A ride of about seven miles brought them to the farm, which seemed completely isolated from the world. The old-fashioned porch commanded a view of mountains extending afar until the rugged profusion was tinged with the sky’s gray and seemed to merge in the horizon. Not a house was there to be seen in all that wild expanse. Once a day a train of smoke crept across above the wooded lowland near at hand, and the cheerful whistle of the locomotive could be heard echoing among the hills. Often, as she sat upon the funny, rickety little porch, Hope Stillmore wondered what would happen if she were to start out and go straight across all those wooded mountains. Where would she come out? And what would she see?
Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Stillmore, being both in search of rest, enjoyed this jointly, and we need not trouble ourselves with their reading and crocheting and other wild amusements.
Pee-wee’s acquaintance with Hope began on the porch after he had attended to the more important matter of eating supper. It was then, as he wandered out through the musty sitting room with its dismal melodeon in the corner and its picture of Asa Goodale during his dancing days, that the buoyant spirit of our young hero was momentarily clouded by a sense of newness and strangeness.
Everybody knows those awkward minutes after the first meal before acquaintance has begun. One wanders aimlessly, and usually ends on the front porch. Pee-wee wandered through the sitting-room, out of a side door, around the barnyard, and thence to the porch. Hope Stillmore was rocking frantically in a rickety chair as if in a kind of forlorn hope of extracting some excitement out of that piece of furniture. Each time she came forward her dainty little feet gave a vigorous push and back she went again. Probably she relieved her nerves in this way. This expression of impatience and despair is not uncommon on the porches of farm houses during the summer.
Hope Stillmore was of an age not exceeding sixteen (perhaps fifteen would be about right) and it is only fair to her to say that she was very pretty.
“I bet you can’t do that two hundred times without touching your feet to the floor,” Pee-wee said.
“I’m not counting the times,” said Miss Hope.
“Put your feet up on the cross-piece and keep them there,” Pee-wee said, “and then start and I’ll count for you. You’re not supposed to touch the floor. Most always girls go over backwards, but don’t you care, because the window sill is there. I won’t make fun of you.”
“Oh, you won’t?” said Miss Hope ironically.
“Sure I won’t because girls can do lots of things that fellers can’t do; gee whiz, I have to admit that.”