"Ah, let them go, Dian," begged Ellen; "I will look after them, and I know Harvey will be good, and the girls will stay right with me. Won't you, girls?"
And with this promise, the whole party started up the steep ascent towards the upper lake.
"In all my life," said Ellen, as the children swarmed around her, and she found that John Stevens was to be her escort, for that portion of the trip at least, "I was never so happy. I could sing if I only had Diantha's voice; or I could dance, if I had Lucy's hornpipe steps; but as it is, I must just shout aloud and cry 'Hello.'" And suiting the action to the word, she put her pretty hands to the side of her lips and cried down the valley:
"Hello! Hello!"
Ellen stood some time at this viewpoint on the southern peak, and the children gathered around her and John to admire the exquisite beauty of the scene spread out in the fairy dell below them.
"Was there ever anything more beautiful on this earth, Dian?" she asked, in triumphant tones. "There is nothing to hurt or make one afraid in all this holy mountain, is there, John?"
"Hush, Ellie," answered John. "I don't like people to fling the gauntlet in the face of fate with such careless words."
"But, John, did you hear what the President said this morning?"
"Yes, I did. And it chilled my blood to hear him speak so; I have heard him do such a thing only once before. Do you recall how he said, the first year we came here, that he wanted just ten years of quiet and peace and he would ask no odds of anybody."
"I don't remember it, John. I was only eight years old then, you know."