Looking into herself and about her with asking eyes, Leslie had learned something already by which she apprehended these things of others.  Heretofore, her two friends had seemed to her alike,—­able, both of them, to take life innocently and carelessly as it came; she began now to feel a difference.

Her eyes were bent away off toward the Franconia hills, when Mrs. Linceford leaned round to look in them, and spoke, in the tone her voice had begun to take toward her.  She felt one of her strong likings—­her immense fancies, as she called them, which were really warm sympathies of the best of her with the best she found in the world—­for Leslie Goldthwaite.

“It seems to me you are a stray sunbeam this morning,” she said, in her winning way.  “What kind of thoughts are going out so far?  What is it all about?”

A verse of the Psalms was ringing itself in Leslie’s mind; had been there, under all the other vague musings and chance suggestions for many minutes of her silence.  But she would not have spoken it—­she could not—­for all the world.  She gave the lady one of the chance suggestions instead.  “I have been looking down into that lovely hollow; it seems like a children’s party, with all the grave, grown folks looking on.”

“Childhood and grown-up-hood; not a bad simile.”

It was not, indeed.  It was a wild basin, within a group of the lesser hills close by; full of little feathery birches, that twinkled and played in the light breeze and gorgeous sunshine slanting in upon them between the slopes that lay in shadow above,—­slopes clothed with ranks of dark pines and cedars and hemlocks, looking down seriously, yet with a sort of protecting tenderness, upon the shimmer and frolic they seemed to have climbed up out of.  Those which stood in the half way shadow were gravest.  Hoar old stems upon the very tops were touched with the self-same glory that lavished itself below.  This also was no less a true similitude.

“Know ye not this parable?” the Master said.  “How then shall ye know all parables?” Verily, they lie about us by the wayside, and the whole earth is vocal with the wisdom of the Lord.

I cannot go with our party step by step; I have a summer to spend with them.  They came to Jefferson at noon, and sat themselves down in the solemn high court and council of the mountain kings.  First, they must have rooms.  In the very face of majesty they must settle their traps.

“You are lucky in coming in for one vacancy, made to-day,” the proprietor said, throwing open a door that showed them a commodious second-floor corner-room, looking each way with broad windows upon the circle of glory, from Adams to Lafayette.  A wide balcony ran along the southern side against the window which gave that aspect.  There were two beds here, and two at least of the party must be content to occupy.  Mrs. Linceford, of course; and it was settled that Jeannie should share it with her.