'What a simpleton you are, Molly!' cried Maulevrier. 'Do you suppose because there is no frost in your grandmother's garden--and if you were to ask Staples about his peaches he would tell you a very different story--that there's a tropical atmosphere on Dolly Waggon Pike? Why, I'd wager the ice on Grisdale Tarn is thick enough for skating. Helvellyn won't run away, child. You and Hammond can dance the Highland Schottische on Striding Edge in June, if you like.' 'Mr. Hammond won't be here in June,' said Mary. 'Who knows?--the train service is pretty fair between London and Windermere. Hammond and I would think nothing of putting ourselves in the mail on a Friday night, and coming down to spend Saturday and Sunday with you--if you are good.' There came a sunny morning soon after Easter which seemed mild enough for June; and when Hammond suggested that this was the very day for Helvellyn, Maulevrier had not a word to say against the truth of that proposition. The weather had been exceptionally warm for the last week, and they had played tennis and sat in the garden just as if it had been actually summer. Patches of snow might still linger on the crests of the hills--but the approach to those bleak heights could hardly be glacial. Mary clasped her hands delightedly. 'Dear old Maulevrier!' she exclaimed, 'you are always good to me. And now I shall be able to show you the Red Tarn, the highest pool of water in England,' she said, turning to Hammond. 'And you will see Windermere winding like a silvery serpent between the hills, and Grasmere shining like a jewel in the depth of the valley, and the sea glittering like a line of white light between the edges of earth and heaven, and the dark Scotch hills like couchant lions far away to the north.' 'That is to say these things are all supposed to be on view from the top of the mountain; but as a peculiar and altogether exceptional state of the atmosphere is essential to their being seen, I need not tell you that they are rarely visible,' said Maulevrier. 'You are talking to old mountaineers, Molly. Hammond has done Cotapaxi and had his little clamber on the equatorial Andes, and I--well, child, I have done my Righi, and I have always found the boasted panorama enveloped in dense fog.' 'It won't be foggy to-day,' said Mary. 'Shall we do the whole thing on foot, or shall I order the ponies?' Mr. Hammond inquired the distance up and down, and being told that it involved only a matter of eight miles, decided upon walking. 'I'll walk, and lead your pony,' he said to Mary, but Mary declared herself quite capable of going on foot, so the ponies were dispensed with as a possible encumbrance.