l.
Mary wore her substantial tailor-gown of olive tweed, and a little toque
to match, with a silver mounted grouse-claw for her only ornament.

It was a delicious morning, the air fresh and sweet, the sun comfortably
warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the
narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly
upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and
tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank
grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a
stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest labour from their foreheads;
and here Maulevrier flung himself down upon a big boulder, with the
soles of his stout shooting boots in running water, and took out his
cigar case.

'How do you like it?' he asked his friend, when he had lighted his
cigarette. 'I hope you are enjoying yourself.'

'I never was happier in my life,' answered Hammond.

He was standing on higher ground, with Mary at his elbow, pointing out
and expatiating upon the details of the prospect. There were the
lakes--Grasmere, a disk of shining blue; Rydal, a patch of silver; and
Windermere winding amidst a labyrinth of wooded hills.

'Aren't you tired?' asked Maulevrier.

'Not a whit.'

'Oh, I forgot you had done Cotapaxi, or as much of Cotapaxi as living
mortal ever has done. That makes a difference. I am going home.'

'Oh, Maulevrier!' exclaimed Mary, piteously.

'I am going home. You two can go to the top. You are both hardened
mountaineers, and I am not in it with either of you. When I rashly
consented to a pedestrian ascent of Helvellyn I had forgotten what the
gentleman was like; and as to Dolly Waggon I had actually forgotten her
existence. But now I see the lady--as steep as the side of a house, and
as stony--no, naught but herself can be her parallel in stoniness. No,
Molly, I will go no further.'

'But we shall go down on the other side,' urged Mary. 'It is a little
steeper on the Cumberland side, but not nearly so far.'

'A little steeper! I Can anything be steeper than Dolly Waggon? Yes, you
are right. It is steeper on the Cumberland side. I remember coming down
a sheer descent, like an exaggerated sugar-loaf; but I was on a pony,
and it was the brute's look-out. I will not go down the Cumberland side
on my own legs. No, Molly, not even for you. But if you and Hammond want
to go to the top, there is nothing to prevent you. He i