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Velvety and beautiful as was the moss surrounding this pond, it was nevertheless too damp to form an acceptable couch for a human being, unless that human being were brave enough to risk the rheumatic inconveniences which followed Rip Van Winkle's long sleep in these very regions, so Dorothy always carried with her from the hotel a feather-weight, spider's-web hammock, which she deftly slung between two saplings, their light suppleness giving an almost pneumatic effect to this fairy net spread in a fairy glen; and here the young woman swayed luxuriously in the relaxing delights of an indolence still too new to have become commonplace or wearisome.

Alton had not plucked it all, and the golden apples and velvety peaches lay with their soft tinting enhanced amidst the leaves. When he came in, bright of eye and apparently glowing from a plunge in the river, she glanced at him with quiet amusement. "You have been improving the place wonderfully," she said.

On the velvety sward, which last summer showed so rich a green, the children are racing up and down, Dick's cheeks glowing like the scarlet foliage he treads beneath his feet, and Nina's fair hair tossing in the autumn wind, which seems to blow less rudely on the little girl than on her stronger older brother.

There is the loud and cheerful, if not shrill, bleating of the soprano, the strenuous booming of the bass, the velvety softness and depth of the contralto and the thin high tenor. Hordes of the alert, sharp-featured, far-leaping grass frog represent the chorus, and they have a perfectly rehearsed theme.

But I very soon realized how impossible it was. In that black, velvety darkness one lost all one's bearings in an instant. Before I had made a dozen paces, I was utterly bewildered as to my whereabouts. The rippling of the stream, which was the one sound audible, showed me where it lay, but the moment that I left its bank I was utterly lost.

Then raising their heads ran their velvety lips over her cheeks with as gentle, caressing a touch as a little child's fingers could have given, all the time voicing the soft, bubbling whinney of a trustful, happy horse. Peggy reached an arm about each satiny head. After a moment she said: "Attention!" Back started both horses to stand as rigid as statues. "Salute Mrs. Vincent."

I haven't half thanked you," she pleads, still pressing the podgy little bejewelled paw upon the heaving corsage. Then she sinks, with an air of graceful languor, down upon a long, prostrate monolith of granite, that is thickly crusted with velvety orange lichen and grey-green moss, starred with infinitesimal yellow flowers.

The colors lavished on the plumage would alone make the Birds of Paradise the wonder of the world; exquisite tints not surpassed by the humming-birds themselves, and of almost infinite variety, from the richest velvety purple to the gorgeous metallic greens, blues, and yellows, changing with every motion, and glittering in the sun like gems.

The head, covered with short velvety feathers, which advance on the chic much further than on the upper part of the beak, is of a purplish bronze colour; the whole of the back and shoulders is rich bronzy green, while the closed wings and tail are of the most brilliant violet purple, all the plumage having a delicate silky gloss.

The days shortened. Through the long evenings Hollister's house became a sort of social center. Lawanne would come in after supper, sometimes inert, dumb, to sit in a corner smoking a pipe, again filled with a curious exhilaration, to talk unceasingly of everything that came into his mind, to thump ragtime on the piano and sing a variety of inconsequential songs in a velvety baritone.