Upstairs, again, was choice of two rooms,—­one flight, or two.  But the first looked out westward, where was comparatively little of what they had come for.  Higher up, they could have the same outlook that the others had; a slanting ceiling opened with dormer window full upon the grandeur of Washington, and a second faced southward to where beautiful blue, dreamy Lafayette lay soft against the tender heaven.

“Oh, let us have this!” said Leslie eagerly.  “We don’t mind stairs.”  And so it was settled.

“Only two days here?” they began to say, when they gathered in Mrs. Linceford’s room at nearly tea-time, after a rest and freshening of their toilets.

“We might stay longer,” Mrs. Linceford answered.  “But the rooms are taken for us at Outledge, and one can’t settle and unpack, when it’s only a lingering from day to day.  All there is here one sees from the windows.  A great deal, to be sure; but it’s all there at the first glance.  We’ll see how we feel on Friday.”

“The Thoresbys are here, Augusta.  I saw Ginevra on the balcony just now.  They seem to have a large party with them.  And I’m sure I heard them talk of a hop to-night.  If your trunks would only come!”

“They could not in time.  They can only come in the train that reaches Littleton at six.”

“But you’ll go in, won’t you?  ’T isn’t likely they dress much here,—­though Ginevra Thoresby always dresses.  Elinor and I could just put on our blue grenadines, and you’ve got plenty of things in your other boxes.  One of your shawls is all you want, and we can lend Leslie something.”

“I’ve only my thick traveling boots,” said Leslie; “and I shouldn’t feel fit without a thorough dressing.  It won’t matter the first night, will it?”

“Leslie Goldthwaite, you’re getting slow!  Augusta!”

“As true as I live, there is old Marmaduke Wharne!”

“Let Augusta alone for not noticing a question till she chooses to answer it,” said Jeannie Hadden, laughing.  “And who, pray, is Marmaduke Wharne?  With a name like that, if you didn’t say ‘old,’ I should make up my mind to a real hero, right out of a book.”

“He’s an original.  And—­yes—­he is a hero,—­out of a book, too, in his way.  I met him at Catskill last summer.  He stayed there the whole season, till they shut the house up and drove him down the mountain.  Other people came and went, took a look, and ran away; but he was a fixture.  He says he always does so,—­goes off somewhere and ’finds an Ararat,’ and there drifts up and sticks fast.  In the winter he’s in New York; but that’s a needle in a haystack.  I never heard of him till I found him at Catskill.  He’s an English-man, and they say had more to his name once.  It was Wharne_cliffe_, or Wharne_leigh_, or something, and there’s a baronetcy in the family.  I don’t doubt, myself, that it’s his, and that a part of his oddity has been to drop it.  He was a poor preacher,