Hurrying was just in Pet's line, and he pricked up his ears as though he fully understood this last remark. Rex gave him the word and away he flew, almost running against the gatepost in his eagerness to be off from that region of coloured boys and peach stones.
“Which way shall we go?” asked Rex, consulting his little silver watch; “we have plenty of time.”
“Of course we have,” said Nan, “and why shouldn't we stop somewhere when there is an elegant luncheon in the bottom of this cart and we have not taken a minute to eat it?”
“Sure enough,” Harry exclaimed, and the children stared at each other with a look of amazement, wondering how it ever could have happened that they should for a moment have forgotten anything so important.
“I tell you what let's do,” said Rex; “let's go home by the Rumson Road. I know a lovely great tree, where we can rest Pet while we eat the luncheon.”
Harry and Nan fell in with the plan, and Pet, who, with true pony instinct, had started the shortest way home, was obliged to right-about-face. There are not many more charming drives than that of the Rumson Road, bordered as it is on one side by beautiful country houses, whose windows command a near view of the river and a distant one of the sea. Luxuriant hedges and evenly trimmed grass-plots line the drive, and here and there a fine old tree throws a grateful shadow athwart the red soil road. Though each of the little trio had been over it many times before, it seemed to-day to wear a new beauty in their eyes, and when they reached a point where it curves gracefully and two grand old places confront each other, Nan's enthusiasm found vent.
“Isn't it just too beautiful for anything?” she exclaimed. “Yes, it is lovely,” Rex answered,—“just like the country far away from the sea, and yet you can see the ocean as plain as day.”
“It is a great pity,” said Nan, “that plants and flowers won't grow as they ought to, close down to the shore.” She was looking at a great bed of flowers in the midst of one of the lawns, and recalling a little company of spindly geraniums, which she had vainly tried to make flourish in her little garden at home, so depressing is the effect of salt sea-fogs and sandy soil upon all growing things. “And there are no trees to speak of near the sea,” she added, with a little sigh, for she dearly loved the green and the shade of the inland country; “nothing but meadows of great coarse grass.”
“You forgot the lawns round the places on the boulevard, Nan,” said Harry.
“Oh, to be sure, but the grass only grows there because they have men to sprinkle and 'tend to it all the time. Papa says he could s'port half-a-dozen little girls like me for what it costs for one of those lawns a single summer.”