CHAPTER XI
AT MARSHLANDS AGAIN
"Each year to ancient friendships adds a ring,
As to an oak, and precious more and more,
Without deservingness, or help of ours
They grow, and, silent, wider spread each year
Their unbought ring of shelter or of shade."
I HAD so many visits to pay to various friends and relations of my father, who took a kindly interest in my welfare, that it was not until the following Easter-time that I was able to accept Mrs. Winstanley's oft-repeated invitation that I should spend a second holiday at Marshlands. How familiar the dear little station looked as Cathy and I turned out our numerous bags and packages upon the platform at Everton! The very porter knew me again, and greeted me with a grin of welcome; and every house, and tree, and bend of the road as we drove home through the village, felt to me like an old friend.
"Well, Miss Humming-bird, you have grown out of all knowledge!" said the squire. "The gray pony is still at your service, and there's a nice light little rod-and-line we could soon teach you to whip the stream with. We'll make a sportswoman of you yet, I declare!"
Mrs. Winstanley welcomed me home equally with Cathy.
"I'm longing to see your Nature Note-Book," she said. "You must have made many additions since last we met. The wild daffodils are out in the Wyngates meadows, the herons are building in the wood by Carnton Fell, and I have found the remains of another stone circle on the moors, so we shall have plenty of objects for our walks."
To revisit all our old haunts was an immense delight. The rose-tree which I had planted by Edward's arbour had grown into quite a large bush, the tempestuous poodle puppies had settled down into sober, steady-going, well-conducted dogs, which regarded with much disfavour the harum-scarum ways of a youthful Skye terrier, which was the latest favourite. Cathy had a fresh pony, a beautiful little chestnut called Selim, which ran with Lady in the new phaeton, and the rock garden which we had made at the end of the shrubbery was flourishing in the most satisfactory manner.
I found the boys much changed. Edward was very tall, and had begun to speak meditatively of Oxford. He still drawled a little, and fussed over his clothes, but he had taken keenly to politics, and aired socialistic theories which he argued hotly with the squire. Dick had grown quite polite, comparatively speaking, and offered to teach me golf, but we had so many other occupations on hand that I never found time to learn. George had got over the stage of keeping white mice in his pockets, and talked mostly about cricket; he was still at his preparatory school, but he was to leave soon for a training-college for the Navy. They were all as full of fun and chaff as ever, and laughed yet over the remembrance of our joke with the burglar.
Marshlands looked beautiful in the spring-time. The cherry orchards were in full blossom, the woods were tinged with the faintest of tender greens, and we found violets in every hedgerow. It was early April, and the distant fells were capped with snow, while the air had enough of a northern chill in it to make quick walking a pleasure. We were close to the lake country, on the borders of that mountain district where crag and moorland, pine-wood and tarn combine to make some of the most glorious scenery in the British Isles. I have always had an extreme love for the hills, whether they were the rocky sierras of my childhood, or the rugged peaks of Cumberland. Once up on the slopes, with the fresh wind blowing on your cheek, and the valley spread out like a map below, you feel as if you had left the cares of the world behind, and were in a different moral as well as physical atmosphere. If it is true that our surroundings really have an effect upon our characters, I think that those who live on a mountain can never be quite so petty and mean-minded as the dwellers in the plain beneath; something in the majesty of those peaks must surely draw them up, and lift their thoughts towards that other world that is higher than ours.