"Look at this white pine," she said, pulling down a bunch off a tree they were pa.s.sing. "It has five; and the 'Table Mountain pine' has only two."

"Observant little Dorothy!" exclaimed Roger.

"O, I know more than that," laughed Dorothy. "Look hard at this white pine needle; do you see, it has three sides, two of them white and one green? The loblolly needle has only two sides, though the under is so curved that it looks like two; and the 'Table Mountain' has two sides."

"What's the use of remembering all that?" demanded Mary sullenly.

Dorothy, who had been dimpling amusedly as she delivered her lecture, flushed deeply.

"I don't know," she admitted.

"We like to hear about it because we've been gardening all summer and anything about trees or plants interests us," explained Tom politely, though the way in which Mary spoke seemed like an attack on Dorothy.

"I've always found that everything I ever learned was useful at some time or other," James maintained decidedly. "You never can tell when this information that Dorothy has given us may be just what we need for some purpose or other."

"It served Dorothy's purpose just now when she interested us for a few minutes telling about the different kinds," insisted Ethel Blue, but Mary walked on before them with a toss of her head that meant "It doesn't interest me."

Dorothy looked at her mother, uncertain whether to take it as a joke or to feel hurt. Mrs. Smith smiled and shook her head almost imperceptibly and Dorothy understood that it was kindest to say nothing more.

They chatted on as they walked through the Botanical Gardens and exclaimed over the wonders of the hothouses and examined the collections of the Museum, but the edge had gone from the afternoon and they were not sorry to find themselves on the train for Rosemont. Mary sat with Mrs. Smith.

"I really was interested in what Dorothy told about the pines," she whispered as the train rumbled on; "I was mad because I didn't know anything that would interest them, too."

"I dare say you know a great many things that would interest them,"

replied Mrs. Smith. "Some day you must tell me about the most interesting thing you ever saw in all your life and we'll see if it won't interest them."

"That was in a coal mine," replied Mary promptly. "It was the footstep of a man thousands and thousands of years old. It made you wonder what men looked like and how they lived so long ago."

"You must tell us all about it, some time. It will make a good addition to what we learned to-day about the fossils."

When the Mortons reached home they found Mr. Emerson waiting for them at their house.

"I've a proposal to make to these children, with your permission, Marion," he said to his daughter.

"Say on, sir," urged Roger.

"Mr. Clark is getting very nervous about this man Hapgood. The man is beginning to act as if he, as the guardian of the child, had a real claim on the Clark estate, and he becomes more and more irritating every day. They haven't heard from Stanley for several days. He hasn't answered either a letter or a telegram that his uncle sent him and the old ladies are working themselves into a great state of anxiety over him. I tell them that he has been moving about all the time and that probably neither the letter nor the wire reached him, but Clark vows that Hapgood has intercepted them and his sisters are sure the boy is ill or has been murdered."

"Poor creatures," smiled Mrs. Morton sympathetically. "Is there anything you can do about it?"

"I told Clark a few minutes ago that I'd go out to western Pennsylvania and hunt up the boy and help him run down whatever clues he has. Clark was delighted at the offer--said he didn't like to go himself and leave his sisters with this man roaming around the place half the time."

"It was kind of you. I've no doubt Stanley is working it all out well, but, boy-like, he doesn't realize that the people at home want to have him report to them every day."

"My proposal is, Marion, that you lend me these children, Helen and the Ethels and Roger, for a few days' trip."

"Wow, wow!" rose a shout of joy.

"Or, better still, that you come, too, and bring d.i.c.ky."

Mrs. Morton was not a sailor's wife for nothing.

"I'll do it," she said promptly. "When do you want us to start?"

"Can you be ready for an early morning train from New York?"

"We can!" was the instant reply of every person in the room.

CHAPTER XVI

FAIRYLAND

All day long the train pulled its length across across the state of Pennsylvania, climbing mountains and bridging streams and piercing tunnels. All day long Mr. Emerson's party was on the alert, dashing from one side to the other of the car to see some beautiful vista or to look down on a brook brawling a hundred feet below the trestle that supported them or waving their hands to groups of children staring open-mouthed at the pa.s.sing train.

"Pennsylvania is a beautiful state," decided Ethel Brown as they penetrated the splendid hills of the Allegheny range.

"Nature made it one of the most lovely states of the Union," returned her grandfather. "Man has played havoc with it in spots. Some of the villages among the coal mines are hideous from the waste that has been thrown out for years upon a pile never taken away, always increasing. No gra.s.s grows on it, no children play on it, the hens won't scratch on it.

The houses of the miners turn one face to this ugliness and it is only because they turn toward the mountains on another side that the people are preserved from the death of the spirit that comes to those who look forever on the unlovely."

"Is there any early history about here?" asked Helen, whose interest was unfailing in the story of her country.

"The French and Indian Wars were fought in part through this land,"

answered Mr. Emerson. "You remember the chief struggle for the continent lay between the English and the French. There were many reasons why the Indians sided with the French in Canada, and the result of the friendship was that; the natives were supplied with arms by the Europeans and the struggle was prolonged for about seventy-five years."

"Wasn't the attack on Deerfield during the French and Indian War?" asked Ethel Blue.

"Yes, and there were many other such attacks."

"The French insisted that all the country west of the Alleghenies belonged to them and they disputed the English possession at every point. When Washington was only twenty-one years old he was sent to beg the French not to interfere with the English, but he had a hard journey with no fortunate results. It was on this journey that he picked out a good position for a fort and started to build it. It was where Pittsburg now stands."

"That was a good position for a fort, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to make the Ohio," commended Roger.

"It was such a good position that the French drove off the English workmen and finished the work themselves. They called it Fort Duquesne and it became one of a string of sixty French forts extending from Quebec to New Orleans."

"Some builders!" commended Roger.

"Fort Duquesne was so valuable that the English sent one of their generals, Braddock, to capture it. Washington went with him on his staff, to show him the way."

"It must have been a long trip from the coast through all this hilly country."

"It was. They had to build roads and they were many weeks on the way."

"It was a different matter from the twentieth century transportation of soldiers by train and motor trucks and stages," reminded Mrs. Morton.