Mrs. Rutherford looked up, her anxious little fair face breaking into a smile.
“Now you are laughing at me, Georgie, dear.”
“Not at all. Always best to be prepared for emergencies. Well, come along, both of you. We shall not be back, at this rate, till—”
“Midnight,” suggested Leonard.
“No; dinner.”
“Lunch won’t matter, now we have something with us,” said Dulcibel, beginning to subside from her flurry. “You are going to show me your favorite valley, are you not, dear? Oh, don’t! I can easily carry the basket, please.”
“Give it to me. Here, Dulcie—I mean what I say. Leo will take your waterproof. If you can carry yourself there and back it will be as much as you are equal to.”
“I am sure I can. I feel equal to anything to-day.”
“Equal to anything” meant, as her husband knew by experience, equal to four or five miles, the latter part performed distressfully. Twenty or thirty miles were nothing to him. In her own home, before marriage, Dulcibel Lloyd had counted two miles an arduous undertaking, but George Rutherford was getting her slowly into training. They had been married just seven months, so it was not precisely a case of the honeymoon. In one sense they might be said to be still on their wedding trip, however. Dulcie had not yet seen her husband’s home, extensive alterations in it making a prolonged absence necessary.
They were by no means in one of the more mountainous parts of Wales. The hotel stood outside a small village, on the verge of a wild moor; the name of the village containing the liquid double “l,” as did the names of many villages near. Undulating hills lay around in all directions, showing autumn tints; and two or three mountains, attaining the respectable height of two thousand feet or more, were visible at a little distance.