"Kingsley, Florence Morse - At the End Of His Rope" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kingsley Florence Morse)

himself after his bugsЧ don't want even a guide along to bother him. So he ties
up one end of a string in camp and unwinds a monstrous spool as he goes along.
When he gets through with his investigations he winds up, and the string brings
him into camp again as right as a trivet. See?"
"The very idea!"
"Bright man!" chorused the fair voyagers.
"His spools hold a mile of string, and he generally carries his pockets full of
'em," pursued Mr. Smith, gallantly presenting a toasted marshmallow to each of
his guests. "You can bet the fellows don't raise many objections to his
travels!Ч I say, Miss Margaret," he added guilelessly, "don't you want some pink
water-lilies? I know where there's a grist of 'emЧ beauties too."
"You go, Margaret," said Miss Terrill indulgently; "I'll stop here and rest. I'm
too deliciously comfortable to move."
And producing a volume from the pocket of her jacket, the young lady settled
back in her luxurious chairЧ cunningly fashioned out of a barrel and a piece of
burlapЧ with the air of an experienced chaperon.
Before proceeding further with this narrative, it must be distinctly understood
that Miss Katherine Terrill was a young person in whose veins ran certain saving
streams of genuine blue blood. Not only was she a Colonial dame by virtue of
both lines of descent, but through her maternal grandmother she was still
further linked with greatness in a manner which defied question.
To quote the often-repeated admonition of Madam Carter Stockard herself, "You
must never forget, my dear Katherine, what your position as a descendant of Col.
Brayton Carter, of Virginia, implies."
"I should require a memory as long as that of Methuselah, dear grandmama, if I
remembered all that it implies," was the somewhat flippant answer.
"I am grieved and astonished, my dear Katherine," once remarked Miss Penelope
Scidmore, principal of the Sadmore Select School for Young ladies, "to learn
that you, a young person of the most admirable birth and breeding, should for
one moment have countenanced such a breach of the proprieties!" Miss Scidmore
had made the painful discovery that certain of her "select" young ladies, under
the leadership of Miss Terrill, had walked out of the protecting walls of the S.
S. S. Y. L. without a chaperon; and that, thus alone and unprotected, they had
pressed into service a team of horses and an empty hay-wagon which they found on
a side street, and had actually taken a ride therein through the principal
street of the little towns to the consternation (when he saw them) of the old
farmer who owned the wagon, and to the still greater consternation (when she
heard of it) of Miss Scidmore.
"Why," continued that lady in impassioned tones, "have you thus forgotten what
is due to yourself and your family?"
"I am sure I don't know, Miss Scidmore," Katherine had replied with honest
contrition; "IЧ I just did it!" By which it will be seen that this young lady of
high birth was, on occasion, as much the sport of freakish impulse as Katie
O'Flarity, the daughter of the gardener at Brayton manor. All this by way of
explanationЧ though it is in no sense an excuse for what is to follow.
The day was warm, as has been intimated, and the claims of "The Scarlet Doom" on
the interest of the reader wavered after a little. Historical novels, dealing
with the sanguinary past from a cold-blooded American standpoint, were decidedly
out of placeЧ thought this sapient young personЧ amid the fresh breezy wilds of
the Adirondacks. She dropped the book, to fix her undivided attention upon the