"I'm sure Toddlekins believes I've had measles," she confided to Wendy.
"Of course she does. She said she hadn't the least doubt about it, and that you hadn't eaten anything which could have caused you to have nettle-rash."
"What would she say if she knew about the sausages?" queried Diana.
CHAPTER XIV
Spooks
March had come, and even in the northern mountainous region of the Pennines, where snow lingers long after it has melted in more favoured districts, winter had begun to make way for spring. The snowdrops—January flowers in Wales or Cornwall, fair maids of February in most counties—were late bloomers at Pendlemere, and were never in their prime till St. Patrick's Day. They made up for their tardy arrival by their luxuriance. They grew almost wild in the orchard, and spread like a white carpet over the grass, tossing fairy bells in the wind. Diana, promoted to help Miss Carr in the spraying of apple-trees, paused in her work to look round and revel in nature's re-awakening. She was a sun lover, and the long months of perpetual mist and rain had tried her very much. She had, to be sure, kept up her spirits in spite of weather; still, the sight of fleecy, white clouds scudding across a blue sky, and the sound of the missel-thrush tuning up on the bare branch of the plum-tree were particularly cheering. Hedge-sparrows twittered among the shrubs, and rooks were busy flying with large twigs in their bills to repair their nests in the elms near the church. In the March sunshine the lake glittered like gold.
"I wonder if it looked just like this when the old monks lived here," said Diana. "Did they see exactly what we do now?"
"Pretty much the same, I expect," answered Miss Carr rather abstractedly. "The lake and the fells would be there, and probably most of the farms, though the buildings would be different in those days. The lay brethren would attend to the land just as we do. I dare say they dug in this very orchard, and grew herbs in the same place where we're going to plant our potatoes."