‘That’s lucky’ said Ivinghoe. ‘One can swallow a good deal, but not quite one’s own connections.’
‘In fact,’ said Jasper, ‘you had rather be an oilman’s fag than a quarryman’s—what is it?—first cousin once removed in law?’
‘It is much more likely,’ said Gillian, as they laughed over this, ‘that Kalliope and Maura will be his adopted daughters, only he never comes near them.’
Wherewith there was a halt. Miss Elbury insisted that Phyllis should ride, the banks began to show promise of flowers, and, in the search for violets, dangerous topics were forgotten, and Wilfred was forgiven. They reached the spot marked by Fly, a field with a border of sloping broken ground and brushwood, which certainly fulfilled all their desires, steeply descending to a stream full of rocks, the ground white with wood anemones, long evergreen trails of periwinkles and blue flowers between, primroses clustering under the roots of the trees, daffodils gilding the grass above, and the banks verdant with exquisite feather-moss. Such a springtide wood was joy to all, especially as the first cuckoo of the season came to add to their delights and set them counting for the augury of happy years, which proved so many that Mysie said they would not know what to do with them.
‘I should,’ said Ivinghoe. ‘I should like to live to be a great old statesman, as Lord Palmerston did, and have it all my own way. Wouldn’t I bring things round again!’
‘Perhaps they would have gone too far,’ suggested Jasper, ‘and then you would have to gnaw your hand like Giant Pope, as Wilfred says.’
‘Catch me, while I could do something better.’
‘If one only lived long enough,’ speculated Fergus, ‘one might find out what everything was made of, and how to do everything.’
‘I wonder if the people did before the Flood, when they lived eight or nine hundred years,’ said Fly.
‘Perhaps that is the reason there is nothing new under the sun,’ suggested Valetta, as many a child has before suggested.