“Somewhat back from the village street
  Stands the old-fashioned country seat. 
  Across its antique portico
  Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw,
  And from its station in the hall
  An ancient timepiece says to all,—­
      ’Forever—­never! 
      Never—­forever!’”

“I remember that poem, but I never liked it much;” acknowledged Dorothy; “it’s too gloomy.”

“It is rather solemn,” admitted Mr. Emerson.  “You’ll be interested to know that merry Dr. Holmes used to come to Pittsfield in the summer.  There are many associations with him in the town.”

“I’m sure he wrote gayer poems than ‘The Old Clock on the Stairs’ when he was here.”

“Is this a very old town?” Ethel Blue asked.

“It was settled in 1743.  Does that seem old to you?”

[Illustration:  “It was settled in 1743”]

“1743,” Ethel repeated, doing some subtraction by the aid of her fingers, for arithmetic was not her strong point.  “A hundred and eighty-seven years,” she decided after reflection.  “Yes, that seems pretty old to me.  It’s a lot older than Rosemont but over a hundred years younger than Plymouth or Boston.”

“A sort of middle age,” Mr. Emerson summed up her decision with a smile.

After luncheon at the hotel an early afternoon car sped on with them to a station whence they took an automobile for a drive through Stockbridge and Lenox with their handsome estates and lovely views.

The trolley whizzed them back over the same route to North Adams and westward to Williamstown.

“One of my brothers—­your great-uncle James, Ethel Brown—­went to Williams College,” said Mr. Emerson, “and I shall be glad to spend the night here and see the town and the buildings I heard him talk so much about.”

“Why don’t we get out, then?”

“We’re going now to Bennington, Vermont.”

“Vermont!  Into another state!” exclaimed Ethel Blue.

“When we come back we’ll leave the car here.”

“Are those the Green Mountains?” asked Dorothy as the trolley ran into a smoother country than they had been in while traveling in the Berkshires, but one which showed a background of long wooded ranges rising length after length against the sky.

“Those are the Green Mountains; and this is the ‘Green Mountain State,’ and the men who fought in the Revolution under Ethan Allen were the ’Green Mountain Boys’.”

  “But, ranged in serried order, attent on sterner noise,
  Stood stalwart Ethan Allen and his ‘Green Mountain Boys’
  Two hundred patriots listening as with the ears of one,
  To the echo of the muskets that blazed at Lexington!”

quoted Mrs. Emerson.  “They were bound northward to the British fort at Ticonderoga.”

“Did they get there?”

“They took the British completely by surprise.  That was in May, 1775.  It was in August, two years later that the battle of Bennington took place.”