CHAPTER X.
THE MYSTERY DEEPENS.
Ethel Thompson came over the next day, as she had promised, and the sweet-faced, gentle school-mistress won the hearts of Uncle John's three nieces without an effort.

She was the eldest of them all, but her retired country life had kept her fresh and natural, and Ethel seemed no more mature than the younger girls except in a certain gravity that early responsibility had thrust upon her.
Together the four laughing, light-hearted maids wandered through the pines, where the little school-ma'am showed them many pretty nooks and mossy banks that the others had not yet discovered.

By following an unsuspected path, they cut across the wooded hills to the waterfall, where Little Bill Creek made a plunge of twenty feet into a rocky basin below.

In spite of the bubbles, the water here showed clear as crystal, and the girls admiringly christened it the "Champagne Cup." They shed their shoes and stockings and waded in the pool, enjoying the sport with shrieks of merry laughter--more because they were happy than that there was anything to laugh at.
Afterward they traced the stream down to a lovely glade a half mile above Millville, where Ethel informed them the annual Sunday-school picnic was always held, and then trailed across the rocky plateau to the farm.

By the time they reached home their appetites were well sharpened for Mary's excellent luncheon, and the afternoon was devoted to rest under the shady pines that grew beside the house.
It was now, when they felt thoroughly acquainted and at ease in one another's society, that the girls indulged in talks concerning events in their past, and Ethel was greatly interested in the nieces' recital of their recent trip abroad with Uncle John.