"You don't grasp the big theory at all. This is not to be an excursion, it's an exploring expedition. We're not a couple of tourists out for winter sports and chilblains on our toes. We're pioneers. We're going forth to rediscover the old Christmas spirit that's sane and simple and friendly. If there is a neighborhood left anywhere in this country where the children still believe in Santa Claus we're going to find it. And we'll bring the word back when we come home and next year thousands of others will follow our examples, and generations yet unborn will rise up and bless us as benefactors of the human race. I shouldn't be surprised if they put up monuments to us in the market-place." "You might as well be serious about it. And not quite so oratorical." "I am serious about it--I was never more serious in my life. Beneath this care-free exterior a great and palpitating but practical idea has sprouted to life." "Well, since you're so practical, kindly sprout the name of the spot where we're to spend Christmas. I'm perfectly willing to try anything once, even against my better judgment, but you can't expect me to get on a train with you without at least a general notion as to the name of the station where we get off." Mr. Bugbee's brow furrowed; then magically it unwrinkled. "I have it!" he said. "We'll take the Rousseau cottage up at Pleasant Cove. The Rousseaus are sailing next Tuesday for Europe to be gone until spring. Only yesterday Rousseau offered me the use of his camp any time I wanted it and for as long as I pleased. I'll see him tomorrow and ask him to notify his caretaker that we'll be along about the second week in December." "But it's eight miles from the railroad." Her tone was dubious. "So much the better. I wish it was eighty miles from one." "And right in the middle of the mountains." "You bet it is. I want to be right in the heart of the everlasting peaks. I hope to get snowed in. I crave an old-fashioned white Christmas. I'm fed up on these spangled green, blue, red, pink, purple and blind ones. I want to mingle with hardy kindly souls who have absorbed within them the majesty and the nobility of their own towering hills. I want to meet a few of the real rugged American types once more. I'm weary of these foreigners you see in the subway reading newspapers which seem to be made up exclusively of typographical errors. I yearn to hear the idioms of my native tongue spoken. You remember that gorgeous week we spent with the Rousseaus six summers ago, or was it seven? Anyhow you must remember it--those quaint ruralists, those straightforward sturdy honest old mountaineer types, those characters redolent of the soil, those laughing rosy-cheeked children?" "I seem to recall that some of them were sallow, not to say sickly-looking." "December's winds will remedy that. December's eager winds will--" "How about servants? We'll need somebody surely. And I doubt whether Emile and Eva would be willing to go."