Up this rocky promontory it was very pretty little climbing, over the irregular turf-covered crags that made the ascent; and once up, it was charming.  A natural grove of stately old pine-trees, with their glory of tasseled foliage and their breath of perfume, crowned and sheltered it; and here had been placed at cosy angles, under the deepest shade, long, broad, elastic benches of boards, sprung from rock to rock, and made secure to stakes, or held in place by convenient irregularities of the rock itself.  Pine-trunks and granite offered rough support to backs that could so fit themselves; and visitors found out their favorite seats, and spent hours there, with books or work, or looking forth in a luxurious listlessness from out the cool upon the warm, bright valley-picture, and the shining water wandering down from far heights and unknown solitudes to see the world.

“It’s better so,” said Miss Craydocke, when the others left them.  “I had a word I wanted to say to you.  What do you suppose those two came up here to the mountains for?” And Miss Craydocke nodded up, indicatively, toward the two girl-figures just visible by their draperies in a nook of rock beyond and above the benches.

“To get the good of them, as we did, I suppose,” Leslie answered, wondering a little what Miss Craydocke might exactly mean.

“I suppose so, too,” was the reply.  “And I suppose—­the Lord’s love came with them!  I suppose He cares whether they get the full of the good.  And yet I think He leaves it, like everything else, a little to us.”

Leslie’s heart beat quicker, hearing these words.  It beat quicker always when such thoughts were touched.  She was shy of seeking them; she almost tried, in an involuntary way, to escape them at first, when they were openly broached; yet she longed always, at the same time, for a deeper understanding of them.  “I should like to know the Miss Josselyns better,” she said presently, when Miss Craydocke made no haste to speak again.  “I have been thinking so this morning.  I have thought so very often.  But they seem so quiet, always.  One doesn’t like to intrude.”

“They ought to be more with young people,” Miss Craydocke went on.  “And they ought to do less ripping and sewing and darning, if it could be managed.  They brought three trunks with them.  And what do you think the third is full of?”

Leslie had no idea, of course.

“Old winter dresses.  To be made over.  For the children at home.  So that their mother may be coaxed to take her turn and go away upon a visit when they get back, seeing that the fall sewing will be half done!  That’s a pretty coming to the mountains for two tired-out young things, I think!”

“Oh dear!” cried Leslie pitifully; and then a secret compunction seized her, thinking of her own little elegant, odd-minute work, which was all she had to interfere with mountain pleasure.

“And isn’t it some of our business, if we could get at it?” asked Miss Craydocke, concluding.