'The hut's hardly fit for a girl,' said Mr. Vaughan doubtfully, beginning to relent to Peggy's coaxings.
'Well, you've called me a tomboy often enough, so let me be a boy for to-day. Oh, Auntie, do be a darling, and persuade Father to say yes!'
Aunt Helen paused on her way from the pantry to the dining-room, with a dish of ham in one hand and a pound of butter in the other.
'I really think they might go,' she said, 'if you don't walk too fast for them, Robert. The weather has been so hot that it must be quite dry up there, so I hardly think they would catch cold in the cottage. But they must promise to behave properly, and not to get into any mischief. I can't spare Lilian to-day, or she might have gone to look after them.'
'Oh, thank you! Of course we'll promise!' cried Peggy, clapping her hands, and flying off in the seventh heaven of joy to inform Bobby of the delightful prospect, nearly upsetting Nancy and the breakfast-tray in her mad career, and causing that worthy girl to wish devoutly that schools had no holidays.
Mr. Vaughan owned some land high up on the mountains, across the border, in Wales. He had a little rough shepherd's hut there, just sufficient to form a shelter at night-time, and every now and then he would make an expedition to look after his sheep, or the tiny shaggy ponies which were turned out loose to wander almost wild upon the moors.
To go with Father upon one of these mountain excursions had been the dream of Peggy and Bobby's lives, so it was with very gay faces that, their fishing-baskets full of provisions slung over their shoulders, and old Rover trotting soberly behind, they started off on their eight-mile tramp up the hillside.
It was such a lovely summer morning, one of those brilliant, glorious days when the world looks as if it had been newly created, and came to us with a whiff of Paradise about it. Down in the village the cottage gardens were ablaze with flowers, and even old Ephraim had forgotten his rheumatism, and crawled out to bask in the hot sunshine on the low wall, and called out a friendly 'Good-marnin'!' as the children went by. Past the forge, whence the cheery chink, chink of the blacksmith's hammer came mingled with the refrain of a stirring melody from a good bass voice; under the spreading yew-trees of the churchyard, and out through the lych-gate to the old mill, where the great wheel was turning slowly round, its dripping blades gleaming bright in the sunshine; up the steep path through the little hazel-wood, scrambling over the ladder-like stile into the narrow lane that ran ever uphill towards the mountains, which loomed before them, rugged in outline, and shaded in a mist of purple blue. The hedgerows had given place to stone walls now, loosely built without any mortar, and with green ferns and pennywort growing in the crevices, and forget-me-nots in the ditch below. On and up, on and up, with the great blue hills always rising higher before them, till at length even the stone walls vanished, and they were on the bare moorland, with only a slight foot-track for a road.
Quite out of breath with scrambling after Father's long strides, the children begged for mercy, and sat down to rest for a few minutes and eat their lunch by the side of a little quick-running stream.
'It is a good place for a halt,' said Father, 'for it is the boundary between England and Wales. When we are over the border we shall all be Taffies instead of John Bulls.'