CHAPTER X
ON THE MOORS
'No sound by night but the winds which blow, No sound by day but the water's flow, And the wild bird's screaming note.'
In spite of the best resolutions for early rising, nobody woke with thesun after all, and that luminary had plenty of time to creep round andpeep in through the little window before Father sprang up from his bedof heather, and exclaiming that they were late, set the children to blowthe peats into life again while he took his morning bath in the lake.
Later on Peggy and Bobby followed his example. After sleeping all nightin their clothes the cool plunge in the clear water was delightfullyrefreshing, and they sat about like mermaids on the rocks, basking inthe sunshine, and watching a ring-ousel teaching her three big babies tofly, till Father called out that if they did not hurry up and come in atonce he should eat all the breakfast before they arrived.
It was real fun frying rashers of bacon over the fire, especially whenPeggy nearly upset the pan in her excitement, and Bobby absentmindedlysat upon the teapot, which he had put to keep warm among the peats. I amafraid poor Father had rather a distracting meal, but he cheerfully atethe smoky toast which the children provided, and did not even grumblewhen Peggy, by mistake, put six lumps of sugar into his tea.
'Rover and I must be off to work again this morning,' he said, taking ashepherd's crook that lay in a corner of the room, and calling the olddog from the fireside. 'You youngsters had better play about near thecottage. Don't go wandering all round the lake, or you'll get so tiredyou won't be able to walk home this afternoon.'
Left alone, the children began to busy themselves with what theAmericans call 'chores.' First of all the breakfast things had to becleared away, and carried down to the stream, but, to Peggy's dismay,the greasy bacon plates utterly refused to wash clean, however long theywere left to soak in the pool, and came up in the same smeary conditionin which she had put them in.
'Whatever shall we do with them? We can't leave them dirty like this,'she exclaimed, feeling as anxious for the credit of the establishment asany full-grown housekeeper.
'Tilt them up in a row against the cottage wall, and pour a kettleful ofboiling water over them,' said practical Bobby, who generally had somesuggestion to offer.
I do not know what Nancy would have thought of such a method of washingup, but it answered splendidly all the same, for the greasy waterdrained away into the grass, and the fresh breeze dried the plateswithout any need of a towel, and Peggy even managed to clean out thefrying-pan with the help of some fern-leaves and a wisp of grass, anachievement of which she felt quite proud.
'We can't make our beds,' she said, 'because there's nothing to make;but we'll pile the heather up with the rest of the peat in the chimneycorner, and it will do to light the fire with next time. I mean to askFather to bring us, now, whenever he comes up.'
They managed to construct a broom from some of the longest pieces ofheather, and swept the crumbs neatly out at the front-door; they hung upthe frying-pan, the kettle, and the bellows in their accustomed places,and stacked the cups and plates in the old box which served as acupboard.
'Doesn't it look nice?' said Peggy, gazing round with much satisfactionon their handiwork. 'If only we could stay up here a good long time we'dbring lots of things from home, and paint pictures for the walls, andput them in cork frames, and I really believe, if I tried, I could makeup one of those hearthrugs out of little scraps of cloth all pinched upand sewn on, like Nancy made last winter for her sister's weddingpresent.'
'Oh, bother the cottage!' said Bobby, who, boy-like, soon tired ofdomestic duties. 'Let's go out and look for whinberries; there ought tobe heaps of them round there by the lake.'
Peggy was more than willing, and relinquishing her schemes of householdimprovement to hunt up the milk-can as a handy receptacle, followed himout into the sunshine, to search among the heather for the littlelow-growing, red-leaved shrubs with their crop of small purple berries.
But the blackbirds and the ring-ousels had been before them, so it tooka long time to fill the can, especially as a good deal of the fruitfound its way into the children's mouths, leaving them with such purplelips and stained fingers that they resembled the babes in the wood.
'I say, Peggy,' cried Bobby suddenly, stooping down to examine moreclosely the grassy bank where he was sitting, 'there's a whole swarm ofbees keeps coming in and out of this hole.'
Peggy came hurrying up in great excitement, tripping as usual over herdangling bootlace.
