.."
"What's the matter with these maples?" asked Fasten, abandoning himself
to the American idiom. "And where are there handsomer elms than right
here in Wisconsin? And what have you against those hills?" He thought of
the wide flatness of Essex; what would not Boxton Park give for a
foothold on such a shore, a prospect over such a sheet of rippling blue?
But Rosy had her own conception of Essex. In some miraculous way it
combined the sweetness of Devonshire, the fatness of Warwick, the
boldness of Westmorland, the severity of Cornwall. And through this
enchanting tract the fox-hounds ever sped in full, re-echoing cry.
Paston gave a sudden dig with his shingle, and a lump of damp sand fell
with a splash far out upon the water. "But, after all, it's dear old
England," he said, plaintively.
"The dearest land in all the world, I'm sure," sighed Rosy,
sympathetically. She dug her toe at a single tuft of coarse grass in the
midst of the sand, and wondered over his "after all."
"Indeed, it is. You would like it, I'm sure."
"I know I should. I shall never be happy until I've seen it."
"But think of me--four thousand miles away from it."
"I do," said Rosy, softly.
"We younger sons," sighed Paston, in a tone of great self-commiseration.
"We younger daughters," echoed Rosy, with an implication that all the
drawbacks were not on one side.
The rest of the party came flocking down to the shore; the Ingleses among
them--to see the others off.
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