 A Real New England Girl by Anna I. Parsons 1. The Shower 2. Oxford County 3. The Stranger and the Girl 4. The Youth and the Girl 5. Pansy and Richard Go Trading 6. The Marvelous Storyteller 7. The Dinner 8. The The Minister Comes for Tea 9. Pansy's Father 10. Pansy and Her Mother 11. Poland Springs 12. The Birthday Cake 13. Ned Patterson Comes for a Visit 14. The Blue Berrying Party 15. The Beginning of Wisdom 16. The Tempted and the Penitent 17. The Concert 18. Stanley's Ride 19. The Bench by the Wayside 20. The Banker and the Widow 21. The Bag of Nuts 22. How They Kept Thanksgiving at Little Farm 23. Hardly a Merry Christimas 24. A Call Down and a Caller 25. The Pride of Mrs. Bradford 26. A Happy New Year 27. Amusement and Winter Sport 28. Kim 29. Richard, the Lion Hearted 30. A Tour of the White Mountains 31. Talking Over the Trip with Henry Bright 32. Thoughts That Lie Too Deep for Words 33. Economics 34. His Toast 35. The Busy Haunts of Man 36. Christmas in New York 37. The Last Night of Their Visit 38. The Language Understood by All 39. Sugaring Off 40. Correspondence 41. Commencement 42. Conclusion Afterward     |
A Tour of the White Mountains "Rather see the wonders of the world abroad, Than, living dully sluggardized at home, Wear out they youth with shapeless idleness." -- Shakespeare It was finally decided that Pansy and Richard should go with the Winthrops to tour the White Mountains. The news of the bee tree incident had spread, not only through the Town of Paris, but through surrounding towns. Although it was a busy season for farmers, those in the immediate vicinity stopped in to see Richard and to get the facts first hand. The girls in Pansy's Sunday School class sent flowers daily by the mail man and other people sent in delicacies. One day a stranger from Oxford village knocked at Mrs. Bradford's door, and said, that as he was going to South Paris village and it wasn't more than two miles out of his way, he had driven up the big hills to see her boy, and her handed her a bag of fruit to be given Richard at her discretion. Mrs. Bradford who had rather rigid ideas about pampering children, began to think Richard would be spoiled for life, and so when the doctor said it wouldn't do him any harm to take the trip, she consented to his going. Phil Morris had come up the day after Richard's injury to assist Mr. Alden, and he not only could but was anxious to remain as cow boy and general factotem about the farm. So one hot July morning the Winthrop touring car with Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop, Stanley, Julia, and a chauffeur aboard stopped at Little Farm and Pansy and Richard with a suitcase appeared and were comfortably tucked away in its capacious tonneau. At a given signal, the chauffeur stepped on the gas, and the long tour commenced. "There's where we'll be going in another day," said Pansy, pointing to Mt. Washington that loomed up blue and majestic in the sunlight less than fifty miles to the west. "I wonder if we'll be able to see Little Farm when we reach its summit?" "When you have reversed the point of view, it won't be even a dot in the distance," said Mr. Winthrop. Going by easy stages, they reached the Glen House and there rested on the first day of their journey under the shadow of mighty Washington. "How would you and Richard like to wire your mother?" asked Mr. Winthrop, while they waited at the hotel for their rooms to be assigned them. Pansy hadn't the faintest idea of what he meant and looked at Richard who in turn looked at her as much puzzled as though the question had been asked in Russian. On the farm they wired the fences, the chicken enclosures and running vines, such as Sweet Peas and Scarlet Beans. When Pansy had quickly run over these things in her mind, she decided Mr. Winthrop meant a safeguard of some kind and so answered somewhat slowly for her, "I think we would like to." Stanley brought a blank and showed them to a desk on which they could write, and their faces cleared up wonderfully as they set about composing their first message by telegraph. In a few minutes, they had written the following: Mrs. Ruth Bradford, Paris, Maine At the Glen House, Carroll County, New Hampshire. I have seen and retained so many beautiful views in my eyes that I feel like a moving picture reel. Pansy. So do I. Richard. After a night's rest and a look around The Glen, between 10 and eleven o'clock, they left this small plateau where the Hermit Thrush and other wild birds sang so cheerily and millions of butterflies flitted from blossom to blossom, and taking a carriage road on the northeast ridge, they rose steadily upward until there was no more song of birds to please the ear, no more flitting