We brushed our way down through the meadows, and father went straight to
the place where the Grass of Parnassus had been growing when he was a
boy. It was growing there still--and thriving too. We called on a big
bumble-bee, of the kind that has its stinging end very blunt and red. It
was not at home, but the hole in the bank which it had occupied thirty
years ago was now let to a Rabbit family, the younger members of which
scuttled away at our approach, though without too much alarm. We could
see their tails bobbing among the ferns and undergrowth. And then we
came to the Stepping-Stones. It was ten years since I had seen them, and
then I was quite a little girl. But I remembered everything at once,
even to the small starry green plants that grew beneath the water, and
the sharp stones that get between your toes when you wade too far out.
The woods were as green and as solitary as ever--cool too, and all the
opposite ground elastic with pine-needles that were not nearly so
uncomfortable for the bare feet as you would suppose. We waded for quite
a long time, and then sat and ate our lunch on the big middle bowlder,
alternately dabbling our feet in the clear olive-green water and drying
them in the sunshine. Father told stories. No, I don't mean that he made
them up--only that, as is usual at such times, all sorts of funny
memories went and came in his head--all of the people about whom he told
them as completely passed away as the orange-trousered bee we had gone
so vainly out of our way to seek.
Then we went to the little farmhouse up the loaning, where they took us
for ordinary tourists, and pointed out to us the sights. More than once
I glanced at father, but he had so grave a face that the kind and pretty
girl who showed us over evidently took him for a very severe critic of
his own books, an enemy of dialect in any form. So, ceasing her legends,
she offered us refreshments instead. After that we tramped away over the
"Craigs" and the heather by the very little path along which father used
to go his three-and-a-half miles along the lochside to school. I saw the
Truant's Bathing-Place, the Far-Away-Turn, the Silver Mine (where once
on a time father had found half-a-crown, and dreamed of it for years),
and the Bogle Thorn, now sadly worn away since the days of the "Little
Green Man." After that I kept on asking questions till we got to
Laurieston, when I stopped, not because I had finished, but because tea
was waiting for us. They called us names, and said that they had eaten
up all the good things. But father answered, laughing, that it was
written that man should not live by bread alone, and that what he had
seen that day ought to suffice any one. But really I did not see that it
made any difference to his appetite, and, for all they said, there were
plenty of nice things left for us.
Then we came to Castle Douglas, and what I remember best is the big
courtyard of the hotel, the noise and rattle of horses' hoofs passing
through the narrow entry on to the street, the kind people who welcomed
us, and the home-like air of everything about the "Douglas Arms," which
I never have seen about an hotel before, though I had been in many.
Our journey was done. So it was quite proper that things should begin to
look a bit home-like. We had quite a nice homecoming. Cissy Carter met
us at the station in a pretty dark-blue dress, smartly belted in at the
waist, but with some flour on her right shoulder. And when I asked her
what she had been doing to herself, she answered in a matter-of-course
tone, "Oh, only helping Elizabeth!"
"What Elizabeth?" I had the strength to gasp.
"Why, Elizabeth Fortinbras, of course," she answered, quite sharply for
her; "whom else?" And this proved to me that the world had not been
standing still in Edam while we were whirling through Father's Country
at the tails of Jim's spanking chestnuts! I asked how about the pride of
all the Davenant Carters, and if her father knew that his only daughter
was assisting in a sweet-shop. Cissy held up her rounded chin with a
pout that made me at least almost forget our noble family motto: "WE DO
NOT KISS AT STATIONS!"
"I did not say that I was in the _shop_," said Cissy. "I am learning how
to make pastry rise till it is flake-light. And even you, Miss Priscilla
Picton Smith, could not do that without getting flour on your shoulder!"
* * * * *
Now I would quite well like to stop here, and, indeed, I could easily
do so. For a Diary, however dear, is not like any other book. When you
finish one year's doings, you just get another ruled book and start with
January First again. Only it is explained to me that I must not quite do
that. At any rate I must absolutely tell what became of my characters!
Now this is awfully funny. For, quite different from all the other
story-books I ever read--nothing at all happened to any of them. Cissy
is not married. No more is Elizabeth Fortinbras. No more, thank
goodness, am I. Hugh John can't be--not for a long time yet. As for
Toady Lion, he upholds the honor of his country (and of the Benbow
Dormitory) by not being sick on the stormiest seas--a thing which none
of the rest of the family would even attempt.
But there is one thing that I must tell. It is just as well that I wrote
down all about Torres Vedras, and the woods, and everything. For--sad it
is to tell it--strange children dig and play there now. All our old
beloved names for places and things and people would soon have been lost
if they had not been written down in this book. We have set up a new
home on the other side of the Edam Valley, and in some ways it is nicer.
But in others it can never have the charm of the "Wampage," the
"Scrubbery," the Low Park where the three bridges are, the Feudal Tower,
and Picnicville, up among the Sentinel Pines! They make one's heart
warm--only just the names of them said low in the heart, but now never
spoken out loud by the tongue!
Our new house is on a hill, and not in the howe of a valley. From the
front door (and almost from every window) we can see woods and fields,
and far-away cows that are no bigger than ants. Then on the hills beyond
are sheep that you cannot see at all without one of father's big
glasses, such as only the boys can use. Beyond those, again, there are
the mountains that run right away down into England in wave after purple
wave, each bending over a tiny bit as if it were real water just on the
point of breaking. Eastward and southward there are "Pens" and "Muirs"
and "Cairns" without number, and out of the window on clear mornings, as
I lie in bed, I can watch the tasseled larch and white-stemmed birch
sending scaling-parties up every ravine and watercourse, while the big
white clouds, hump-backed ones, sail majestically over all.