"Aunt Clara's lips will scold you," jeered Dian as she climbed safely down on the other side. But Ellen jumped gayly into the grasp of the waiting cavalier, whose modest action in placing her gently on the hillside belied his bombastic appeal.
"Spirit of the hills, descend and greet,
The pressing of her eager feet,"
sang Charlie as he followed the flying girls, gayly improvising his boyish madrigals to meet each incident of the day.
The girls climbed from point to point, always going upward, but keeping out of the way of passing teams. Their arms were soon filled with the blooms of riotous colors and perfume which intoxicated them with the blush and glory of the color song of peak and mountain vale.
"Her spicy cheeks were red with bloom,
Her colored breath was panting;
As with a thousand flowers of June—"
Charlie paused to block the wheel, and Diantha finished his doggerel for him,
"She mocked at Charlie's ranting."
and Aunt Clara who felt faint herself from the rarified air that they were all conscious of, looked anxiously at the somewhat delicate frame of her foster-daughter.
"Tom, I believe you, too, are uncomfortable."
Tom Allen was almost speechless, for his bulky form was nearly overcome with the constant climbing; but he would not betray the fact to the scorn of Charlie Rose: for Tom dreaded to be teased quite as much as he loved to tease others. So he quieted his panting breath to say, "Aunt Clara, I think I heard some one say you had some doughnuts in one of those baskets; where could we find a better place to eat our frugal meal than beside this purling stream."