When the question of the walking tour was broached, Bess, owing to home engagements, had at first reluctantly refused, then had managed to rearrange her holidays and had joined the party after all. To Ingred her presence utterly marred the enjoyment. It was extremely unreasonable of Ingred, for Bess was most unassuming and really very long-suffering. She put up with snubs that would have made most girls retaliate indignantly. Nobody likes to be sat upon too hard, however, and even the proverbial worm will turn at last.
As the walking party, much urged by Miss Strong straggled along towards Ryton-on-the-Heath, Bess made a lightning dive up a bank and came back with a blue flower plainly of the Labiate species.
“Bugle!” she remarked with satisfaction.
“Bugle?” echoed Ingred scornfully. “Shows how much you know about botany! That’s self-heal!”
“Oh no; it’s certainly bugle.”
“I tell you it’s self-heal. I found some at Lynstones last August and looked it up in the flower-book.”
“Very likely you did, but that doesn’t prove that this is self-heal.”
“It does, for anybody with a pair of eyes. I’ve been studying botany.”
“And so have I!”
“You may think you know everything, Bess Haselford, but you don’t know this.”
“I didn’t say I knew everything; but I’m certain this is bugle all the same, and I stick to it!”
Bess’s usually sweet voice had an obstinate note in it for once. She seemed determined to defend her botanical trenches.
“Go it—hammer and tongs!” laughed Kitty. “I’ll back the winner!”
“And I’ll take the case into court,” said Linda, snatching the flower from her schoolfellow’s hand and running on to show it to Miss Strong, who was an authority on the subject.
The mistress paused to let the others overtake her.
“Bugle, certainly,” she decided emphatically. “The first bit we’ve found this year. It’s out early. Self-heal? Oh dear no! The two are rather alike and are sometimes mistaken one for another, but no botanist would dream of confusing them. Bugle is a spring and early summer flower, and self-heal blooms much later. Make a note in your nature diaries that you found bugle on 15th April.”
Considerably squashed, Ingred had for once to acknowledge her botany to be at fault, and, though Bess did not triumph, Francie gave Kitty a poke and the pair giggled.
“Well, of course, one can’t be always right,” said Ingred airily.
“So it seems; though some people set themselves up for wiseacres!” sniggered Kitty.
Ingred fell behind with Verity and let the others walk on. It was only a trifling incident, but she was annoyed to notice how openly and instantly the girls had sided with Bess. She felt too glum for speech, and as Verity was tired and disinclined to talk, they tramped along in silence.
They had been winding steadily uphill for some miles and were now on the heath from which Ryton took its name. The ground fell steeply to the west, showing glimpses of a great river in the valley below, where the still-leafless woods had burst here and there into faint tokens of spring. Beyond the river rose the characteristic grey hills of the neighborhood, with their stone walls and sheepfolds and stretches of moorland, looking a little hazy in the afternoon light, but with patches of yellow gorse catching the sunshine. Ryton was a delightful little village. Its cottages, built long ago by local craftsmen, seemed absolutely in harmony with the landscape: walls, dormers, and mullions and long undulating roofs were all of limestone and conveyed an impression of sturdy self-respect. The rain-worn, lichen-covered roofs had weathered to charming irregularities of form and lovely tones of color. Ivy and clematis climbed over the porches and twisted themselves round the low chimneys. The little gardens were bright with daffodils, mezereon, and flowering currant.
To the girls, somewhat tired and decidedly hungry, the main focus of the village was a long iron post which stretched out over the street and supported a rudely-painted sign of a bird, whose species might have been a puzzle to an ornithologist but for the words “Pelican Inn” that appeared beneath it.
In the long-ago days before railroads, the little hostelry had been a stopping-place for stagecoaches, and a wooden board still set forth that it supplied “Posting in all its branches.” The landlord would no doubt have been much dismayed if any wag had entered and demanded a chaise and post-horses to drive to Gretna Green, and a shabby motor in his stable-yard showed that he marched with the times.
Miss Strong, on consulting her watch, decided that her party might safely indulge in a halt of half an hour, and ordered tea for nine persons. The inn, built on a type common in the district, was entered by an archway leading