'It's a wild bees' nest; I expect the bank is full of honey. Oh,wouldn't it be fun to dig it out! I'm sure we could do it first-rate!'
'But won't they all go for us when we start laying into their hive?'
'We must smoke them out first, like the people do in the village whenthey only have those straw hives. We'll bring some dry heather and lighta fire, so that the smoke will send them to sleep, and then we can getthe honey as easy as anything. I remember just how Mrs. Davis does.'
Peggy spoke as if she knew all about it, though really she had neverseen any honey taken in her life, but she was a young lady who had muchconfidence in her own powers, and Bobby was so accustomed to follow herlead that he offered no further objections. They went back to thecottage for the matches and a supply of dry heather, which they arrangedin a circle round the nest.
'You stand ready with the matches,' commanded Peggy, 'and when I say"Now!" strike a light. Then, as the smoke goes up, I shall poke a stickinto the hole, and you'll see they'll all fly out and tumble downasleep.'
Obedient Bobby stood at attention, match in hand.
'Now!' cried Peggy breathlessly.
Up went the smoke, the heather catching fire at once, in went the stick,and out came the bees in an angry swarm; but something had gone wrong inthe calculations, for instead of falling stupefied on to the grass,they flew unharmed through the smoke, and fell upon their tormentorswith a buzz of indignation.
Away fled the children, racing over the moor as if the furies were attheir heels. They were both capital runners, having had plenty ofpractice at cricket and rounders, but I do not think they ever ran sofast in their lives as when they were chased by the bees.
They had just reached the side of a little incline when Peggy'sbootlace, which she had neglected to fasten all the morning, tripped herup, and over she went, rolling into a prickly gorse-bush, while Bobby,who was so close behind that he could not stop himself, fell over her,and collapsed into a boggy hollow, where he lay panting for breath untilPeggy picked herself up and hauled him out.
'Oh, you _are_ in a mess!' she cried, trying to wipe the mud off hiscoat with her pocket-handkerchief, and getting almost as grimy as he wasin the process.
'I'm half stinged up!' moaned poor Bobby. 'I've a great place on mycheek, and just look at my hands!' stretching out the wounded membersfor sympathy.
'They've stung me all round the back of my neck,' said Peggy. 'I expectit'll hurt ever so when it begins to swell. We'd best go and bathe theplaces in the lake.'
The water relieved the smart considerably, and Peggy, happilyremembering she had a parcel of biscuits in her pockets, pulled them outand suggested some lunch, for Bobby was looking doleful and injured, andinclined to cast aspersions upon her knowledge of bee-keeping.
There were three apiece, all thick arrow-root ones, and I grieve to saythis ill-behaved pair had a competition as to which could finish themthe quickest. Dry biscuits are choky things, and it is not very easy toeat three off on end, in record time, without drinking.
'I've won!' declared Bobby in triumph, hurriedly swallowing the lastmorsel, and scooping up a delicious draught of water to wash it down.
'Yes; but you simply bolted your last. You want Miss Wilkins here toteach you manners. What a dear little fat dot she was! I wish we couldcome across her again.'
'She's gone home. I saw her the day before yesterday in a carriage, witha lady and gentleman and a lot of boxes, and Mrs. Price at thepost-office said she
had heard Sir Somebody Wilkins was a very greatartist in London, and had pictures in the Royal Something-or-other,'explained Bobby lucidly.
'Was it the Royal Academy?'
'I believe it was; but I thought an academy meant a school.'
'So it does sometimes, but I know the Academy is a place where people goto see pictures, because Maud Middleton told me she had her portraitthere last year. Talking of Maud, we have never seen anything of Mr.Neville since that party. I wish he would come over to Gorswen.'
'So do I; he was a stunning chap! He could bowl better than the captainof our eleven. Why don't Father and Aunt Helen write and ask him?'
'I don't know. I asked Aunt Helen, but she was so funny and queer overit, and wouldn't talk about him at all. I can't imagine why. Oh, Bobby,look what I've found! A clump of real white heather! Isn't that lucky?The first I've ever seen. I shall take it home for Aunt Helen; she'll beso pleased.'
