'We shall have Fergus reporting that he's a petroleuse,' put in Jasper.
'No, a petroleuse is a woman.'
'I like Mr. White,' said Fly; 'but, Gillian, you don't think it is true that he is going to marry your Aunt Jane?'
There was a great groan, and Japs observed-
'Some one told us Rockquay was a hotbed of gossip, and we seem to have got it strong.'
'Where did this choice specimen come from, Fly!' demanded Ivinghoe, in his manner most like his mother.
Fly nodded her head towards her governess in the advanced guard.
'She had a cousin to tea with her, and they thought I didn't know whom they meant, and they said that he was always up at Rockstone.'
'Well, he is; and Aunt Jane always stands up for him,' said Gillian; 'but that was because he is so good to the workpeople, and Aunt Ada took him for some grand political friend of Cousin Rotherwood's.'
'Aunt Jane!' said Jasper. 'Why, she is the very essence and epitome of old maids.'
'Yes,' said Gillian. 'If it came to that, she would quite as soon marry the postman.'
'That's lucky' said Ivinghoe. 'One can swallow a good deal, but not quite one's own connections.'
'In fact,' said Jasper, 'you had rather be an oilman's fag than a quarryman's-what is it?-first cousin once removed in law?'
'It is much more likely,' said Gillian, as they laughed over this, 'that Kalliope and Maura will be his adopted daughters, only he never comes near them.'
Wherewith there was a halt. Miss Elbury insisted that Phyllis should ride, the banks began to show promise of flowers, and, in the search for violets, dangerous topics were forgotten, and Wilfred was forgiven. They reached the spot marked by Fly, a field with a border of sloping broken ground and brushwood, which certainly fulfilled all their desires, steeply descending to a stream full of rocks, the ground white with wood anemones, long evergreen trails of periwinkles and blue flowers between, primroses clustering under the roots of the trees, daffodils gilding the grass above, and the banks verdant with exquisite feather-moss. Such a springtide wood was joy to all, especially as the first cuckoo of the season came to add to their delights and set them counting for the augury of happy years, which proved so many that Mysie said they would not know what to do with them.
'I should,' said Ivinghoe. 'I should like to live to be a great old statesman, as Lord Palmerston did, and have it all my own way. Wouldn't I bring things round again!'
'Perhaps they would have gone too far,' suggested Jasper, 'and then you would have to gnaw your hand like Giant Pope, as Wilfred says.'
'Catch me, while I could do something better.'
'If one only lived long enough,' speculated Fergus, 'one might find out what everything was made of, and how to do everything.'
'I wonder if the people did before the Flood, when they lived eight or nine hundred years,' said Fly.
'Perhaps that is the reason there is nothing new under the sun,' suggested Valetta, as many a child has before suggested.
'But then,' said Mysie, they got wicked.'
'And then after the Flood it had all to be begun over again,' said Ivinghoe. 'Let me see, Methuselah lived about as long as from William the Conqueror till now. I think he might have got to steam and electricity.'
'And dynamite,' said Gillian. 'Oh, I don't wonder they had to be swept away, if they were clever and wicked both!'
'And I suppose they were,' said Jasper. 'At least the giants, and that they handed on some of their ability through Ham, to the Egyptians, and all those queer primeval coons, whose works we are digging up.'
'From the Conquest till now,' repeated Gillian. 'I'm glad we don't live so long now. It tires one to think of it.'
'But we shall,' said Fly.
'Yes,' said Mysie, 'but then we shall be rid of this nasty old self that is always getting wrong.'
'That little lady's nasty old self does so as little as any one's,' Jasper could not help remarking to his sister; and Fly, pouncing on the first purple orchis spike amid its black-spotted leaves, cried-
'At any rate, these dear things go on the same, without any tiresome inventing.'
'Except God's just at first,' whispered Mysie.
'And the gardeners do invent new ones,' said Valetta.
'Invent! No; they only fuss them and spoil them, and make ridiculous names for them,' said Fly. These darling creatures are ever so much better. Look at Primrose there.'
'Yes,' said Gillian, as she saw her little sister in quiet ecstasy over the sparkling bells of the daffodils; 'one would not like to live eight hundred years away from that experience.'
'But mamma cares just as much still as Primrose does,' said Mysie. 'We must get some for her own self as well as for the church.'
'Mine are all for mamma,' proclaimed Primrose; and just then there was a shout that a bird's nest had been found-a ring-ousel's nest on the banks. Fly and her brother shared a collection of birds' eggs, and were so excited about robbing the ousels of a single egg, that Gillian hoped that Fergus would not catch the infection and abandon minerals for eggs, which would be ever so much worse-only a degree better than butterflies, towards which Wilfred showed a certain proclivity.
'I shall be thirteen before next holidays,' he observed, after making a vain dash with his hat at a sulphur butterfly, looking like a primrose flying away.
'Mamma won't allow any 'killing collection' before thirteen years old,' explained Mysie.
'She says,' explained Gillian, 'by that time one ought to be old enough to discriminate between the lawfulness of killing the creatures for the sake of studying their beauty and learning them, and the mere wanton amusement of hunting them down under the excuse of collecting.'
'I say,' exclaimed Valetta, who had been exploring above, 'here is such a funny old house.'
There was a rush in that direction, and at the other end of the wide home-field was perceived a picturesque gray stone house, with large mullioned windows, a dilapidated low stone wall, with what had once been a handsome gateway, overgrown with ivy, and within big double daffodils and white narcissus growing wild.
'It's like the halls of Ivor,' said Mysie, awestruck by the loneliness; 'no dog, nor horse, nor cow, not even a goose,'
'And what a place to sketch!' cried Miss Vincent. 'Oh, Gillian, we must come here another day.'
'Oh, may we gather the flowers?' exclaimed the insatiable Primrose.
'Those poetic narcissuses would be delicious for the choir screen,' added Gillian.
'Poetic narcissus-poetic grandmother,' said Wilfred. 'It's old butter and eggs.'
'I say!' cried Mysie. 'Look, Ivy-I know that pair of fighting lions-ain't these some of your arms over the door?'
'By which you mean a quartering of our shield,' said Ivinghoe. 'Of course it is the Clipp bearing. Or, two lions azure, regardant combatant, their tails couped.'
'Two blue Kilkenny cats, who have begun with each other's tails,' commented Jasper.
'Ivinghoe glared a little, but respected the sixth form, and Gillian added-
'They clipped them! Then did this place belong to our ancestors?'
'Poetic grandmother, really!' said Mysie.
'Great grandmother,' corrected Ivinghoe. 'To be sure. It was from the Clipps that we got all this Rockstone estate!'
'And I suppose this was their house? What a shame to have deserted it!'
'Oh, it has been a farmhouse,' said Fly. 'I heard something about farms that wouldn't let.'
'Then is it yours?' cried Valetta, 'and may we gather the flowers?'
'And mayn't we explore?' asked Mysie. 'Oh, what fun!'
'Holloa!' exclaimed Wilfred, transfixed, as if he had seen the ghosts of all the Clipps. For just as Valetta and Mysie threw themselves on the big bunches of hepatica and the white narcissus, a roar, worthy of the clip-tailed lions, proceeded from the window, and the demand, 'Who is picking my roses?'
Primrose in terror threw herself on Gillian with a little scream. Wilfred crept behind the walls, but after the general start there was an equally universal laugh, for between the stout mullions of the oriel window Lord Rotherwood's face was seen, and Sir Jasper's behind him.
