“Our friend, Lizzie Davis, brought it,” their chaperon answered with a smile, in response to the girls’ curious questions.  “Also some fresh butter and eggs, I have an idea,” she added, as she got up to refill the butter plate, “that we shall live on the fat of the land while we are here.”

“Lizzie Davis,” repeated Betty, pausing in the act of filling her glass with fresh milk and regarding Mrs. Irving with dancing eyes.  “Tell me, chaperon dear, Didn’t she have nice red cheeks, and wasn’t she delightfully plump?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Irving, smiling at Betty’s flushed prettiness.  “She was all of that, my dear.  I don’t believe I ever saw a more cozy looking person in my life.”

“I knew it!” cried Betty triumphantly, adding with a suspicious eye on Grace:  “Hand over that plate of toast, Gracie.  You needn’t think you can eat it all up!”

After breakfast they sallied forth to “view the country o’er.”  They would have stayed and helped Mrs. Irving clear up, but that good woman declared that she could do better by herself on this first morning.  After she had become better acquainted with the place they could help her all they liked.  Finally, after some protest, they had to let her have her way.

As they stepped out on the porch, Betty paused and held up her hand for silence.

“Listen,” she said.  “That murmuring sound and the splash of water——­”

“It’s the river and the falls,” explained Mollie.  “Let’s go down and have a look at them.”

But Amy, giving a little gasp of delight, fairly tumbled down the steps and into a riot of gorgeous pink wild roses.  The lodge was fairly surrounded by them.

“Oh, you darlings!” cried Amy, putting both arms around a bush of the fragrant flowers as though she would gather in all their beauty at once.  “I never saw anything so wonderful in all my life!  Oh, girls, I’m glad I came!”

CHAPTER XVI

 The whirlpool

All the spirit and joy of the woods seemed to have entered into the Outdoor Girls.  For the next half hour they romped in the woods and the beautiful flowers for all the world like little children whose first glimpse it was of the country.

They took down their hair and made wreaths of wild roses for crowns, and when, faces flushed with exercise and fun, they had finished, one might easily have mistaken them for real fairies come to life.

“But I want to see the river,” Betty called to them, stopping once more to listen to the rhythmic sound of splashing water.  “Come on, girls.  It can’t be more than a few hundred feet away, even though we can’t see it for the bushes.  Lead on, Mollie Billette, I wouldst hie me hence.”

But when Mollie laughingly obeyed and started into the woods, Amy held back.

“What’s the matter?” Grace asked, turning to her curiously.

“I—­ I was just thinking,” stammered Amy, ashamed of her own weakness, “about last night.”