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 the
sun after all, and that luminary had plenty of time to creep round and
peep in through the little window before Father sprang up from his bed
of heather, and exclaiming that they were late, set the children to blow
the peats into life again while he took his morning bath in the lake.
Later on Peggy and Bobby followed his example. After sleeping all night
in their clothes the cool plunge in the clear water was delightfully
refreshing, and they sat about like mermaids on the rocks, basking in
the sunshine, and watching a ring-ousel teaching her three big babies to
fly, till Father called out that if they did not hurry up and come in at
once he should eat all the breakfast before they arrived.
It was real fun frying rashers of bacon over the fire, especially when
Peggy nearly upset the pan in her excitement, and Bobby absentmindedly
sat upon the teapot, which he had put to keep warm among the peats. I am
afraid poor Father had rather a distracting meal, but he cheerfully ate
the smoky toast which the children provided, and did not even grumble
when 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 a
shepherd's crook that lay in a corner of the room, and calling the old
dog from the fireside. 'You youngsters had better play about near the
cottage. Don't go wandering all round the lake, or you'll get so tired
you won't be able to walk home this afternoon.'
Left alone, the children began to busy themselves with what the
Americans call 'chores.' First of all the breakfast things had to be
cleared away, and carried down to the stream, but, to Peggy's dismay,
the greasy bacon plates utterly refused to wash clean, however long they
were left to soak in the pool, and came up in the same smeary condition
in 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 as
any full-grown housekeeper.
'Tilt them up in a row against the cottage wall, and pour a kettleful of
boiling water over them,' said practical Bobby, who generally had some
suggestion to offer.
I do not know what Nancy would have thought of such a method of washing
up, but it answered splendidly all the same, for the greasy water
drained away into the grass, and the fresh breeze dried the plates
without any need of a towel, and Peggy even managed to clean out the
frying-pan with the help of some fern-leaves and a wisp of grass, an
achievement 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 chimney
corner, and it will do to light the fire with next time. I mean to ask
Father to bring us, now, whenever he comes up.'
They managed to construct a broom from some of the longest pieces of
heather, and swept the crumbs neatly out at the front-door; they hung up
the frying-pan, the kettle, and the bellows in their accustomed places,
and stacked the cups and plates in the old box which served as a
cupboard.
'Doesn't it look nice?' said Peggy, gazing round with much satisfaction
on their handiwork. 'If only we could stay up here a good long time we'd
bring lots of things from home, and paint pictures for the walls, and
put them in cork frames, and I really believe, if I tried, I could make
up one of those hearthrugs out of little scraps of cloth all pinched up
and sewn on, like Nancy made last winter for her sister's wedding
present.'
'Oh, bother the cottage!' said Bobby, who, boy-like, soon tired of
domestic duties. 'Let's go out and look for whinberries; there ought to
be heaps of them round there by the lake.'
Peggy was more than willing, and relinquishing her schemes of household
improvement to hunt up the milk-can as a handy receptacle, followed him
out into the sunshine, to search among the heather for the little
low-growing, red-leaved shrubs with their crop of small purple berries.
But the blackbirds and the ring-ousels had been before them, so it took
a long time to fill the can, especially as a good deal of the fruit
found its way into the children's mouths, leaving them with such purple
lips and stained fingers that they resembled the babes in the wood.
'I say, Peggy,' cried Bobby suddenly, stooping down to examine more
closely the grassy bank where he was sitting, 'there's a whole swarm of
bees keeps coming in and out of this hole.'
Peggy came hurrying up in great excitement, tripping as usual over her
dangling 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 when
they only have those straw hives. We'll bring some dry heather and light
a fire, so that the smoke will send them to sleep, and then we can get
the 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 never
seen any honey taken in her life, but she was a young lady who had much
confidence in her own powers, and Bobby was so accustomed to follow her
lead that he offered no further objections. They went back to the
cottage for the matches and a supply of dry heather, which they arranged
in 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 stick
into the hole, and you'll see they'll all fly out and tumble down
asleep.'
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 in
the calculations, for instead of falling stupefied on to the grass,
they flew unharmed through the smoke, and fell upon their tormentors
with a buzz of indignation.
Away fled the children, racing over the moor as if the furies were at
their heels. They were both capital runners, having had plenty of
practice at cricket and rounders, but I do not think they ever ran so
fast in their lives as when they were chased by the bees.
