“It was sort of frightful. No sound broke the awful silence, save the warning voice of the mosquito.—By the way, girls, why don’t you call this spot Mosquito Ranch?”
“I’ll tell you what we used to call it at our house,—we always called it ‘Down to the Farm,’” remarked little Fanny.
“It ought to be Rose Villa,” said Lucy. “Just see our rose-tree that reaches almost to the eaves. We measured it yesterday, and it’s seven feet high.”
“That will do for a tree,” said Preston, plucking one of the pure, white roses and thrusting it into his button-hole; “but you can’t eat roses, you know.”
He had built a fire in the kitchen stove, but the young ladies seemed to have forgotten entirely that there was such a thing in the world as breakfast.
“O, yes, we must prepare our simple morning meal,” said cousin Lucy. “Girls, where’s my blue-checked apron? Preston, we’ve heard there are lovely trout in that brook across the field. Not the river-brook.”
“Have you, really? Then I go a-fishing; I’d rather do that than starve.—No, Fan, you needn’t come, I won’t have anybody with me but Flaxie.”
Very proud was Mary that she could be trusted to keep silence in the presence of the wise and wary trout. It was beautiful there by the brook-side, in the still June morning, sitting and watching the “shadowy water, with a sweet south wind blowing over it.” There was no house within half a mile, and perhaps the Peck family and the Brown family—the nearest neighbors—were still asleep, for there was no sound, except the “song-talk” of the birds, and the whisper of the wind through the trees. It was a very light whisper, reminding Preston of the words,—
“And then there crept
A little noiseless noise among the leaves,