Two men and one woman succeeded in obtaining the prizes. The woman interested me by the intense triumph that sparkled in her black eyes and glowed on her cheeks at having distanced several competitors of her own sex, to say nothing of the men. She beamed! As I made room for her, she said, with a toss of the head, “I guess I haven’t been through Lake George for nothing.”
Crack! We were jolting along the road, around the base of Red Hill, the horses stepping briskly out at the driver’s chirrup, the coach pitching and lurching like a gondola in a sea. What a sense of exhilaration, of lightness! The air so pure and elastic, the odor of the pines so fragrant, so invigorating, which we breathe with all the avidity of a convalescent who for the first time crosses the threshold of his chamber. Each moment I felt my body growing lighter. A delicious sense of self-ownership breaks the chain binding us to the toiling, struggling, worrying life we have left behind. We carry our world with us. Life begins anew, or rather it has only just begun.
The view of the ranges which on either side elevate two immense walls of green is kept for nearly the whole distance. As we climb the hill into Sandwich, Mount Israel is the prominent object; then brawny Whiteface, Passaconnaway’s pyramid, Chocorua’s mutilated spire advance, in their turn, into line. Sometimes we were in a thick forest, sometimes on a broad, sunny glade; now threading our way through groves of pitch-pine, now winding along the banks of the Bear-Camp River.
The views of the mountains, as the afternoon wore away, grew more and more interesting. The ravines darkened, the summits brightened. Cloud-shadows chased each other up and down the steeps, or, flitting slowly across the valley, spread thick mantles of black that seemed to deaden the sound of our wheels as we passed over them. On one side all was light, on the other all gloom. But the landscape is not all that may be seen to advantage from the top of a stage-coach.
From time to time, as something provoked an exclamation of surprise or pleasure, certain of the inside occupants manifested open discontent. They were losing something where they had expected to see everything.
While the horses were being changed, one of the insides, I need not say it was a woman, thrust her head out of the window, and addressed the young person perched like a bird upon the highest seat. Her voice was soft and persuasive:
“Miss!”
“Madam!”
“I’m so afraid you find it too cold up there. Sha’n’t I change places with you?”
The little one gave her voice a droll inflection as she briskly replied, “Oh dear no, thank you; I’m very comfortable indeed.”