, Paul and
Elly had almost finished setting the table. Elly nodded a
country-child's silent greeting to the newcomers. Paul said, "Oh goody!
Mr. Welles, you sit by me."

Marise was pleased at the friendship growing up between the gentle old
man and her little boy.

"Elly, don't you want me to sit by you?" asked Marsh with a playful
accent.

Elly looked down at the plate she was setting on the table. "If you want
to," she said neutrally.

Her mother smiled inwardly. How amusingly Elly had acquired as only a
child could acquire an accent, the exact astringent, controlled brevity
of the mountain idiom.

"I think Elly means that she would like it very much, Mr. Marsh," she
said laughingly. "You'll soon learn to translate Vermontese into
ordinary talk, if you stay on here."

She herself went through the house into the kitchen and began placing
on the wheel-tray all the components of the lunch, telling them over to
herself to be sure she missed none. "Meat, macaroni, spinach, hot
plates, bread, butter, water . . . a pretty plain meal to invite city
people to share. Here, I'll open a bottle of olives. Paul, help me get
this through the door."

As he pulled at the other end of the wheeled tray, Paul said that Mark
had gone upstairs to wash his hands, ages ago, and was probably still
fooling around in the soap-suds, and like as not leaving the soap in the
water.

"Paul the responsible!" thought his mother. As they passed the foot of
the stairs she called up, "Mark! Come along, dear. Lunch is served. All
ready," she announced as they pushed the tray out on the porch.

The two men turned around from where they had been gazing up at the
mountain. "What is that great cliff of bare rock called?" asked Mr.
Marsh.

"Those are the Eagle Rocks," explained Marise, sitting down and
motioning them to their places. "Elly dear, don't spread it on your
bread so _thick_. If Mr. Bayweather were here he could probably tell you
why they are called that. I have known but I've forgotten. There's some
sort of tradition, I believe . . . no, I see you are getting ready to hear
it called the Maiden's Leap where the Indian girl leaped off to escape
an unwelcome lover. But it's not that this time: something or other
about Tories and an American spy . . . ask Mr. Bayweather."

"Heaven forfend!" exclaimed Mr. Marsh.

Marise was amused. "Oh, you've been lectured to on local history, I
see," she surmised.

"_I_ found it very interesting," s