“It isn’t the camp-life,” Ruth said, irritably.  “I am not so much a baby as to care about those things to such a degree that I can’t endure them, though everything is disagreeable enough; but that isn’t the point at all.”

Marion turned and looked at her curiously.

“What on earth is the point then?  What has happened to so disgust you with Chautauqua?”

“The point is, that I am tired of it all.  It is unutterably stupid!  I suppose I have a right to be tired of a silly scheme that ought never to have been undertaken, if I choose to be, have I not, without being called in question by any one?”

And feeling more thoroughly vexed, not only with the girls, but with herself, than ever she remembered feeling before, Ruth arose suddenly and sought refuge under the trees outside the tent.

Marion maintained a puzzled silence.  This was a new phase in Ruth’s character, and one hard to manage.

Flossy looked on the point of crying.  She was not used to crossing the wills of those who had influence over her, but she was very determined as to one thing:  she was not going to leave Chautauqua.

“Nothing could tempt me to go to Saratoga just now,” she said, earnestly.

“Why?” asked Marion, and receiving no answer at all felt that Flossy puzzled her as much as Ruth had done.  However, she set herself to work to restore peace.

“This letter is done,” she said, gayly, folding her manuscript.  “It is a perfectly gushing account of yesterday’s meeting, for some of which I am indebted to the Buffalo reporters; for I have given the most thrilling parts where I wasn’t present.  Now I’m going to celebrate.  Come in, Ruth, we are of the same mind precisely.  I would gladly accompany you on the afternoon train to Saratoga with the greatest pleasure, were it not for certain inconveniences connected with my pocket-book, and a desire to replenish it by writing up this enterprise.  But since we can’t go to Saratoga, let’s you and I go to Mayville.  It is a city of several hundred inhabitants, six or eight, certainly, I should think; and we can have an immense amount of fun out of the people and the sights this afternoon, and escape the preaching.  I haven’t got to write another letter until Monday.  Come, shall we take the three o’clock boat?”

Neither of these young ladies could have told what possible object there could be in leaving the lovely woods in which they were camped and going off to the singularly quiet, uninteresting little village of Mayville, except that it was, as they said, a getting away from the preaching—­though why two young ladies, with first-class modern educations, should find it so important to get themselves away from some of the first speakers in the country they did not stop to explain even to themselves.  However, the plan came to Ruth as a relief, and she unhesitatingly agreed to it; so they went their ways—­Flossy to the afternoon meeting (since Eurie declared herself so far convalescent as to be entirely able to remain alone) and the two of the party who had prided themselves up to this time on their superiority of intellect down to the wharf to take the boat for Mayville.