"I feel somehow as if it were the beginning of something else," answered Mavis. "Uncle David, you'll bring us here again, won't you?"
"Any Saturday that's fine."
"Then I shall simply live for fine Saturdays and Chagmouth. It's the loveliest place I've ever seen. I don't believe there's anything else like it in the whole of the wide world, or anywhere else out of Paradise. That's how I feel about it!"
CHAPTER VI
A Child of Misfortune
Mavis and Merle were brimming over with curiosity about Bevis and about several other affairs in Chagmouth, but they had to keep their questions to themselves, for Dr. Tremayne considered that narrow Devon roads in the gathering darkness required his whole attention, and that conversation might mean an accident.
"You're requested not to speak to the man at the wheel," he replied, in answer to Merle's first eager inquiry; "it takes me all my time to drive."
So the girls subsided into quiet, and did not even speak to one another, but sat watching the glare of the headlights on the road and the dark outlines of the high hedges and banks above. They made up for their silence, though, after supper, for they found Jessop in the pantry, and, offering to wipe the silver for her as an excuse for their presence, they began a brisk catechism.
Jessop was a kindly old gossip, a native of Chagmouth, and had all the affairs of the little town at her fingers' ends. She was nothing loath to discuss its inhabitants while she washed up the supper things.
"To begin with, who is Bevis?" asked Mavis eagerly. "We can't make him out at all. He speaks and looks like a gentleman, and yet he talked about working in the fields. Does he live at Grimbal's Farm? What relation is he to Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock?"