The Liberty Girl

by Rena I. Halsey

Nathalie was somewhat disappointed that the boys were not to go on to the Littleton station, where Mr. Banker had planned to meet them. But alas, she could not ask him to come all the way over to the Sugar Hill station, and then, too, she knew that he and his wife generally took little outings through the mountains every week-end.

Deeply perplexed, she pondered over the matter with no little anxiety, and then suddenly it came to her that she would see if Miss Whipple would not let her hire her machine, and then go for the boys herself. She had learned to know the mountain roads in riding with Jakes when he went to the different hotels to deliver the sweet peas. He had often let her drive, as she had previously learned to handle a car from her many rides with Grace, and had even secured a license through the insistence of her friend.

Hurrying through her work, she hastened down to the tea-house, where she found the two ladies in a state of unusual excitement, for Jakes, Miss Whipple explained, was quite ill, and they were at a loss as to how they were to get their flowers to the various hotels the following day. And the Profile House had sent in a special order, for there was to be some kind of a festivity there that evening, and they wanted the bunches of sweet peas for prizes.

“Oh, don’t worry over that,” cried the girl quickly, as she perceived their distress, “for I can deliver the flowers for you. I can drive and I know the roads, for I have been about so much with Jakes and Mr. Banker.”

After some little hesitation the two ladies consented that Nathalie should deliver the flowers, insisting, however, in return for her kindness to them, that she should have the car for her own use in the afternoon, to drive to the station for the boys.

To Nathalie it was quite a new experience, to get up in the cool gray of early dawn, dress hurriedly, swallow a hasty breakfast,—her mother was to act as housekeeper for the day,—and then hurry down to the tea-house. It did not take her long to load the car with its flowery burden, and then she was speeding through Sugar Hill village, and on to the Long Green Path, as she called the road through the woods that led to Seven Pillars and Franconia. The air was so cool from the moisture of the night dew that still lay in glistening gems and silvery cobwebs on the hilly greens, the leaves, ferns, and wild flowers, and bracing from the ozone of the mountain breezes that heralded the new-born day, that the girl’s pulses throbbed with buoyant exhilaration.

There was a moment’s stop at Seven Pillars for Janet, who had consented to accompany her, and then they were off, Nathalie happily waving her hand to Sam as he came through the pasture with the cows. A few moments later they were whirling past Roslinwood Farm, with its big white barn, and then past a long, low, white-gabled, red-chimneyed building, with the old-time hostelry sign, “Peckett’s on Sugar Hill,” swinging from its porte-cochère, with its flower-garden, riotous with many-colored blooms, across the road, almost under the shadow of Garnet’s sloping meadow.

Now they were flying down the long sloping hill, around the tiny white schoolhouse at the cross-roads, and then they were passing Garnet’s grassy hillside, as it nodded a greeting to its taller fellows, the Franconia Range, that towered on the girls’ right. Its verdant meadows were squared with cobble-stone ledges, and awave with the glossy plumage of stately trees, as it rose upward from the road, until its slope was lost in a tangle of feathery treetops which crowned its summit like a cap of green.

“The Echoes,” a homey little hotel nestling at the base of the green hill, with its square white tower, peeped picturesquely from the protecting sweep of graceful willows and silvery poplars. Here they had a magnificent view of the mountains as they rose from their mists of gray, their rugged crests, spires, and domes sharply outlined against a glorious riot of sunrise color.

Lafayette, the king of the range, towered his grizzly head in blue-hazed grandeur far upward, standing like some giant up from the mists that covered the valleys below like a silver lake, while Lincoln’s rounded summit, with its twin slides, was almost hidden by trailing wreaths of pearly gray. The gaps between the Sleeping Infant, sharp-peaked Garfield, the North and South Twins, and the Sleeping Giant, were so thickly silvered with mist that the peaks of these mountains looked like islets of green on a shimmering gray sea, with their tops scarfed with pink and violet streaks, that floated mistily against the golden splendor, reflected from the crimson-hued ball in the east.