Marmaduke Wharne came and looked in at the doorway.  Mrs. Linceford rose from her seat upon the sofa close by, and gave him courteous greeting.  “The season has begun early, and you seem likely to have a pleasant summer here,” she said, with the half-considered meaning of a common fashion of speech.

“No, madam!” answered Marmaduke Wharne, out of his real thought, with a blunt emphasis.

“You think not?” said Mrs. Linceford suavely, in a quiet amusement.  “It looks rather like it to-night.”

“This?—­It’s no use for people to bring their bodies to the mountains, if they can’t bring souls in them!” And Marmaduke Wharne turned on his heel, and, without further courtesy, strode away.

“What an old Grimgriffinhoof!” cried Jeannie under her breath; and Elinor laughed her little musical laugh of fun.

Mrs. Linceford drew up her shawl, and sat down again, the remnant of a well-bred smile upon her face.  Leslie Goldthwaite rather wished old Marmaduke Wharne would come back again and say more.  But this first glimpse of him was all they got to-night.

CHAPTER V.

HUMMOCKS.

      “Blown crystal clear by Freedom’s northern wind.”

Leslie said the last line of Whittier’s glorious mountain sonnet, low, to herself, standing on the balcony again that next morning, in the cold, clear breeze; the magnificent lines of the great earth-masses rearing themselves before her sharply against a cloudless morning sky, defining and revealing themselves anew.

“Freedom’s northern wind will take all the wave out of your hair, and give you a red nose!” said Jeannie, coming round from her room, and upon Leslie unaware.

Well, Jeannie was a pretty thing to look at, in her delicate blue cambric morning dress, gracefully braided with white, with the fresh rose of recent sleep in her young cheeks, and the gladness of young life in her dark eyes.  One might look away from the mountains to look at her; for, after all, the human beauty is the highest.  Only, it must express high things, or at last one turns aside.

“And there comes Marmaduke; he’s worse than the north wind.  I can’t stay to be ‘blown clear’ by him.”  And Jeannie, in high, merry good-humor, flitted off.  It is easy to be merry and good-humored when one’s new dress fits exquisitely, and one’s hair hasn’t been fractious in the doing up.

Leslie had never, apparently to herself, cared less, somehow, for self and little vanities; it seemed as if it were going to be quite easy for her, now and henceforth, to care most for the nobler things of life.  The great mountain enthusiasm had seized her for the first time and swept away before it all meaner thought; and, besides, her trunk had been left behind, and she had nothing to put herself into but her plain brown traveling dress.