Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/236

 “The Lady seems not to be at home, Di.”

“No wonder. You forgot a very important part of the spell. Now watch me.” Thereupon that intrepid damsel stalked through the oozy moss to the very edge of the fountain, where, with clasped hands and “red eyes rolling” wildly about the glen, she muttered,—

“It is the place, the season, and the hour!”

Then, gravely removing the rubber boot from her right foot, balancing herself on the left, she bowed as impressively as could be expected from one in that stork-like attitude, thrice to the holly and thrice to the well, invoking the spirit in tones more awful than those of the ghost in “Hamlet,” using both verses of the charm to make all sure. Again we waited. Nothing was seen, nothing heard, save the hurrying waters of Deer Leap.

“By my knightly word, this is strange!” exclaimed the petitioner, drawing on her boot. “Though I bethink me now I should have brought hither me good steel blade, or, lacking that, should at least have waved a bulrush or a hazel wand.”

“If you’d like to try again, Di, and think a cedar—”

“Good gracious! Do you think I’d try to lure a wood maiden from her haunts with a spiked pole? Anyway, come to think about it, I don’t want her to appear, for now we have the freedom of her drawing-room, and can stare around to our hearts’ content.”

Mother Nature doesn’t mind us; she knows that we