How To Do It | Page 6

but Clara with a girl whom she did not know, but
who rode better than she, and had whipped both horses with a rattan
she had. And who should this girl be but Sybil Dyer!
As the party filed up, and we lifted tired girls and laughing mothers off
the patient horses, I found that a lucky chance had thrown Maud and
her brother Stephen into the same caravan. There was great kissing
when my girls recognized Maud, and when it became generally known
that I was competent to introduce to others such pretty and bright
people as she and Laura and Sarah Clavers were, I found myself very
popular, of a sudden, and in quite general demand.

And I bore my honors meekly, I assure you. I took nice old Mrs. Van
Astrachan out to a favorite rock of mine to see the sunset, and, what
was more marvellous, the heavy thunder-cloud, which was beating up
against the wind; and I left the young folks to themselves, only aspiring
to be a Youth's Companion. I got Will to bring me Mrs. Van
Astrachan's black furs, as it grew cold, but at last the air was so sharp
and the storm clearly so near, that we were all driven in to that nice,
cosey parlor at the Tiptop House, and sat round the hot stove, not sorry
to be sheltered, indeed, when we heard the heavy rain on the windows.
We fell to telling stories, and I was telling of the last time I was there,
when, by great good luck, Starr King turned up, having come over
Madison afoot, when I noticed that Hall, one of those patient giants
who kept the house, was called out, and, in a moment more, that he
returned and whispered his partner out. In a minute more they returned
for their rubber capes, and then we learned that a man had staggered
into the stable half frozen and terribly frightened, announcing that he
had left some people lost just by the Lake of the Clouds. Of course, we
were all immensely excited for half an hour or less, when Hall appeared
with a very wet woman, all but senseless, on his shoulder, with her hair
hanging down to the ground. The ladies took her into an inner room,
stripped off her wet clothes, and rubbed her dry and warm, gave her a
little brandy, and dressed her in the dry linens Mrs. Hall kept ready.
Who should she prove to be, of all the world, but Emma Fortinbras!
The men of the party were her father and her brothers Frank and
Robert.
No! that is not all. After the excitement was over they joined us in our
circle round the stove,--and we should all have been in bed, but that Mr.
Hall told such wonderful bear-stories, and it was after ten o'clock that
we were still sitting there. The shower had quite blown over, when a
cheery French horn was heard, and the cheery Hall, who was never
surprised, I believe, rushed out again, and I need not say Oliver rushed
out with him and Jo Gresham, and before long we all rushed out to
welcome the last party of the day.
These were horseback people, who had come by perhaps the most
charming route of all,--which is also the oldest of all,--from what was
Ethan Crawford's. They did not start till noon. They had taken the
storm, wisely, in a charcoal camp,--and there are worse places,--and

then they had spurred up, and here they were. Who were they? Why,
there was an army officer and his wife, who proved to be Alice
Faulconbridge, and with her was Hatty Fielding's Cousin Fanny, and
besides them were Will Withers and his sister Florence, who had made
a charming quartette party with Walter and his sister Theodora, and on
this ride had made acquaintance for the first time with Colonel
Mansfield and Alice. All this was wonderful enough to me, as
Theodora explained it to me when I lifted her off her horse, but when I
found that Horace Putnam and his brother Enoch were in the same train,
I said I did believe in astrology.
For though I have not named Jane Smith nor Fanchon, that was because
you did not recognize them among the married people in the Crawford
House party,--and I suppose you did not recognize Herbert either. How
should you? But, in truth, here we all were up above the clouds on the
night of the 25th of August.
Did not those Ethan Crawford people eat as if they had never seen
biscuits? And when at last they were done, Stephen, who had been out
in the stables, came in with a black boy he found there, who had his
fiddle; and as