'Joe says it means a wedding if you give it to anybody, and if you findit in three places you'll be married three times. No, I don't want tohunt for any, thank you! It's girls' stuff! I aren't going to botherwith marrying when I grow up; I mean to be a pirate, and live in a shipwith a black flag, and a lot of jolly fellows with pistols andcutlasses, and we'll overhaul every merchantman we see, and string thesailors up from the yard-arm!' and the future buccaneer swung his legsover the rock, and put on a cut-throat expression, strangely at variancewith his cherubic cast of countenance.
'Pooh! You're a silly little boy!' said Peggy scornfully, forgettingthat only last week she had regarded the adventures in 'Treasure Island'as the beau-ideal of earthly bliss. 'There are no such things as piratesnow, so you couldn't be one, and I believe you'd be scared of thepistols, too, if they were loaded!'
Much offended at these remarks, Bobby stalked away in such aggrievedmajesty that, as the best means to restore peace, Peggy suggested thatthey should walk on to a larger stream, which emptied itself into thelake about half a mile lower down. Luckily Bobby's ill-humours were of ashort-lived nature, and after a few minutes of cutting silence, hevolunteered the rather ambiguous remark that there were 'lots of thingsa fellow could do when he grew up, anyhow,' and was his smiling selfagain.
The new stream proved highly attractive. It was one of those noisy,rushing mountain torrents, brown with flowing over the peat, and full ofgreat moss-grown boulders, with smooth round stones between. There werefoaming cataracts here and there among the rocks, just like Niagara on asmall scale, and there were dear little quiet pools at the edges, wherethe still water was overhung by ferns and rushes, that shelteredcaddice-worms, and boat-flies, and whirligig water-beetles, and allsorts of other delights for the collection.
The children promptly pulled off their shoes and stockings and paddledin the brown water like a couple of ducks. Peggy tied her boots togetherby the laces, and putting her stockings inside, slung them over her backin true fisher-boy fashion, while she sat dabbling her feet in awaterfall, and watching Bobby's frantic efforts to catch a dragon-fly.
'Oh, Peg, come quick! I believe I have him under my hat!' shouted theenthusiastic collector, lying flat among the reeds on a grassy bank.
Peggy jumped up in a hurry, and splashed her way to the rescue, but thesmooth round stones were slippery, and seemed to slide away from underher feet. She gave a desperate clutch at a willow-stump on the bank tosave herself from falling, and somehow or other, in the struggle, herbootlace broke, and away went the boots, sailing gaily down the stream,over the waterfall and into the depths of the lake, before theirastonished owner had even realized their loss. Naturally, to secure thedragon-fly and pin him on Bobby's hat was the first consideration, andby the time the missing boots were thought of, they had utterlydisappeared, and though the children searched for fully half an hourdown the stream and on the bank of the lake, they were not to be found.
'I'm afraid it's no use,' said Peggy at last. 'They must have gone downinto a hole, or been washed right into the middle of the lake. Someonewill fish them out a few hundred years hence, and put them into a museumas great treasures. Well, it can't be helped. I suppose I shall have towalk home without them,' pretending to look as if she did not care,though really the prospect of a scolding from Father, and furtherexplanations with Aunt Helen on her return, made her somewhat uneasy.
With spirits slightly damped she wended her way back to the cottage,trying to think it did not hurt to walk on the scrubby heather-stems,and privately wondering whether Scotch children's toes were made ofdifferent material to her own.
Mr. Vaughan came home at one o'clock, having counted the sheep to hissatisfaction, and found none missing.
'I'm as hungry as a hunter,' he announced. 'We must eat up everythingthat's left; it won't do to carry anything back in our baskets. Is thekettle boiling? Come, Peggy, child, put on your shoes and stockings; youlook like the picture of an Irish peasant-girl.'
Peggy had certainly expected a lecture when she made the painfulconfession that her foot-gear was at the bottom of the lake, but, to hergreat relief, Father took it all as a joke, and laughed so heartily thathe quite forgot to scold her.
