BAB
[BAB]
CHAPTER I
HER STORY
"Clare," I said, "I wish that we had brought some better clothes, if it were only one frock. You look the oddest figure."
And she did. She was lying head to head with me on the thick moss which clothed one part of the river bank above Breistolen near the Sogne Fiord. We were staying at Breistolen, but there was no moss there, nor in all the Sogne district, I often thought, so deep and soft, and of so dazzling an orange and white and crimson as that particular patch. It lay quite high upon the hills, and there were gigantic grey boulders peeping through the moss here and there, very fit to break your legs if you were careless. Little more than a mile above us was the watershed, where our river, putting away with reluctance a first thought of going down the farther slope towards Bysberg, parted from its twin brother--who was thither bound with scores upon scores of puny green-backed fishlets--and instead, came down our side gliding and swishing and swirling faster and faster, and deeper and wider, and full, too, of red-speckled yellow trout all half-a-pound apiece, and very good to eat.
But they were not so sweet or toothsome to our girlish tastes as the tawny-orange cloud-berries which Clare and I were eating as we lay. So busy was she with the luscious pile we had gathered that I had to wait for an answer. And then, "Speak for yourself," she said. "I'm sure you look like a short-coated baby. He is somewhere up the river, too." Munch, munch, munch!
"Who is, you greedy little chit?"
"Oh, you know," she answered. "Don't you wish you had your grey plush here, Bab?"
I flung a look of calm disdain at her; but whether it was the berry juice which stained our faces that took from its effect, or the free mountain air which father says saps the foundations of despotism, that made her callous, at any rate she only laughed scornfully and got up and went down the stream with her rod, leaving me to finish the cloud-berries, and stare lazily up at the snow patches on the hillside--which somehow put me in mind of the grey plush--and follow or not as I liked.