Then we ate Mrs. Jacobus's biscuit,
light as Aurora's cloudlets, drank her honest coffee, inhaled the
perfume of the late azaleas with which she decked her table, and
decided to postpone our departure one more day. And then we wandered
out to take our morning glance at what we called "our view"; and it
seemed to us as if Tabb and Hoogencamp and Halkit and the Biggleses
could not drive us away in a year.
I was not surprised when, after breakfast, my wife invited the Bredes
to walk with us to "our view." The Hoogencamp-Biggle-Tabb-Halkit
contingent never stirred off Jacobus's veranda; but we both felt that
the Bredes would not profane that sacred scene. We strolled slowly
across the fields, passed through the little belt of woods and, as I
heard Mrs. Brede's little cry of startled rapture, I motioned to Brede
to look up.
"By Jove!" he cried, "heavenly!"
We looked off from the brow of the mountain over fifteen miles of
billowing green, to where, far across a far stretch of pale blue lay a
dim purple line that we knew was Staten Island. Towns and villages lay
before us and under us; there were ridges and hills, uplands and
lowlands, woods and plains, all massed and mingled in that great
silent sea of sunlit green.
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