'So do I; he was a stunning chap! He could bowl better than the captain of our eleven. Why don't Father and Aunt Helen write and ask him?'
'I don't know. I asked Aunt Helen, but she was so funny and queer over it, and wouldn't talk about him at all. I can't imagine why. Oh, Bobby, look what I've found! A clump of real white heather! Isn't that lucky? The first I've ever seen. I shall take it home for Aunt Helen; she'll be so pleased.'
'Joe says it means a wedding if you give it to anybody, and if you find it in three places you'll be married three times. No, I don't want to hunt for any, thank you! It's girls' stuff! I aren't going to bother with marrying when I grow up; I mean to be a pirate, and live in a ship with a black flag, and a lot of jolly fellows with pistols and cutlasses, and we'll overhaul every merchantman we see, and string the sailors up from the yard-arm!' and the future buccaneer swung his legs over the rock, and put on a cut-throat expression, strangely at variance with his cherubic cast of countenance.
'Pooh! You're a silly little boy!' said Peggy scornfully, forgetting that only last week she had regarded the adventures in 'Treasure Island' as the beau-ideal of earthly bliss. 'There are no such things as pirates now, so you couldn't be one, and I believe you'd be scared of the pistols, too, if they were loaded!'
Much offended at these remarks, Bobby stalked away in such aggrieved majesty that, as the best means to restore peace, Peggy suggested that they should walk on to a larger stream, which emptied itself into the lake about half a mile lower down. Luckily Bobby's ill-humours were of a short-lived nature, and after a few minutes of cutting silence, he volunteered the rather ambiguous remark that there were 'lots of things a fellow could do when he grew up, anyhow,' and was his smiling self again.
The new stream proved highly attractive. It was one of those noisy, rushing mountain torrents, brown with flowing over the peat, and full of great moss-grown boulders, with smooth round stones between. There were foaming cataracts here and there among the rocks, just like Niagara on a small scale, and there were dear little quiet pools at the edges, where the still water was overhung by ferns and rushes, that sheltered caddice-worms, and boat-flies, and whirligig water-beetles, and all sorts of other delights for the collection.
The children promptly pulled off their shoes and stockings and paddled in the brown water like a couple of ducks. Peggy tied her boots together by the laces, and putting her stockings inside, slung them over her back in true fisher-boy fashion, while she sat dabbling her feet in a waterfall, and watching Bobby's frantic efforts to catch a dragon-fly.
'Oh, Peg, come quick! I believe I have him under my hat!' shouted the enthusiastic collector, lying flat among the reeds on a grassy bank.
Peggy jumped up in a hurry, and splashed her way to the rescue, but the smooth round stones were slippery, and seemed to slide away from under her feet. She gave a desperate clutch at a willow-stump on the bank to save herself from falling, and somehow or other, in the struggle, her bootlace broke, and away went the boots, sailing gaily down the stream, over the waterfall and into the depths of the lake, before their astonished owner had even realized their loss. Naturally, to secure the dragon-fly and pin him on Bobby's hat was the first consideration, and by the time the missing boots were thought of, they had utterly disappeared, and though the children searched for fully half an hour down the stream and on the bank of the lake, they were not to be found.
'I'm afraid it's no use,' said Peggy at last. 'They must have gone down into a hole, or been washed right into the middle of the lake. Someone will fish them out a few hundred years hence, and put them into a museum as great treasures. Well, it can't be helped. I suppose I shall have to walk home without them,' pretending to look as if she did not care, though really the prospect of a scolding from Father, and further explanations with Aunt Helen on her return, made her somewhat uneasy.