“Tom, what Tom? Jane, my dear,” said Dr. Brown in a pained voice, “does Tom matter much or any one else in the midst of all this glory?”
“I think so, Papa,” said Jane firmly. “You matter, don't you? Everybody matters. Besides, we were told not to look until we reached the top.”
“Well, Jane, you are an incorrigible Philistine,” said her father, “and I yield. Tom's father is a broker, and Tom is by way of being a broker too, though I doubt if he is broking very much. May I dismiss Tom for a few minutes now?” Again they all laughed.
“I don't see what you are all laughing at,” said Jane, and lapsed into silence.
“Now then,” cried Nora, “in three minutes.”
At the top of the long, gently rising hill the motor pulled up, purring softly. They all stood up and gazed around about them. “Look back,” commanded Nora. “It is fifty miles to that prairie rim there.” From their feet the prairie spread itself in long softly undulating billows to the eastern horizon, the hollows in shadow, the crests tipped with the silver of the rising moon. Here and there wreaths of mist lay just above the shadow lines, giving a ghostly appearance to the hills. “Now look this way,” said Nora, and they turned about. Away to the west in a flood of silvery light the prairie climbed by abrupt steps, mounting ever higher over broken rocky points and rocky ledges, over bluffs of poplar and dark masses of pine and spruce, up to the grey, bare sides of the mighty mountains, up to their snow peaks gleaming elusive, translucent, faintly discernible against the blue of the sky. In the valley immediately at their feet the waters of the little lake gleamed like a polished shield set in a frame of ebony. “That's our lake,” said Nora, “with our house just behind it in the woods. And nearer in that little bluff is Mrs. Waring-Gaunts home.”
“Papa,” said Jane softly, “we must not keep Mrs. Waring-Gaunt.”
“Thank you, Jane,” said Mrs. Waring-Gaunt. “I fear I must go on.”
“Don't you love it?” inquired Larry enthusiastically and with a touch of impatience in his voice.
“Oh, yes, it is lovely,” said Jane.