“By the bye,” cried Caroline, starting, “those children have never come home, and see how it rains!”
Jock volunteered to take the pony carriage and fetch them, but he had not long emerged from the park in the gathering twilight before he overtook two figures under one umbrella, and would have passed them had he not been hailed.
“You demented children! Jump in this instant.”
“Don’t turn!” called Armine. “We must take this,” showing a parcel which he had been sheltering more carefully than himself or his sister. “It is cord and tassels for the banner. They sent wrong ones,” said Barbara, “and we had to go and match it. They would not let me go alone.”
“Get in, I say,” cried Jock, who was making demonstrations with the “national weapon” much as if he would have liked to lay it about their shoulders.
“Then we must drive onto the Parsonage,” stipulated Armine.
“Not a bit of it, you drenched and foolish morsel of humanity. You are going straight home to bed. Hand us the parcel. What will you give me not to tie this cord round the Reverend Petronella’s neck?”
“Thank you, Jock, I’m so glad,” said Babie, referring probably to the earlier part of his speech. “We would have come home for the pony carriage, but we thought it would be out.”
“Take care of the drip,” was Armine’s parting cry, as Babie turned the pony’s head, and Jock strode down the lane. He meant merely to have given in the parcel at the door, but Miss Parsons darted out, and not distinguishing him in the dark began, “Thank you, dear Armine; I’m so sorry, but it is in the good cause and you won’t regret it. Where’s your sister? Gone home? But you’ll come and have a cup of tea and stay to evensong?”
“My brother and sister are gone home, thank you,” said Jock, with impressive formality, and a manly voice that made her start.