After
all of which she would catch his eye, and they would both laugh to
startle the birds.
Blue Lead proved to be some distance away, for which fact Bennington
was not sorry. At length they surmounted a little ridge. Over its
summit there started into being a long cool "draw," broad and shallow
near the top, but deepening by insensible degrees into a canon filled
already with broad-leaved shrubs, and thickly grown with saplings of
beech and ash. Through the screen of slender trunks could be seen
miniature open parks carpeted with a soft tiny fern, not high enough to
conceal the ears of a rabbit, or to quench the flame of the tiger lily
that grew there. Soon a little brook sprang from nowhere, and crept
timidly through and under thick mosses. After a time it increased in
size, and when it had become large enough to bubble over clear gravel,
Mary called a halt.
"We'll have our picnic here," she decided.
The ravine at this point received another little gulch into itself, and
where the two came together the bottom widened out into almost parklike
proportions. On one side was a grass-plot encroached upon by numerous
raspberry vines.
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