"Why, it will almost make Father's fortune!" triumphed Ingred, still in a state of delighted bewilderment.
"It will certainly be an immense pull to him professionally to have the designing of an important public building," smiled Mother. "And I think he will be able to plan a house to satisfy Mr. and Mrs. Haselford. It's just the kind of work he likes."
"Mother, when they leave Rotherwood, shall we have to let it to any one else, or would it be possible——" Ingred hesitated, with the wish that for nearly a year she had put resolutely away from her trembling on her lips.
"To go back there ourselves?" finished Mother. "If Father's affairs prosper, as they seem likely to do at present, I think we may safely say 'yes.' It never rains but it pours, and just as his profession has suddenly taken a leap forward, his private investments have picked up. Colonial mines, that he thought utterly done for, have begun to work again, and pay dividends. Our prospects now are very different indeed from what they were a few months ago. Don't look too excited, Ingred! Houses take a long time to build, nowadays, and it may be years before Mr. Haselford's new place is finished, and we can get re-possession of Rotherwood."
"I don't care, so long as there's hope of ever having it again!"
"It's our own home, and naturally we love it, but we must not forget what a debt of gratitude we owe to the Bungalow. We have been very happy here, and I think we have been thrown together, and have learnt to know one another in a way we should never have done at Rotherwood. All the sacrifices we have made for each other have drawn us far closer as a family, and linked us up so that we ought never to be able to drift apart now, which might have happened if we had all been able just to pursue our own line. We have learnt the value here of simple pleasures, we've enjoyed the moors and the flowers and the birds and the stars and all the beautiful things that Nature can give us. The realization of them is worth far more than anything that money can buy, for it's the 'joy that no man taketh from you.' I have grown to love Wynch-on-the-Wold so dearly that I shall beg Father to keep on the Bungalow as a country cottage, and I shall run out here for holidays when I feel Rotherwood is too much for me, and I want to be alone for a while with Nature."
"I expect we'll all want to do just the same!" said Quenrede, looking from the gay flower-beds, which her own hands had planted, over the hedge to where the brown moors stretched away into the dim gray of the distance. "I thought it was going to be hateful when I came here, but, Muvvie, I think it's been the happiest year of my life! The country may be quiet, but it has its compensation. We'll walk to the Whistling Stones again, Ingred, as soon as you break up!"
"And that will be exactly a week next Friday!" rejoiced Ingred.
The school was busy with all the usual activities that seem to happen at the end of the summer term. There was a successful cricket match with the Girls' High School from Birkshaw, a tennis tournament where Nora and Susie took part after all, and won laurels for the College, a Nature Notebook Competition in which Linda, to every one's amazement, bore off the first prize against all other schools in the town.
Then there was the annual function, when parents were invited to see a display of Swedish Drill, listen to three-part songs given by the singing class, admire the drawings and clay models exhibited in the studio, and watch a French play acted by the Sixth. It was at the close of this performance that (when friends had taken their departure, and Dr. Linton, who had conducted the singing class, had closed the grand piano and had hurried across to the Abbey to keep an appointment with an organ pupil) a certain piece of news leaked out, and began to circulate round the school. Verity had the proud importance of carrying it into the hostel.