Five Little Peppers Abroad, Margaret Sidney [best classic books to read TXT] 📗

it seems to stick right into the blue sky, and there are lots and lots of other mountains - oh, awfully high, - and the sun shines up there a good deal, and it's too perfectly lovely for anything, Phronsie Pepper."

"Then I want to go," decided Phronsie. "I do so want to see that white needle, Polly."

"Well, eat your breakfast," said Polly, "because you know we all have ever so much to do to-day to get off."

"Yes, I will," declared Phronsie, attacking her cold chicken and roll with great vigour.

"It seems as if the whole world were at Zermatt," said the parson, looking out from the big piazza crowded with the hotel people, out to the road in front, with every imaginable tourist passing and repassing. Donkeys were being driven up, either loaded down to their utmost with heavy bags and trunks, or else waiting to receive on their patient backs the heavier people. Phronsie never could see the poor animals, without such distress coming in her face that every one in the party considered it his or her bounden duty to comfort and reassure her. So this time it was Tom's turn to do so.

"Oh, don't you worry," he said, looking down into her troubled little face where he sat on the piazza railing swinging his long legs, "they like it, those donkeys do!"

"Do they?" asked Phronsie, doubtfully.

"Yes, indeed," said Tom, with a gusto, as if he wished he were a donkey, and in just that very spot, "it gives them a chance to see things, and to hear things, too, don't you know?" went on Tom, at his wits' end to know how he was going to come out of his sentences.

"Oh," said Phronsie, yet she sighed as she saw the extremely fat person just being hauled up to a position on a very small donkey's back.

"You see, if they don't like it," said Tom, digging his knife savagely into the railing, "they have a chance to kick up their heels and unsettle that heavy party."

"O dear me!" exclaimed Phronsie, in great distress, "that would hurt the poor woman, Tom."

"Well, it shows that the donkey likes it," said Tom, with a laugh, "because he doesn't kick up his heels."

"And so," ran on Tom, "why, we mustn't worry, you and I, if the donkey doesn't. Just think," - he made a fine diversion by pointing with his knife-blade up to the slender spire of the Matterhorn - "we're going up on a little jaunt to-morrow, to look into that fellow's face."

Phronsie got out of her chair to come and stand by his side. "I like that white needle," she said, with a gleeful smile. "Polly said it was nice, and I like it."

"I should say it was," declared Tom, with a bob of his head. "Phronsie, I'd give, I don't know what, if I could climb up there." He thrust his knife once more into the railing, where it stuck fast.

"Don't." begged Phronsie, her hand on his sleeve, "go up that big white needle, Tom."

"No, I won't; it's safe to promise that," he said grimly, with a little laugh. "Good reason why; because I can't. The little mother wouldn't sleep nights just to think of it, and I promised the granddaddy that I wouldn't so much as think of it, and here I am breaking my word; but I can't help it." He twitched his knife out suddenly, sprawled off from the railing, and took several hasty strides up and down the piazza.

"Well, that's all right, Phronsie," he said, coming back to get astride the railing again; this time he turned a cold shoulder on Phronsie's "white needle." "Now, to-morrow, we'll have no end of fun." And he launched forth on so many and so varied delights, that Phronsie's pleased little laugh rang out again and again, bringing rest to many a wearied traveller, tired with the sights, sounds, and scenes of a European journey.

"I wish we could stay at this nice place," said Phronsie, the next morning, poking her head out over the side of the car, as it climbed off from the Riffelalp station.

"Take care, child," said Grandpapa, with a restraining hand.

"You would want to stop at every place," said Polly, from the seat in front, with a gay little laugh. "And we never should get on at that rate. But then I am just as bad," she confessed.

"So am I," chimed in Jasper. "Dear me, how I wanted to get a chance to sketch some of those magnificent curves and rapids and falls in the Visp River coming up."

"Oh, that dear, delicious Visp River!" echoed Polly, while Adela began to bemoan that it was the best thing they had seen, and the car whizzed them by so fast, she couldn't do a thing - O dear!

"I got some snap-shots, but I don't believe they are good for anything," said Jasper, "just from the pure perversity of the thing."

"Take my advice," said Tom, lazily leaning forward, "and don't bother with a camera anyway."

"As if you expected any one to take up with such a piece of advice," ejaculated Jasper, in high disdain. "Say something better than that, Tom, if you want to be heard."

"Oh, I don't expect to be heard, or listened to in the slightest," he said calmly. "Anybody who will trot round with a kodak hanging to his neck by a villanous strap - can't be - "

"Who's got a villanous strap hanging to his neck?" cried Jasper, while the rest shouted as he picked at the fern-box thus hanging to Tom.

"Oh, that's quite a different thing," declared Tom, his face growing red.

