'School is over, hooray!' shouted Peggy, banging down her books on the mounting-block, and waltzing into the kitchen, where Aunt Helen and Nancy were busy making jam. 'Don't you hear, Auntie? We've broken up for eight weeks! Isn't it glorious?'
'I hear fast enough; but I'm afraid it will be a doubtful pleasure for Nancy and me if you are all going mad like this. My dear child, don't you think you might choose a less juicy seat than a tray full of raspberries?'
Peggy jumped up in a hurry.
'I really didn't see them,' she said. 'I'll go and help Lilian unharness Pixie. Joe's away in the turnip-field. No home-lessons to-night, hip-hip-hooray!' and she took herself off like a whirlwind.
The holidays were indeed a delightful respite after the weary round of examinations which generally makes life a burden at the end of the summer term, and the children set to work to enjoy them thoroughly. Bobby had taken to entomology, and panted over the hot pastures, chasing butterflies with unflagging zeal. At dusk he would enlist Peggy's services, and the pair went treacling for moths. A careful mixture of gin and syrup was smeared upon the trees, which were afterwards visited with a lantern, when the unfortunate insects could easily be taken in the midst of their revels, falling sad victims to the sin of intemperance.
Caterpillars, too, were caught and kept in boxes, till the Rose Parlour became so full of interesting specimens that Aunt Helen, for once, rebelled, and ordered this new branch of the menagerie to be removed to the loft.
'I found one of your beasties inside my hat, and another in my teacup,' she complained. 'So you had better keep them where it does not much matter if they escape.'
Lilian devoted herself to art, and sallied forth with her paint-box, pencils, and sketch-block, in quite a professional manner, looking for subjects. To be sure, the perspective of her cottages was apt to be rather peculiar at times, and the Welsh mountains turned out a more vivid shade of purple, and the fields a far more brilliant green than Nature ever painted them; but it was all good practice, and the admiring Peggy thought that no Royal Academician could have produced such charming masterpieces. There was a little work, too, to make the playtime all the sweeter—fruit to be picked, peas and beans to shell, the garden to weed, and great piles of bread and cheese to be cut and carried out into the fields for the harvesters' 'drinkings.' But, as Bobby said, it was all play-work, and much nicer than lessons, anyhow.
Peggy lay one afternoon at full length on the grass under the lime-tree, deep in the pages of 'Treasure Island.' It was rather a grown-up book, perhaps, for a little girl, but it was all about pirates, and sailors, and hairbreadth escapes, of so wildly exciting a nature, that she read on till she almost wept with disappointment to think she was not a boy to go to sea and meet with such thrilling adventures.
From the Rose Parlour came the strains of the piano, where Lilian was wailing a melancholy little ditty with keen enjoyment. It is mostly when we are very young that we take the greatest delight in the sad songs; those who have felt the real bitterness of sorrow are glad to bury it deeply away, and do not wish it wakened, as sailors' wives love a place best where they cannot hear the sound of the sea.