“And how do you get to it?” asked Mrs. Macallister, pointing her pretty chin at him in lifting her head to look.
“Walk.”
“Thanks, then; I shall try to be satisfied with me own backbone,” said Mrs. Macallister, who had that freedom in alluding to her anatomy which marks the superior civilization of Great Britain and its colonial dependencies.
“Carry you,” suggested Bartley.
“I dare say you'd be very sure-footed; but I'd quite enough of donkeys in the hills at home.”
Bartley roared with the resolution of a man who will enjoy a joke at his own expense.
Marcia turned away, and referred her invitation, with a glance, to Olive.
“I don't believe Miss Halleck wants to go,” said Mr. Macallister.
“I couldn't,” said Olive, regretfully. “I've neither the feet nor the head for climbing over high rocky places.”
Marcia was about to sink down on the grass again, from which she had risen, in the hopes that her proposition would succeed, when Bartley called out: “Why don't you show Ben the Devil's Backbone? The view is worth seeing, Halleck.”