothin’ but jes’ seem’ fur, an’ if’n th’ain’t nothin’ ter see, what’s the use in it?”
Wordsworth’s lines came to Nan and she whispered them to herself as she looked off across the wonderful valley:
“‘The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.’”
She intended to whisper it to herself but as the march of the lines took possession of her, she spoke them out loud without knowing it. On the ninth line she came out strong with, “‘Great God! I’d rather be—’” Miss Somerville and Susan looked at her in amazement. Her dark eyes were fixed on the despised view with a look of a somnambulist.
“Lawd a mussy! Miss Nan done got a tech er heat!”
“Blow your horn, Lewis. Didn’t you hear Nan?” from Miss Somerville. “She must see something coming.”
Nan went off into such a peal of laughter that Bill Tinsley himself could not have vied with her. She blushingly admitted it was just some poetry she was repeating to herself, which made Miss Somerville agree with Susan that Miss Nan had a “tech er heat.”