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IN THE MIST OF THE MOUNTAINS




  +----------------------------+
  |                            |
  |    _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_    |
  |                            |
  | (Uniform with this volume) |
  |                            |
  | SEVEN LITTLE AUSTRALIANS   |
  | THE FAMILY AT MISRULE      |
  | THE LITTLE LARRIKIN        |
  | MISS BOBBIE                |
  | THE CAMP AT WANDINONG      |
  | THREE LITTLE MAIDS         |
  | THE STORY OF A BABY        |
  | LITTLE MOTHER MEG          |
  | BETTY AND CO.              |
  | MOTHER'S LITTLE GIRL       |
  | THE WHITE-ROOF TREE        |
  | THE STOLEN VOYAGE          |
  |                            |
  +----------------------------+




[Illustration: "'I'm so sorry, chickies,' she said kindly." (Page 19.)]




IN THE MIST OF
THE MOUNTAINS


By
ETHEL TURNER
(Mrs. H. R. Curlewis)

_Author of "Seven Little Australians," "The Little Larrikin,"
"Miss Bobbie," etc., etc._


ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. MACFARLANE


LONDON
WARD LOCK & CO. LIMITED
1908




  TO
  H. R. C.

   "They that have heard the overword
    Know life's a dream worth dreaming."
                               _Henley._




CONTENTS


    CHAP.                                                     PAGE
      I Somewhat Contagious                                      9
     II Treating of Larkin and his Commission                   23
    III Miss Bibby                                              31
     IV The Famous Novelist                                     43
      V Ante-prandial Visitors                                  55
     VI A Grocery Order                                         60
    VII Letters to a Mother                                     72
   VIII Across the Rubicon                                      87
     IX The Interview for the "Evening Mail"                    96
      X Anna enjoys Ill-health                                 112
     XI Miss Bibby's Holiday                                   126
    XII In Black and White                                     135
   XIII An Interview with the Interviewer                      144
    XIV The Literary Microbe                                   156
     XV "Out of the Mouths of Babes"                           170
    XVI Wooing the Muse                                        179
   XVII Literature is Low                                      190
  XVIII An Editing Pencil                                      197
    XIX Max Runs Amuck                                         205
     XX A Lesson in Discipline                                 216
    XXI In Print at last                                       227
   XXII A Master Mind                                          229
  XXIII The Picnic at the Falls                                243
   XXIV At the Second Fall                                     259




CHAPTER I

SOMEWHAT CONTAGIOUS


It is October and the mountains are waking from their short winter
sleep.

It is October, the month of the moving mists.

Come and let us take a walk, not down Fleet Street with Dr. Johnson, but
up a mountain side with Nature,--nay, with God Himself. There is nothing
to see, absolutely nothing at all. You know that there are trees on
either hand of you, and that the undergrowth is bursting into the stars
and delicate bells of its springtime bloom. But your knowledge of this
is merely one of the services your memory does for you, for the mist has
covered it all away from sight.

You look behind you and your world is blotted out.

You look in front of you,--nay, you cannot look in front of you, for the
mist lies as a veil, actually on your face.

"I breathed up a whole cloud this morning," Lynn remarked once.

"I eated one--and it was nasty," said Max.

Still you continue to look in front of you as far as may be.

And the next moment the veil lifts,--clean up over your head perhaps,
and you see it rolling away on the wind to one side of you, yards and
yards of flying white gossamer, its ragged edges catching in the trees.

And now your gaze leaps and lingers, and lingers and leaps for miles in
front of you. You look downward and the ball of the earth has split at
your feet and the huge fissure has widened and widened till a limitless
valley lies there. You look down hundreds of feet and see like sprouting
seedlings the tops of gum trees,--gum trees two hundred feet high.

The far side of the valley shows a rolling mountain chain washed in in
tender shades of purple, paling nearer at hand to blue, the tender
indescri