of butterflies to delight the eye; only the music of the winds playing their wild fantasies in cliff and cavern, rugged rock and sterile soil, clouds that trailed their filmy mist along the mountain sides, and the bleak summit of Mt. Washington had been reached. No one said very much. The physical discomfort was such that Mr. Winthrop soon took Mrs. Winthrop and Julia into the shelter of the Tip Top House, but Stanley remained to clamber with Pansy and Richard from one rocky pinnacle to another and view the wonderous landscape revealed for miles around. It was a leaden blue day. The great clouds that drifted through Heaven were white, but heavy. Far off the sun shone on part of the earth's surface, but the shadows were deep and the blue was dull on a greater part of that within their view. Perhaps the thing that impressed the young minds of Pansy and Richard most was the appearance of flatness of the surrounding country and the deception of nature itself. Here they were on one of the highest peaks east of the Mississippi, a summit up to which they had looked winter and spring, seed time and harvest, and had used as the criterion of all that was lofty and massive, and now they must perforce stand where they could look down into The Glen and at their hostelry of the night before to realize that they were on a great pinnacle at all. As Mr. Winthrop had foretold, not a vestige of Little Farm could be seen in the distance. There was old Kearsarge, beautiful for its symmetry, with Lovewell's Pond at its left, and not many miles farther east should be the Township of Paris, but their sharp eyes could not pierce to where lay that humble sanctuary best described by the three words, home, sweet home. "Are you disappointed?" asked Stanley, when they had roamed about for sometime. "No-o," answered Pansy, "but it's quite different from what I expected. I don't think I should like to stay long up here among the clouds." "We've always been curious to know what lay beyond the mountains," said Richard, "and now we're here to see for ourselves, it's only some more of the same thing -- forests, lakes, and hills, all of a dull lead color instead of a nice blue. It's a heap sight prettier looking from Paris up here than it is looking from here in any direction." "I think so, too," said Stanley. "These mountains with the snowy foreheads, as the Indians called them, are particularly entrancing when viewed from a distance; but I like the vastness of this view and the feeling of standing on something old, for geologists say these mountains have an antiquity antedating that of the Andes or Alps. Then there is the absence of ego. If a man erects a fine structure, he expects his name to be writ thereon forever in bronze, but here, only from the nature of the work itself can you glean who is the maker and builder." "You say you are an Episcopalian, Stanley, but sometimes you seem almost pious," observed Pansy, so seriously that he did not laugh or try to convince her that all the religion in the world was not embraced in Congregationalism; instead, he took her and Richard each by the arm and piloted them into the hotel where Mr. Winthrop had made arrangements for dinner to be served as soon as they should be ready. "I wonder if they gave us morphine with our lettuce," said Pansy, before the meal was over, "I feel so sleepy I could take a hundred winks sitting right here in this chair." "It's from exposure to the wind and the rarefied air," said Mr. Winthrop. "You had better drink some strong coffee or you will miss some of the view going down." That night they slept at Jackson at Hotel Wentworth-Hall, then continued their journey along the banks of the Saco, on up through Crawford Notch, to Bretton Woods, with a night and a day at the stately Mount Washington House, and from thence to the Aaumbeck on beautiful Jefferson Hill. Pansy and Richard liked Jefferson from the moment they arrived, and as soon as their rooms were assigned them, went out on the spacious piazza to look again at the Presidential Range which is nowhere more grand than from this point of view. Here, as at many other hotels at which they had stopped, the Winthrops met friends who claimed their attention from the moment they entered the hotel office, so the two were left quite by themselves. "In twenty-four hours more, we shall be home, Richard, shall you be glad?" asked Pansy. "Yes, Pansy, I think I should welcome a kick from Lillian Russell this minute, or a good switch from Janet Beecher's whisk-about. This mountain scenery is awfully grand, but there's nothing friendly about it like a lot of cows waiting at the gate so glad to see you coming to open it that they almost smile." "We ought to like