"This is no place for a dear old gentleman like your colonel! What does he want to come here for?" I added.
"Says he'll be staying with a friend of his in this neighbourhood," explained Elizabeth, handing me the note with the neat, precise handwriting that we had seen on so many business letters, "and that as I was here he would give himself the pleasure of calling upon me if he might. Antediluvian touch, isn't it? And, of course, he won't be allowed to call here, I suppose, even at his age."
"Oh, but I hope we shall meet him," I said, as I prepared to get into bathing-things again for my swimming lesson from Vic and Sybil in the pool. "It will be rather fun, after all our guess-work, to see what the funny old thing really is like."
Now this was vouchsafed to us in a few days from then. And I admit that this, and what it brought in its train, has been quite one of the shocks of my life.
CHAPTER XII
WE "GET USED TO IT "
"This is the life,
This is the life,
This is the life—for mine!"
—THE BING BOYS.
We had been at Mr. Price's farm for a week now. In that short time the miracle had begun to work.
Seven bottles of the most powerful pick-me-up could not have worked in that time what was done by these seven natural tonics—fresh air, physical toil, simple, wholesome food, cold water, newness of occupation, laughter with comradeship, and profound sleep o' nights!
"This is pretty awful, you know," we whispered rebelliously to each other half a dozen times a day.