So the old gentleman scrambled down the hill with Betty and Babe, while Madeline and Babbie ran ahead to make sure of the luncheon and get the preparations for it under way. The bread and butter was so good and the milk so creamy, and they all ate and drank so much, while the old gentleman forgot to be annoyed at his unhappy plight and told funny stories of his motoring experiences in France,—neither he nor his chauffeur, it seemed, knew a word of any language but English,—that the time slipped by, and when Babe thought to look at her watch it was long past the hour that she had allotted to lunching.
“There’s Dove Cottage gone!” she announced in tragic tones. “And when we get back to America and people ask us about it, how we shall hate to say we were right here and didn’t take enough interest in Wordsworth to hunt up his house.”
“Never mind,” Madeline reassured her cheerfully. “We’ll just inquire in a casual way if they saw Easdale Tarn, when they were here, and that will settle them.”
“The only trouble is we didn’t see it either,” matter-of-fact Betty reminded her sadly.
The old gentleman was looking at his watch and muttering hasty calculations. “You shall see your Dove Cottage,” he announced triumphantly. “You didn’t count on going back in my car. Come along.”
The next minute they were tearing down the Easdale road at a rate that the old gentleman smilingly characterized as “about our usual speed, and we’ve only been arrested once so far.” When they reached the cottage he sat outside in the car, watch in hand, ready to give the signal for departure, and at the church he did the same thing. Then they whirled back to the inn, where Mrs. Hildreth was getting a little anxious about them, though, as Babbie pointed out, five minutes before the coach started was a whole lot of time—you could see all the regular sights of Grasmere in five minutes if you were a good manager.
Betty and Babe, who had taken a great fancy to the crusty old gentleman, stayed behind the others to say a more extended good-bye.
“We’re really very grateful to you,” Babe assured him gaily. “You’ve saved our reputations. But for you the Grasmere chapter of ‘B. A.’s Abroad’ would have had a disgraceful blank in it.”
“‘B. A.’s Abroad,’”—the old gentleman turned to Betty. “That’s the journal you told me about. B. A.—Benevolent Adventurers—that’s what you’ve been this morning. I haven’t had so good a time since I left New York. Thank you all, and you particularly, Miss——”
“Wales,” supplied Betty.