'But you can't walk eight miles home over a rough road with bare feet!'he exclaimed, the practical side of the question suddenly striking him,'and I certainly don't feel equal to carrying you. We must manage tomake you a pair of sandals of some kind. I suppose I shall have tosacrifice my shooting-gaiters;' and he divested himself of his leatherleggings with rueful reluctance. 'Now, put your foot down upon that, andI will draw a line round it; then, if I cut it out with my penknife itwill make quite a good sole--enough to save you from the stones, at anyrate.'
Peggy sat on the box while Father tied on the improvised sandals withher pocket-handkerchief and Bobby's. They were certainly ingenious,though hardly elegant, and it did not comfort her much to be told thatshe would be taken for a wounded soldier limping back from the wars;indeed, Father made such fun of her that she grew quite indignant, andbegan to think she would really rather have been scolded a little thanso very much laughed at.
Peggy never forgot that walk home. The sandals were anything butcomfortable, and her feet hurt dreadfully on the stones, while everygorse-bush she passed seemed to be stretching out spiky fingers toscratch her bare legs; she was tired after her morning's adventures onthe moors, and the eight miles seemed to lengthen out to an interminablevista, in spite of the way being downhill; sundry bumps and bruises,which she had never noticed at the time, began to ache now, and thebee-stings on her neck smarted, until she hardly knew how to bear thepain.
Poor Bobby was in scarcely better plight, and, to add to their misery, arain-cloud, blowing over from the west, broke on the mountain-top, anddrenched them almost to the skin. Mr. Vaughan was in such haste to gethome before post-time that he hurried them on, quite forgetting how muchshorter their legs were than his own, and he refused to listen to anyexcuses for sitting down and resting, which, considering their wetcondition, was perhaps just as well.
A more draggled and disreputable-looking pair of children it would havebeen impossible to find. Bobby's sailor-suit was all stained with mud,where he had fallen into the bog, and smears of the same material seemedto have distributed themselves over his chubby face. There were severalrents in his stockings, while the brim and crown of his straw hat hadparted company, showing his crop of brown curls through the gap between.As for Peggy, a young gipsy tramp would have looked more respectable,for the brown holland dress, which had started out stiff and cleanyesterday morning, was smeared with whinberry juice, black smudges fromthe kettle, and green stains from the mossy stones in the stream, andclung around her bare legs in damp, clammy folds, while the drenchingrain had reduced the poppies in her hat to a scarlet pulp, which drippeddown in crimson tears upon her cheek. The sun, shining out brilliantlyas they reached civilization once more, seemed to make the forlornplight of the wayfarers look worse than ever. If there had been anypossible way home, except through the village, I think Peggy would havebegged Father to take it
, and she wished that, like Lady Godiva, shecould have shut the people up in their cottages until she had passed by.
'I know they'll all stand and stare at my bare legs and queer sandals,'she groaned. 'Those horrid, rude Watkin boys are sure to see me, andcall names next time, when Father's not there, and Mrs. Price will comefussing out of the post-office to ask if there has been an accident; shealways wants to poke her nose into everything!'
The Watkin boys, however, were away, engaged in a raid for early applesin the orchards of long-suffering neighbours, while Mrs. Price wastaking tea in her back-parlour, and indulging in such spicy gossip withher particular friend Miss Jones that the children passed by unnoticed,and Peggy began to congratulate herself that they were almost out ofdanger.
But alas! things rarely happen as we expect in this world. They hadcrossed the bridge, and were turning away up the lane to the Abbey, whenthe sound of wheels was heard behind them, and, in the smart carriagewhich rolled by, whom should Peggy recognise but the supercilious facesand elegant costumes of Phyllis and Marjorie Norton. Her cup ofhumiliation was filled to the brim.
'And they knew me at once, I'm sure,' she lamented to Lilian afterwards,'for they both looked at each other, and Phyllis laughed in that horrid,sneering way she has. I know she'll tell the Middletons, and they'llthink it so queer. I don't much mind Marjorie, but of all people in thisworld I simply _detest_ Phyllis Norton!'