She's after asking me now if Queens ever run
away!" To Polly's remorseful confusion here her good father, equally
proud of her precocious interest and his own knowledge, at once
interfered with an unintelligible account of the abdication of various
queens in history until Polly's head ached again. Well meant as it was,
it only settled in the child's mind that she must keep the awful secret
to herself and that no one could understand her.
The eventful day dawned without any unusual sign of importance. It was
one of the cloudless summer days of the Californian foothills, bright,
dry, and, as the morning advanced, hot in the white sunshine. The
actual, prosaic house in which the Pirates apparently lived was a mile
from a mining settlement on a beautiful ridge of pine woods sloping
gently towards a valley on the one side, and on the other falling
abruptly into a dark deep olive gulf of pine-trees, rocks, and patches
of red soil. Beautiful as the slope was, looking over to the distant
snow peaks which seemed to be in another world than theirs, the children
found a greater attraction in the fascinating depths of a mysterious
gulf, or canyon, as it was called, whose very name filled their ears
with a weird music.
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