travel, because it is so enlightening, but I won't be sorry to get back where I can wipe the dishes or make muffins for breakfast if mother asks me to." "Did you know there was to be a ball here tonight? asked Richard. "Yes, Stanley told me, and he said I am to be his partner every time he doesn't have to dance with Julia. Now, Richard, if I knew how to dance, I should be tempted to do so, it looks so alluring, but we don't want to spoil Stanley's good time, so we will dress up -- you in your dark suit and I in my white dress and ribbons -- and go into the ball and stay until they begin dancing, and then we will come out and find something to amuse ourselves." "Don't you like to listen to the music and watch the dancing, Pansy?" "Yes, but I wouldn't like to watch Stanley dancing with somebody else." They started to walk about the piazza, but a man busily engaged in crocheting an afghan caught their attention. His hair was silvery, his face was placid, and he worked on serenely unconscious that he was exciting any wonder. "What patience you must have," said Pansy, coming up quite near to him. He smiled benignantly. "No patience at all, my child. This is only the sixty-ninth afghan I have crocheted." "I should think your mother must have taught you how when you were in the cradle." "Well, hardly that. I was four years old when I began to manipulate the crochet hook." When the ball was well under way that evening, Stanley came to his father who with Mrs. Winthrop sat conversing with a party of friends on the hotel piazza. "Have you seen Pansy and Richard?" he inquired, somewhat anxiously. "I left them to dance with Julia, and I have not been able to find them since. Their keys are at the desk, so they have not gone to their rooms." "I have not seen them," said Mr. Winthrop, getting up. We had better look about the hotel." They walked around the piazza, through parlors, halls, and office, everywhere meeting the gaily dressed people who thronged at the dance. It was Mr. Winthrop's eagle eye that finally espied them at a table in a secluded corner playing dominoes, each with an elderly gentleman for a partner. It was a sweet home picture in an odd setting, and gave Mr. Winthrop much the same feeling he had when he saw the Salvation Army lasses holding a prayer meeting in Wall Street. "That's too much happiness to be disturbed," he said. "Let us leave them to enjoy themselves in their own way." "Who are those gentlemen, father?" asked Stanley, detaining him. "One is a distinguished jurist from Massachusetts and the other is an artist as well known for his crocheting habits as for his portraits," answered Mr. Winthrop. "I assure you they are in perfectly good company." They were making their way slowly toward the piazza again, when Stanley thrust his arm through that of his parent to further retard his progress, and, with all the eagerness of a boy lighting up his face, said, "Father, I think I should have an understanding with Pansy." "She is too young yet, my son. When you are both a couple of years older, you will know better whether you care for each other or not. I do not want to see you disappointed." "If I succeed with Pansy, it will be hard work winning mother's approval, but if I have yours, I shall not mind that so much." "You have my approval and my best wishes that you may succeed." Mr. Winthrop went back to join his wife and friends on the piazza, and Stanley, not caring to dance more, walked about until it was time for refreshments, then again sought Pansy and Richard. They each shook hands with their elderly partners, who in turn wished them much pleasure on their return trip to Little Farm. "How did you become acquainted with the ancient and honorables," asked Stanley, as he took them away to join the rest of the party and have refreshments. "Why, Richard and I tried to play dominoes by ourselves, but we both got lonesome for mother and Ruth," answered Pansy, "so we decided to each find a partner to play with us. I asked the afghan man and Richard asked the smooth faced gentleman, and they were both glad, because they said to watch other people dance and not take part, made them feel old, whereas to play dominoes with us made them feel young." "Did you have a nice time dancing?" asked Pansy. "I only danced twice with Julia." "Why not?" A peculiar smile played over Stanley's mouth as he answered with a kindly look into those wide open blue eyes, "I was talking over an important matter with father part of the time." They made their way among the tables, until they found the rest of the party waiting with three seats reserved for them. Before sunset the next afternoon, Pansy and Richard were back at Little Farm. Click Here for Chapter 31 |