Vainly their comrades of Troy
called after them. Back and down the hill they streamed pell-mell,
one on another's heels; down to the marshy bottom known as Trebant
Water, nor paused to catch breath until they had placed a running
brook between them and the Power of Darkness.
For the second time that night the Gallants rolled about and clung
one to another in throes of Homeric laughter; laughter which,
reverberating, shout on shout, along the ridge and down among the
tree-tops, reached even to the meadow far below, where in the sudden
hush of the lark's singing the merrymakers paused and looked up to
listen.
But wait awhile! They laugh best who laugh last.
CHAPTER IX.
BY LERRYN WATER.
"O will you accept of the mus-e-lin so blue,
To wear in the morning and to dabble in the dew?"
_Old Song_.
Miss Marty had duly visited the meadow and eaten and paid for her
breakfast of bread and cream. But she had eaten it in some
constraint, sitting alone. She had never asserted her position as
the Major's kinswoman in the eyes of Miss Pescod and the ladies of
Miss Pescod's clan, who were inclined to regard her as a poor
relation, a mere housekeeper, and to treat her as a person of no
great account. On the other hand, the majority of the merrymakers
deemed her, no doubt, a stiff stuck-up thing; whereas she would in
fact have given much to break through her shyness and accost them.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124