Perhaps of all our expeditions I enjoyed our walks the most. To ramble about the lanes and fields in search of nests or wild flowers was to me always an endless pleasure. Finding that I had never picked wild daffodils before, Cathy suggested one morning that we should walk to Wyngates, where they grew so lavishly that the marshy meadows were literally yellow with them. So with our baskets on our arms, and the new Skye terrier for company, we started off in high spirits. Our way led up a steep lane, the sloping banks of which were spangled with primroses and celandine, while the rough-built walls at the top gave a hold to trailing honeysuckle, ivy, and hazel bushes. It was a grand place for birds' nests, and we made very slow progress as we poked about, peering into every likely-looking spot. Cathy, through long experience, was much more clever at discovering them than I, and while she found three thrushes', a wren's, and two chaffinches', my efforts were only rewarded by a solitary hedge-sparrow's. I had had a kodak for my last birthday present, and I was very anxious to take some snap-shots of the young birds in their nests, fired thereto by the beautiful nature photographs I had seen in the illustrated papers. With a good deal of climbing and difficulty I managed to secure various views of Mrs. Thrush at home, Mrs. Chaffinch's nursery, and the five Miss Hedge-sparrows clamouring for a meal. I used a whole spool of films over them, only to find, when with Dick's assistance I developed them afterwards, that my little camera was not intended for such near distances, and my pictures were so hopelessly out of focus that they were utterly spoilt.
"It's an awful sell, and you've wasted a dozen films," said Dick. "I believe you ought to have a special lens for these nature dodges. Your kodak won't take nearer than seven feet off. Never mind, the ones of the Mater and the house and the village are stunning, and you'll get some good snap-shots when we go over Carnton Fell to the sheep-counting."
But to return to our walk. Leaving the lane and the birds' nests behind, we were soon on the open moor, with the brown of last year's heather around us, and the gorse in brilliant patches of gold scenting the air with its faint peachy smell. Innumerable little mountain springs crossed our path, cutting channels through the peat, and overhung with lady-fern and sedges, and here and there among the furze the shoots of the young bracken were springing green. We cut down a deep gorge into the valley, following the course of a swift stream which was descending with much noise to join the river, and found ourselves at last on a kind of rushy marshland, where deep dykes and high banks told a tale of flooded meadows in winter. It might aptly have been called "The Field of the Cloth of Gold", for the daffodils were growing in such endless profusion that one could have picked for a week without stopping. I filled my basket with infinite satisfaction, and sat down on an old poplar stump to wait for Cathy, who thought she had discovered some new snail-shells in the brook.
"What's that house up there?" I asked, pointing to a gray old Tudor building which stood on the side of the crag above, looking down over the valley towards the dim line of the distant sea.
"Oh, that's Wyngates," said Cathy, pulling herself up the bank with her hands full of treasures. "It's such a dear old place! Would you like to go and see it? Nobody lives there now, and I know the care-taker. I always think it is such fun to explore an empty house."
I had not been over an untenanted home before, so I jumped at the opportunity, and we climbed up the hill-side again to a little iron gate which opened through the hedge from the fields. We found ourselves in an old-world garden such as I had never even imagined. The tall yew hedges had been clipped smooth, with here and there a small window cut in them through which the distant landscape appeared like a picture set in a frame. At either end the trees were fashioned into quaint shapes—peacocks with spreading tails, cocked hats, or ramping lions, all getting a little straggling and untended, but adding a very picturesque feature to the scene. There was a long flagged terrace, with dandelions pushing up between the stones, and roses, grown almost wild, climbing in glorious profusion over the balustrade, while a flight of steps led down to the ladies' pleasaunce, where the narrow grass walks were bordered with box-edgings, and pink daisies and forget-me-nots were trying to struggle through the weeds in the neglected beds. In the centre was a sun-dial with twisted shaft, and an inscription round the capital. We rubbed away the moss which covered the worn letters, and spelt out the words, written in old English characters:
"NESCIES + QUA + HORA + VIGILA",
which we were not Latin scholars enough at the time to be able to translate, but which I afterwards learnt meant "Thou knowest not at what hour. Watch!" I wondered, as I looked, how many footsteps, in the centuries that had fled, had passed up and down that terraced walk, and how many quaint little maidens as young and gay as we, had come to tell the time by that dial, and had read that same motto, "wrought in dead days by men a long while dead". The blossom from the almond-tree above fell on us like pink snow, and a thrush in the lilac bush was ruffling every feather on his little throat in the rapture of his spring song.
"If I could choose any spot in the world I wished, I think I should come to live here," I said, with a long sigh of content as I looked over the sweet-brier fence down the valley to where in the distance gleamed the bay, a faint gray streak against a patch of yellow sand, with the outline of the fells rising up misty and blue behind. Cathy smiled.
"You haven't seen the house yet," she said. "You couldn't live only in a garden."