They had just reached the side of a little incline when Peggy's
bootlace, which she had neglected to fasten all the morning, tripped her
up, 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 until
Peggy picked herself up and hauled him out.
'Oh, you _are_ in a mess!' she cried, trying to wipe the mud off his
coat with her pocket-handkerchief, and getting almost as grimy as he was
in the process.
'I'm half stinged up!' moaned poor Bobby. 'I've a great place on my
cheek, and just look at my hands!' stretching out the wounded members
for sympathy.
'They've stung me all round the back of my neck,' said Peggy. 'I expect
it'll hurt ever so when it begins to swell. We'd best go and bathe the
places in the lake.'
The water relieved the smart considerably, and Peggy, happily
remembering she had a parcel of biscuits in her pockets, pulled them out
and suggested some lunch, for Bobby was looking doleful and injured, and
inclined to cast aspersions upon her knowledge of bee-keeping.
There were three apiece, all thick arrow-root ones, and I grieve to say
this ill-behaved pair had a competition as to which could finish them
the quickest. Dry biscuits are choky things, and it is not very easy to
eat three off on end, in record time, without drinking.
'I've won!' declared Bobby in triumph, hurriedly swallowing the last
morsel, and scooping up a delicious draught of water to wash it down.
'Yes; but you simply bolted your last. You want Miss Wilkins here to
teach you manners. What a dear little fat dot she was! I wish we could
come across her again.'
'She's gone home. I saw her the day before yesterday in a carriage, with
a lady and gentleman and a lot of boxes, and Mrs. Price at the
post-office said she had heard Sir Somebody Wilkins was a very great
artist 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 go
to see pictures, because Maud Middleton told me she had her portrait
there 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 captain
of 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 over
it, 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 be
so pleased.'
'Joe says it means a wedding if you give it to anybody, and if you find
it in three places you'll be married three times. No, I don't want to
hunt for any, thank you! It's girls' stuff! I aren't going to bother
with marrying when I grow up; I mean to be a pirate, and live in a ship
with a black flag, and a lot of jolly fellows with pistols and
cutlasses, and we'll overhaul every merchantman we see, and string the
sailors up from the yard-arm!' and the future buccaneer swung his legs
over the rock, and put on a cut-throat expression, strangely at variance
with his cherubic cast of countenance.
'Pooh! You're a silly little boy!' said Peggy scornfully, forgetting
that only last week she had regarded the adventures in 'Treasure Island'
as the beau-ideal of earthly bliss. 'There are no such things as pirates
now, so you couldn't be one, and I believe you'd be scared of the
pistols, too, if they were loaded!'
Much offended at these remarks, Bobby stalked away in such aggrieved
majesty that, as the best means to restore peace, Peggy suggested that
they should walk on to a larger stream, which emptied itself into the
lake about half a mile lower down. Luckily Bobby's ill-humours were of a
short-lived nature, and after a few minutes of cutting silence, he
volunteered the rather ambiguous remark that there were 'lots of things
a fellow could do when he grew up, anyhow,' and was his smiling self
again.
The new stream proved highly attractive. It was one of those noisy,
rushing mountain torrents, brown with flowing over the peat, and full of
great moss-grown boulders, with smooth round stones between. There were
foaming cataracts here and there among the rocks, just like Niagara on a
small scale, and there were dear little quiet pools at the edges, where
the still water was overhung by ferns and rushes, that sheltered
caddice-worms, and boat-flies, and whirligig water-beetles, and all
sorts of other delights for the collection.
The children promptly pulled off their shoes and stockings and paddled
in the brown water like a couple of ducks. Peggy tied her boots together
by the laces, and putting her stockings inside, slung them over her back
in true fisher-boy fashion, while she sat dabbling her feet in a
waterfall, and watching Bobby's frantic efforts to catch a dragon-fly.
'Oh, Peg, come quick! I believe I have him under my hat!' shouted the
enthusiastic collector, lying flat among the reeds on a grassy bank.
