But, sad to relate, when the children went down to breakfast the next morning, yesterday’s light mist was woven into a thick curtain of fog, which shut out the sun, the ocean, and even the hedge that bordered the lawn. Molly opened the front door, and immediately closed it with a shiver.
“O Kirke! out-of-doors it’s like a vapor bath. Do you suppose papa can take us to the canyon?”
“Papa must take us; papa promised!” exclaimed Weezy, her eyes watering as if the fog had condensed in them.
“But you know it never will do for papa to get cold, Weezy,” returned Molly, herself ready to cry. “If it isn’t pleasant to-day, we can go when it clears off. Wasn’t it nice in Captain Bradstreet to ask us to stay a long while?”
“Oh! the fog will lift by and by, Molly. Here in California mist doesn’t mean rain,” said hopeful Kirke.
For once he was a true prophet. By ten o’clock the sun had pierced the clouds; and by eleven the little party set forth in a beach wagon, attended by Zip, Donald’s hairless Mexican dog. Turning their backs upon the blue ocean, they drove across the parched mesa, descended a steep hill, and found themselves at the lower end of Sylvan Canyon. Here the grass was still tender and juicy, watered by a lazy brook flowing between dwarf forests of fern. Molly clapped her hands.
“How pretty it is, papa! so green and so tree-y!”
“The trees are mostly live-oaks and sycamores,” replied her father, who had driven over the road the week before with Captain Bradstreet. “Look out for the branches, or you’ll lose your caps.”
“I’d like to lose mine,” responded Weezy rather fretfully. “It pinches, and it’s all crumpled up.”
“Oh! never mind, little sister,”—Molly brushed some grains of sand from the visor; “the cap is plenty good enough for the woods.”