"Here. See if you can find me," came a m.u.f.fled answer.

"Where do you suppose she went to?" asked Ethel Brown, as they all three straightened themselves, yet saw no sign of Dorothy.

"I hope she hasn't fallen down a precipice and been killed!" said Ethel Blue, whose imagination sometimes ran away with her.

"More likely she has twisted her ankle," practical Ethel Brown.

"She wouldn't sound as gay as that if anything had happened to her,"

Della reminded them.

The cries that kept reaching them were unquestionably cheerful but where they came from was a problem that they did not seem able to solve. It was only when Dorothy poked out her head from behind a rock almost in front of them that they saw the entrance of what looked like a real cave.

"It's the best imitation of a cave I ever did see!" the explorer exclaimed. "These rocks have tumbled into just the right position to make the very best house! Come in."

Her guests were eager to accept her invitation. There was s.p.a.ce enough for all of them and two or three more might easily be accommodated within, while a bit of smooth gra.s.s outside the entrance almost added another room, "if you aren't particular about a roof," as Ethel Brown said.

"Do you suppose Roger has never found this!" wondered Dorothy. "See, there's room enough for a fireplace with a chimney. You could cook here.

You could sleep here. You could _live_ here!"

The others laughed at her enthusiasm, but they themselves were just as enthusiastic. The possibilities of spending whole days here in the shade and cool of the trees and rocks and of imagining that they were in the highlands of Scotland left them almost gasping.

"Don't you remember when Fitz-James first sees Ellen in the 'Lady of the Lake'?" asked Ethel Blue.

"He was separated from his men and found himself in a rocky glen overlooking a lake. The rocks were bigger than these but we can pretend they were just the same," and she recited a few lines from a poem whose story they all knew and loved.

"But not a setting beam could glow Within the dark ravines below, Where twined the path in shadow hid, Round many a rocky pyramid."

"I remember; he looked at the view a long time and then he blew his horn again to see if he could make any of his men hear him, and Ellen came gliding around a point of land in a skiff. She thought it was her father calling her."

"And the stranger went home to their lodge and fell in love with her--O, it's awfully romantic. I must read it again," and Dorothy gazed at the rocks around her as if she were really in Scotland.

"Has anybody a knife?" asked Della's clear voice, bringing them all sharply back to America and Rosemont. "My aunt--the one who has the hanging flowerpots I was telling you about--isn't a bit well and I thought I'd make her a little fernery that she could look at as she lies in bed."

"But the ferns are all dried up."

"'Greenery' is a better name. Here's a sc.r.a.p of partridge berry with a red berry still clinging to it, and here's a bit of moss as green as it was in summer, and here--yes, it's alive, it really is!" and she held up in triumph a tiny fern that had been so sheltered under the edge of a boulder that it had kept fresh and happy.

There was nothing more to reward their search, for they all hunted with Della, but she was not discouraged.

"I only want a handful of growing things," she explained. "I put these in a finger bowl, and sprinkle a few seeds of gra.s.s or canary seed on the moss and dash some water on it from the tips of my fingers. Another finger bowl upside down makes the cover. The sick person can see what is going on inside right through the gla.s.s without having to raise her head."

"How often do you water it?"

"Only once or twice a week, because the moisture collects on the upper gla.s.s of the little greenhouse and falls down again on the plants and keeps them, wet."

"We'll keep our eyes open every time we come here," promised Dorothy.

"There's no reason why you couldn't add a little root of this or that any time you want to."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Partridge Berry]

"I know Aunty will be delighted with it," cried Della, much pleased.

"She likes all plants, but especially things that are a little bit different. That's why she spends so much time selecting her wall vases--so that they shall be unlike other people's."

"Fitz-James's woods," as they already called the bit of forest that Dorothy hoped to have possession of, extended back from the road and spread until it joined Grandfather Emerson's woods on one side and what was called by the Rosemonters "the West Woods" on the other. The girls walked home by a path that took them into Rosemont not far from the station where Della was to take the train.

"Until you notice what there really is in the woods in winter you think there isn't anything worth looking at," said Ethel Blue, walking along with her eyes in the tree crowns.

"The shapes of the different trees are as distinct now as they are in summer," declared Ethel Brown. "You'd know that one was an oak, and the one next to it a beech, wouldn't you?"

"I don't know whether I would or not," confessed Dorothy honestly, "but I can almost always tell a tree by its bark."

"I can tell a chestnut by its bark nowadays," a.s.serted Ethel Blue, "because it hasn't any!"

"What on earth do you mean?" inquired city-bred Della.

"Something or other has killed all the chestnuts in this part of the world in the last two or three years. Don't you see all these dead trees standing with bare trunks?"

"Poor old things! Is it going to last?"

"It spread up the Hudson and east and west in New York and Ma.s.sachusetts, and south into Pennsylvania."

"Roger was telling Grandfather a few days ago that a farmer was telling him that he thought the trouble--the pest or the blight or whatever it was--had been stopped."

"I remember now seeing a lot of dead trees somewhere when one of Father's parishioners took us motoring in the autumn. I didn't know the chestnut crop was threatened."

"Chestnuts weren't any more expensive this year. They must have imported them from far-off states."

There were still pools of water in the wood path, left by the melting snow, and the gra.s.s that they touched seemed a trifle greener than that beside the narrow road. Once in a while a bit of vivid green betrayed a plant that had found shelter under an overhanging stone. The leaves were for the most part dry enough again to rustle under their feet.

Evergreens stood out sharply dark against the leafless trees.

"What are the trees that still have a few leaves left clinging to them?"

asked Della.

"Oaks. Do you know why the leaves stay on?"

"Is it a story?"

"Yes, a pleasant story. Once the Great Evil Spirit threatened to destroy the whole world. The trees heard the threat and the oak tree begged him not to do anything so wicked. He insisted but at last he agreed not to do it until the last leaf had fallen in the autumn. All the trees meant to hold On to their leaves so as to ward off the awful disaster, but one after the other they let them go--all except the oak. The oak never yet has let fall every one of its leaves and so the Evil Spirit never has had a chance to put his threat into execution."

"That's a lesson in success, isn't it? Stick to whatever it is you want to do and you're sure to succeed."

"Watch me make my garden succeed," cried Dorothy. "If 'sticking' will make it a success I'm a stick!"

CHAPTER IV