"Glorious! glorious!" chimed in a dozen voices.
"How long has the boat to wait?" asked Hugh.
"One hour," was the answer of the weather-beaten son of Neptune.
"That gives us plenty of time," was the general verdict. So without more ado lunch-baskets were brought ashore. The steamer's steward was prevailed upon, by a silver dollar thrust slyly into his hand, to help us, and presently the whole party was feasting by the lakeside. And what a royal dining-room was that grove, its outer pillars rising from the very lake itself, its smooth brown floor of pine-needles, arabesqued with a flitting tracery of sun shadows and fluttering leaves, and giving through the true Gothic arches of its myriad windows glorious views of the lake that lay like an enchanted sea before us! And whoever dined more regally, more divinely, even, though upon nectar and ambrosia, than our merry-makers as they sat at their well-spread board, with such glowing, heaven-tinted pictures before their eyes, such balmy airs floating about their happy heads, and such music as the sunshiny waves made in their glad, listening ears? It was like a picture out of Hiawatha. At least it seemed to strike our young lady so, who in a voice of peculiar sweetness and power recited the opening of the twenty-second book of that poem:—
"By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.
All the air was full of freshness.