"I know; one is a kodak, and the other is a fern-box," said Jasper, nodding. "I acknowledge they are different," and they all burst out laughing again.

"Well, at least," said Tom, joining in the laugh, "you must acknowledge, too, that I go off by myself and pick up my wild flowers and green things, and I'm not bothering round focussing every living thing and pointing my little machine at every freak in nature that I see."

"All right," said Jasper, good-naturedly, "but you have the strap round your neck all the same, Tom."

And Phronsie wanted to stay at the Riffelberg just as much; and old Mr. King was on the point of saying, "Well, we'll come up here for a few days, Phronsie," when he remembered Mrs. Selwyn and her boy, and how they must get on. Instead, he cleared his throat, and said, "We shall see it after dinner, child," and Phronsie smiled, well contented.

But when she reached the Corner Grat station, and took Grandpapa's hand, and began to ascend the bridle path to the hotel, she couldn't contain herself, and screamed right out, "Oh, Grandpapa, I'd rather stay here."

"It is beautiful, isn't it?" echoed old Mr. King, feeling twenty years younger since he started on his travels. "Well, well, child, I'm glad you like it," looking down into her beaming little face.

"You are very much to be envied, sir. I can't help speaking to you and telling you so," said a tall, sober-looking gentleman, evidently an English curate off on his vacation, as he caught up with him on the ascent, where they had paused at one of the look-offs, "for having that child as company, and those other young people."

"You say the truth," replied old Mr. King, cordially; "from the depths of my heart I pity any one who hasn't some children to take along when going abroad. But then they wouldn't be little Peppers," he added, under his breath, as he bowed and turned back to the view.

"There's dear Monte Rosa," cried Polly, enthusiastically. "Oh, I just love her."

"And there's Castor and Pollux," said Jasper.

"And there's the whole of them," said Tom, disposing of the entire range with a sweep of his hand. "Dear me, what a lot there are, to be sure. It quite tires one."

"Oh, anybody but a cold-blooded Englishman!" exclaimed Jasper, with a mischievous glance, "to travel with."

"Anything on earth but a gushing American!" retorted Tom, "to go round the world with."

"I wish I could sketch a glacier," bemoaned Adela, stopping every minute or two, as they wound around the bridle path, "but I can't; I've tried ever so many times."

"Wait till we get to the Mer de Glace ," advised Tom. "You can sit down in the middle of it, and sketch away all you want to."

"Well, I'm going to," said Adela, with sudden determination. "I don't care; you can all laugh if you want to."

"You can sketch us all," suggested Jasper, "for we shall have horrible old stockings on."

"I sha'n't have horrible old stockings on," said Adela, in a dudgeon, sticking out her foot. "I wear just the same stockings that I do at home, at school in Paris, and they are quite nice."

"Oh, I mean you'll have to put on coarse woollen ones that the peasant women knit on purpose, - we all shall have to do the same, on over our shoes," explained Jasper.

"O dear me!" cried Adela, in dismay.

"And I think we shall slip and slide a great deal worse with those things tied on our feet, than to go without any," said Polly, wrinkling up her brows at the idea.

"'Twouldn't be safe to go without them," said Jasper, shaking his head, "unless we had nails driven in our shoes."

"I'd much rather have the nails," cried Polly, "oh, much rather, Jasper."

"Well, we'll see what father is going to let us do," said Jasper.

"Wasn't that fun snowballing - just think - in July," cried Polly, craning her neck to look back down the path toward the Riffelberg station.

"Did you pick up some of that snow?" asked Adela.

"Didn't we, though!" exclaimed Jasper. "I got quite a good bit in my fist."

"My ball was such a little bit of a one," mourned Polly; "I scraped up all I could, but it wasn't much."

"Well, it did good execution," said Tom; "I got it in my eye."

"Oh, did it hurt you?" cried Polly, in distress, running across the path to walk by his side.

"Not a bit," said Tom. "I tried to find some to pay you back, and then we had to fly for the cars."

The plain, quiet face under the English bonnet turned to Mrs. Fisher as they walked up the path together. "I cannot begin to tell you what gratitude I am under to you," said Tom's mother, "and to all of you. When I think of my father, I am full of thankfulness. When I look at my boy, the goodness of God just overcomes me in leading me to your party. May I tell you of ourselves some time, when a good opportunity offers for a quiet talk?"

"I'd like nothing better," said Mother Fisher, heartily. "If there is one person I like more than another, who isn't of our family, or any of our home friends, it's Mrs. Selwyn," she had confided to the little doctor just a few days before. "She hasn't any nonsense about her, if she is an earl's daughter."

"Earl's daughter," sniffed the little doctor, trying to slip a collar button into a refractory binding. "Dear me, now that's gone - no, 'tisn't - that's luck," as the button rolled off into a