A very limpid spring,
high up and out of sight among the leaves, sent its waters tinkling
down the face of the cliff, ever filling a crystal-clear lakelet at
the foot, which yet was never full. Velvety and beautiful as was the
moss surrounding this pond, it was nevertheless too damp to form an
acceptable couch for a human being, unless that human being were brave
enough to risk the rheumatic inconveniences which followed Rip Van
Winkle's long sleep in these very regions, so Dorothy always carried
with her from the hotel a feather-weight, spider's-web hammock, which
she deftly slung between two saplings, their light suppleness giving
an almost pneumatic effect to this fairy net spread in a fairy glen;
and here the young woman swayed luxuriously in the relaxing delights
of an indolence still too new to have become commonplace or wearisome.
She always expected to read a great deal in the hammock, but often the
book slipped unnoticed to the moss, and she lay looking upward at the
little discs of blue sky visible through the checkering maze of green
leaves. One afternoon, deserted by the latest piece of fictional
literature, marked in plain figures on the paper cover that protected
the cloth binding, one dollar and a half, but sold at the department
stores for one dollar and eight cents, Dorothy lay half-hypnotized by
the twinkling of the green leaves above her, when she heard a sweet
voice singing a rollicking song of the Civil War, and so knew that
Katherine was thus heralding her approach.
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