dor. "I think I should like to see it as well as
anything else. I have not seen many waterfalls. I once saw the Falls of
the Black Fork of Cheat; and I saw the Natural Bridge. They are both in
Virginia. I do not know whether I should like Niagara or not."

"Would you like to go there. Suppose brother and myself were going to
Niagara and should ask you to go with us--would you be pleased to go?"

"I would as lief go as stay here or go anywhere else," said the singular
girl.

"I thought you might possibly have objections to going, because there is
so much company at Niagara, and because you have so lately lost your
grandfather--that is why I asked," explained Bell.

"I do not mind the company. They are nothing to me. I do not mourn for
my poor grandfather _aloud_. But you are very kind to think of me,"
answered the little enigma. And with that very unenthusiastic
endorsement of the Niagara project, Bell Crawford was compelled to
descend the stairs and make report of the event of her embassy. But the
result was held to be rather satisfactory than otherwise, and the
hastily-devised arrangements for Niagara went forward.

To pass rapidly over that movement, the manner of which does not in any
degree affect the progress of this narration, let it be said that on
Wednesday, the 9th of July, the two brothers, the sister and their
guest, with the proper array of the "great North River travelling-trunks"
and other baggage, took the steamer Daniel Drew for a sail by daylight
up the Hudson, as the mode of making half the journey least fatiguing to
the recovering invalid. That the three New Yorkers, to whom the scenery
of that noble river was thoroughly familiar, clapped hands and shouted
their joy once more, nearly all day, at the flashing blue of the river,
the rafts of steamboats, sloops and tows that continually came sweeping
down it, the rugged frowning of the Palisades, the narrow-passes and
rugged peaks of the Highlands, and the long, blue, uneven line of the
Cattskills, with the white glimmering of the Mountain House,--while the
young Virginian girl, introduced to that scenery for the first time in her
life, seemed to maintain her calmness and comparative insensibility. That
they rested for the night at Albany, out of respect to the comfort of the
invalid--John Crawford submitting under protest, and declaring Albany,
after Washington, the most unendurable "one-horse town" in the universe.
That they took the cars of the Ce