Peggy jumped up in a hurry, and splashed her way to the rescue, but the
smooth round stones were slippery, and seemed to slide away from under
her feet. She gave a desperate clutch at a willow-stump on the bank to
save herself from falling, and somehow or other, in the struggle, her
bootlace broke, and away went the boots, sailing gaily down the stream,
over the waterfall and into the depths of the lake, before their
astonished owner had even realized their loss. Naturally, to secure the
dragon-fly and pin him on Bobby's hat was the first consideration, and
by the time the missing boots were thought of, they had utterly
disappeared, and though the children searched for fully half an hour
down 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 down
into a hole, or been washed right into the middle of the lake. Someone
will fish them out a few hundred years hence, and put them into a museum
as great treasures. Well, it can't be helped. I suppose I shall have to
walk home without them,' pretending to look as if she did not care,
though really the prospect of a scolding from Father, and further
explanations 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 of
different material to her own.
Mr. Vaughan came home at one o'clock, having counted the sheep to his
satisfaction, and found none missing.
'I'm as hungry as a hunter,' he announced. 'We must eat up everything
that's left; it won't do to carry anything back in our baskets. Is the
kettle boiling? Come, Peggy, child, put on your shoes and stockings; you
look like the picture of an Irish peasant-girl.'
Peggy had certainly expected a lecture when she made the painful
confession that her foot-gear was at the bottom of the lake, but, to her
great relief, Father took it all as a joke, and laughed so heartily that
he 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 to
make you a pair of sandals of some kind. I suppose I shall have to
sacrifice my shooting-gaiters;' and he divested himself of his leather
leggings with rueful reluctance. 'Now, put your foot down upon that, and
I will draw a line round it; then, if I cut it out with my penknife it
will make quite a good sole--enough to save you from the stones, at any
rate.'
Peggy sat on the box while Father tied on the improvised sandals with
her pocket-handkerchief and Bobby's. They were certainly ingenious,
though hardly elegant, and it did not comfort her much to be told that
she would be taken for a wounded soldier limping back from the wars;
indeed, Father made such fun of her that she grew quite indignant, and
began to think she would really rather have been scolded a little than
so very much laughed at.
Peggy never forgot that walk home. The sandals were anything but
comfortable, and her feet hurt dreadfully on the stones, while every
gorse-bush she passed seemed to be stretching out spiky fingers to
scratch her bare legs; she was tired after her morning's adventures on
the moors, and the eight miles seemed to lengthen out to an interminable
vista, in spite of the way being downhill; sundry bumps and bruises,
which she had never noticed at the time, began to ache now, and the
bee-stings on her neck smarted, until she hardly knew how to bear the
pain.
Poor Bobby was in scarcely better plight, and, to add to their misery, a
rain-cloud, blowing over from the west, broke on the mountain-top, and
drenched them almost to the skin. Mr. Vaughan was in such haste to get
home before post-time that he hurried them on, quite forgetting how much
shorter their legs were than his own, and he refused to listen to any
excuses for sitting down and resting, which, considering their wet
condition, was perhaps just as well.
A more draggled and disreputable-looking pair of children it would have
been 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 seemed
to have distributed themselves over his chubby face. There were several
rents in his stockings, while the brim and crown of his straw hat had
parted 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 clean
yesterday morning, was smeared with whinberry juice, black smudges from
the kettle, and green stains from the mossy stones in the stream, and
clung around her bare legs in damp, clammy folds, while the drenching
rain had reduced the poppies in her hat to a scarlet pulp, which dripped
down in crimson tears upon her cheek. The sun, shining out brilliantly
as they reached civilization once more, seemed to make the forlorn
plight of the wayfarers look worse than ever. If there had been any
possible way home, except through the village, I think Peggy would have
begged Father to take it, and she wished that, like Lady Godiva, she
could 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, and
call names next time, when Father's not there, and Mrs. Price will come
fussing out of the post-office to ask if there has been an accident; she
always wants to poke her nose into everything!'
The Watkin boys, however, were away, engaged in a raid for early apples
in the orchards of long-suffering neighbours, while Mrs. Price was
taking tea in her back-parlour, and indulging in such spicy gossip with
her particular friend Miss Jones that the children passed by unnoticed,
and Peggy began to congratulate herself that they were almost out of
danger.
But alas! things rarely happen as we expect in this world. They had
crossed the bridge, and were turning away up the lane to the Abbey, when
the sound of wheels was heard behind them, and, in the smart carriage
which rolled by, whom should Peggy recognise but the supercilious faces
and elegant costumes of Phyllis and Marjorie Norton. Her cup of
humiliation 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'll
think it so queer. I don't much mind Marjorie, but of all people in this
world I simply _detest_ Phyllis Norton!'