Children's Book Classics - Kate Douglas Wiggin Edition: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories for Children. Kate Douglas Wiggin

or it will even do for a theatre; and it is scarcely more than half a mile up the cañon.’

      ‘How did you find it?’ asked Margery.

      ‘As I was walking along by the brookside, I saw a snake making its way through the bushes, and—’

      ‘Goodness!’ shrieked Polly, ‘I shall not write there, thank you.’

      ‘Goose! Just wait a minute. I looked at it, and followed at a distance; it was a harmless little thing; and I thought, for the fun of it, I would just push blindly on and see what I should find, because we are for ever walking in the beaten path, and I long for something new.’

      ‘A bad instinct,’ remarked Madge, ‘and one which will get you into trouble, so you should crush it in its infancy.’

      ‘Well, I took up my dress and ploughed through the chaparral, until I came, in about three minutes of scratching and fighting, to an open circular place about as large as this tent. It was exactly round, which is the curious part of it; and in the centre was one stump, covered with moss and surrounded by great white toadstools. How any one happened to go in there and cut down a single tree I can’t understand, nor yet how they managed to bring out the tree through the tangled brush. It is so strange that it seems as if there must be a mystery about it.’

      ‘Certainly,’ said Margery promptly. ‘A tragedy of the darkest kind! Some cruel wretch has cut down, in the pride and pomp of it beauty, one sycamore-tree; its innocent life-blood has stained the ground, and given birth to the white toadstools which mark the spot and testify to the purity of the victim.’

      ‘Well,’ continued Bell, impressively, ‘I knew I could never find it again; and I wanted so much you should see it that I took the ball of twine we always carry, unrolled it, and dropped the thread all the way along to the brookside, like Phrygia, or Melpomene, or Anemone, or whatever her name was.’

      ‘Or Artesia, or Polynesia, or Euthanasia,’ interrupted Polly. ‘I think the lady you mean is Ariadne.’

      ‘Exactly. Now we’ll take papa to see it, and then we’ll fit it up as a retreat. Won’t it be charming? We’ll call it the Lone Stump.’

      ‘Oh, I like that; it makes me shiver!’ cried Polly. ‘I’m going to write an ode to it at once. Ahem! It shall begin—let me see—

      ‘O lonely tree,

       What cruel “he”

       Did lay thee low?

       Tell us the facts;

       Did cruel axe

       Abuse thee so?’

      ‘Sublime! Second verse,’ said Bell slowly, with pauses between the lines:—

      ‘Or did a gopher,

       The wicked loafer,

       Gnaw at thy base,

       And, doing so,

       Contrive to go,

       And leave no trace?’

      ‘Oh dear!’ sighed Margery; ‘if you will do it, wait a minute.

      ‘O toadstools white,

       Pray give us light

       Upon the question.

       Did gopher gnaw,

       And live in awe

       Of indigestion?’

      ‘Good!’ continued Bell:—

      ‘Or did a man

       Malicious plan

       The good tree’s ruin,

       And leave it so

       Convenient low,

       A seat for Bruin?

      For travelling grizzlies, you know. We may go there and see a hungry creature making a stump-speech, while an admiring audience of grasshoppers and tarantulas seat themselves in a circle on the toadstools.’

      ‘Charming prospect!’ said Madge. ‘I don’t think I care to visit the Lone Stump or pass my mornings there.’

      ‘Nonsense, dear child; it is just like every other part of the cañon, only a little more lonely. It is not half a mile from camp, and hardly a dozen steps from the place where the boys go so often to shoot quail.’

      ‘Very well,’ said the girls. ‘We must go there to-morrow morning; and perhaps we’d better not tell the boys,—they are so peculiar. Jack will certainly interfere with us in some way, if he hears about it.’

      ‘Now let us take our books and run down by the pool for an hour or two,’ said Bell. ‘Papa and the boys are all off shooting, and mamma is lying down. We can have a cool, quiet time; the sunshine is so hot here by the tents.’

      Accordingly, they departed, as they often did, for one of the prolonged chats in which school-girls are wont to indulge, and which so often, too, are but idle, senseless chatter.

      These young people, however, had been fortunate in having the wisest and most loving guardianship, so that all their happy young lives had been spent to good purpose. They had not shirked study, and so their minds were stocked with useful information; they had read carefully and digested thoroughly whatever they had read, so that they possessed a good deal of general knowledge. The girls were bright, sensible, industrious little women, who tried to be good, too, in the old-fashioned sense of the word; and full of fun, nonsense, and chatter as they were among themselves, they never forgot to be modest and unassuming.

      The boys were pretty well in earnest about life, too, with good ambitions and generous aspirations. They had all been studying with Dr. Winship for nearly two years; and that means a great deal, for he was a real teacher, entering into the lives of his pupils, sympathising with them in every way, and leading them, through the study of nature, of human beings, and of God, to see the beauty and meaning of life.

      Geoffrey Strong, of course, was older than the rest, having completed his junior year at college; but Dr. Winship, who was his guardian, thought it wiser for him to rest a year and come to him in California, as his ambition and energy had already led him into greater exertions than his age or strength warranted. He was now studying medicine with the good Doctor, but would go back to the ‘land of perpetual pie’ in the fall and complete his college course.

      A splendid fellow he was,—so earnest, thoughtful, and wise; so gravely tender in all his ways to Aunt Truth, who was the only mother he had ever known; so devoted to Dr. Winship, who loved him as his own elder son.

      What will Geoffrey Strong be as a man? The twig is bent, and it is safe to predict how the tree will incline. His word will be as good as his bond; he will be a good physician, for his eye is quick to see suffering, and his hand ready to relieve it; little children with feverish cheeks and tired eyes will love to clasp his cool, strong sand; he will be gentle as a woman, yet thoroughly manly, as he is now, for he has made the most of his golden youth, and every lad who does that will have a golden manhood and a glorious old age.

      As for Philip Noble, he was a dear, good, trustworthy lad too; kindly, generous, practical, and industrious; a trifle slow and reserved, perhaps, but full of common sense,—the kind of sense which, after all, is most uncommon.

      Bell once said: ‘This is the difference between Philip and Geoffrey,—one does, and the other is. Geoff is the real Simon-pure ideal which we praise Philip for trying to be,’—a very good description for a little maiden whose bright eyes had only looked into life for sixteen summers.

      And now we come to Jack Howard, who never kept still long enough for any one to write a description of him. To explain how he differed from Philip or Geoffrey would be like bringing the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer together for purposes of comparison.

      If there were a horseback ride, Jack rode the wildest colt, was oftenest thrown and least often hurt; if a fishing-party, Jack it was who caught all the fish, though he made more noise than any one else, and followed no rules laid down in The Complete Angler.

      He