“Three whole hours!” cried Babbie joyously. “Mother doesn’t feel like exploring, so she’s going to wait for us at the inn. Have lunch whenever you’re ready, mummie. If Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage and the old church where he’s buried are too fascinating we may decide to save time by lunching aboard the coach on fruit and sweet chocolate.”
“I’m terribly afraid Dove Cottage will be like Burns’ birthplace,” said Madeline, as they started off. “Another maxim for travelers: Be cautious about poets’ homes. Anyhow Wordsworth never stayed in the house when he could help it on a day like this—I’m sure he didn’t. Let’s walk up that fascinating shady road first. It looks as if it led to something interesting.”
“Now Madeline,” protested Betty, “how does a road that leads to something interesting look different from one that doesn’t?”
“How indeed, man from Cook’s?” Babbie joined her, and the dispute waxed so warm that finally Madeline asked a little girl, who was eyeing them shyly over a garden fence, where this particular road went.
“Proves my point,” she announced triumphantly. “It goes to Easdale Tarn.”
“What’s a tarn?” asked Babe. “A lake? Then it doesn’t prove anything at all. Some lakes are interesting and some aren’t.”
“Don’t quarrel, children,” interposed Betty. “When we get to the tarn we can see whether it’s interesting.”
“But who knows how far it is?” objected Babbie. “Have we time to walk to it?”
The small girl had run off to play by this time, but a little old lady was pottering about among the flowers in another garden, and she told the girls that the tarn was only a mile away and showed them a cross-cut through the meadows.
Beyond that the road turned into a path and climbed up hills, and then down again, but mostly up, so that following it was hot and tiresome work.