tes; and had gone round and come up on the edge
of the broken embankment, which we were following along to where it
sloped down safely again,--when, just at the very middle and highest
and most impossible point, down sat Miss Elizabeth among the stones,
and declared she could neither go back nor forward. She had been
frightened to death all the way, and now her head was quite gone. "No;
nothing should persuade her; she never could get up on her feet again
in that dreadful place." She laughed in the midst of it; but she was
really frightened, and there she sat; Dakie went to her, and tried to
help her up, and lead her on; but she would not be helped. "What would
come of it?" "She didn't know; she supposed that was the end of her;
_she_ couldn't do anything." "But, dear Miss Pennington," says Dakie,
"are you going to break short off with life, right here, and make a
Lady Simon Stylites of yourself?" "For all she knew; she never could
get down." I think we must have been there, waiting and coaxing,
nearly half an hour, before she began to _hitch_ along; for walk she
wouldn't, and she didn't. She had on a black Ernani dress, and a nice
silk underskirt; and as she lifted herself along with her hands, hoist
after hoist sidewise, of course the thin stuff dragged on the rocks
and began to go to pieces. By the time she came to where she could
stand, she was a rebus of the Coliseum,--"a noble wreck in ruinous
perfection." She just had to tear off the long tatters, and roll them
up in a bunch, and fling them over into a hollow, and throw the two or
three breadths that were left over her arm, and walk home in her silk
petticoat, itself much the sufferer from dust and fray, though we did
all we could for her with pocket-handkerchiefs.

"What _has_ happened to Miss Pennington?" said Mrs. General M----, as
we came up on the piazza.

"Nothing," said Dakie, quite composed and proper, "only she got tired
and sat down; and it was dusty,--that was all." He bowed and went off,
without so much as a glance of secret understanding.

"A joke has as many lives as a cat, here," he told Pen and me,
afterwards, "and that was _too_ good not to keep to ourselves."

Dear little mother and girls,--I have told stories and described
describes, and all to crowd out and leave to the last corner _such_ a
thing that Dakie Thayne wants to do! We got to talking about Westover
and last summer, and the pleasant old place, and all; and I couldn't
help telling