With spirits slightly damped she wended her way back to the cottage, trying to think it did not hurt to walk on the scrubby heather-stems, and privately wondering whether Scotch children's toes were made of different material to her own.
Mr. Vaughan came home at one o'clock, having counted the sheep to his satisfaction, and found none missing.
'I'm as hungry as a hunter,' he announced. 'We must eat up everything that's left; it won't do to carry anything back in our baskets. Is the kettle boiling? Come, Peggy, child, put on your shoes and stockings; you look like the picture of an Irish peasant-girl.'
Peggy had certainly expected a lecture when she made the painful confession that her foot-gear was at the bottom of the lake, but, to her great relief, Father took it all as a joke, and laughed so heartily that he quite forgot to scold her.
'But you can't walk eight miles home over a rough road with bare feet!' he exclaimed, the practical side of the question suddenly striking him, 'and I certainly don't feel equal to carrying you. We must manage to make you a pair of sandals of some kind. I suppose I shall have to sacrifice my shooting-gaiters;' and he divested himself of his leather leggings with rueful reluctance. 'Now, put your foot down upon that, and I will draw a line round it; then, if I cut it out with my penknife it will make quite a good sole—enough to save you from the stones, at any rate.'
Peggy sat on the box while Father tied on the improvised sandals with her pocket-handkerchief and Bobby's. They were certainly ingenious, though hardly elegant, and it did not comfort her much to be told that she would be taken for a wounded soldier limping back from the wars; indeed, Father made such fun of her that she grew quite indignant, and began to think she would really rather have been scolded a little than so very much laughed at.
Peggy never forgot that walk home. The sandals were anything but comfortable, and her feet hurt dreadfully on the stones, while every gorse-bush she passed seemed to be stretching out spiky fingers to scratch her bare legs; she was tired after her morning's adventures on the moors, and the eight miles seemed to lengthen out to an interminable vista, in spite of the way being downhill; sundry bumps and bruises, which she had never noticed at the time, began to ache now, and the bee-stings on her neck smarted, until she hardly knew how to bear the pain.
Poor Bobby was in scarcely better plight, and, to add to their misery, a rain-cloud, blowing over from the west, broke on the mountain-top, and drenched them almost to the skin. Mr. Vaughan was in such haste to get home before post-time that he hurried them on, quite forgetting how much shorter their legs were than his own, and he refused to listen to any excuses for sitting down and resting, which, considering their wet condition, was perhaps just as well.
A more draggled and disreputable-looking pair of children it would have been impossible to find. Bobby's sailor-suit was all stained with mud, where he had fallen into the bog, and smears of the same material seemed to have distributed themselves over his chubby face. There were several rents in his stockings, while the brim and crown of his straw hat had parted company, showing his crop of brown curls through the gap between. As for Peggy, a young gipsy tramp would have looked more respectable, for the brown holland dress, which had started out stiff and clean yesterday morning, was smeared with whinberry juice, black smudges from the kettle, and green stains from the mossy stones in the stream, and clung around her bare legs in damp, clammy folds, while the drenching rain had reduced the poppies in her hat to a scarlet pulp, which dripped down in crimson tears upon her cheek. The sun, shining out brilliantly as they reached civilization once more, seemed to make the forlorn plight of the wayfarers look worse than ever. If there had been any possible way home, except through the village, I think Peggy would have begged Father to take it, and she wished that, like Lady Godiva, she could have shut the people up in their cottages until she had passed by.
'I know they'll all stand and stare at my bare legs and queer sandals,' she groaned. 'Those horrid, rude Watkin boys are sure to see me, and call names next time, when Father's not there, and Mrs. Price will come fussing out of the post-office to ask if there has been an accident; she always wants to poke her nose into everything!'