A Terrible Tomboy Part 15

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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s, 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 gra.s.sy 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 gra.s.s, 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 p.r.i.c.kly 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 compet.i.tion 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 cutla.s.ses, 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 gra.s.sy 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.mps 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.