Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/96

 88 INTRODUCTION

tea, as we were looking out of the window, whom should we see but Mr. Randall ! I was very glad to see him, and jumped out of the house in pretty quick time. We all went up on the hill just behind the house and looked at the prospect, and then came down and had tea. We started to come home about an hour before sundown, and came by the Montserrat road, as it is called. While we were passing through Cow Lane, it rained harder than I ever saw it before, and right in our faces, too. Edwin and Mr. Randall were wet through to the skin, I in a less de- gree [because Mr. Randall shielded me all he could with his own coat]. Stanley crawled under the boot, and es- caped unhurt. When we got home, we changed our clothes, and did not take any cold in consequence of our wetting.

" Tuesday, June 10. When Mr. Randall came down here last Wednesday, he said that he only intended to stay three hours ; but he has extended his visit until the pres- ent time. Edwin went home yesterday, as his vacation ended on Monday, and so he went up early to go to school. To-day Mr. Randall proposed to go home, and after break- fast he said to me, * Come, Frank, let's take a little walk.' We went down to Bass River and walked along on the railroad, looking for flowers. On one bank, we found some very pretty lupines, and further on we found geraniums in plenty. As we were looking at the prospect, Mr, Ran- dall saw * Brown's Folly,' a hill two or three or four miles from Grandfather's house, and proposed a jaunt thither,

" I was glad to go, and so we set out. We stopped at Isabel's Island, a pretty spot with a pretty name, and here we found the Star-of-Bethlehem, and other flowers. Just beyond the mill we left the road and rambled over the fields, going here and there in search of flowers, of

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