The aunts departed, and by the time they had reached the first stage on their journey, two little travellers stepped bravely out at the front door, down the gravelled drive, through the wide gate, and there they halted to hold a hurried council as to which way they should go.
Up the hill in one direction sloped the broad white road that led past Copsley Wood. No Happy Land lay in its vicinity! By another route, along which Billy and the basket-carriage had vanished, was the station; but who ever heard of any one arriving at the Happy Land by rail! Some other way still they must seek to bring them to their destination.
From the gable end of Firgrove the fields slid gradually down until they were merged in a long, level stretch of meadow ground, through which was cut a deep, straight canal, whose waters reached like a shining silver belt across the emerald sward of the surrounding pasture-lands. Many a time Darby and Joan had sat on the garden wall watching the dingy barge-boat come and go. They had listened curiously to the voices of the man and boy on board chatting to each other, or shouting to the patient, plodding horse that towed along the clumsy craft, laden with this and that for the villages and hamlets that dotted the landscape thickly between Firdale and the far-off range of hills, which rose so proudly up to meet the sunset and the sky.
The October day was mild, and bright as days not always are, even in midsummer. Great gold-tinged clouds floated slowly across the high, wide dome of the azure sky. The hilltops were bathed in a warm, soft glow; the placid waters of the canal sparkled, dimpled, and smiled beneath the caress of the passing breeze, until they broke into tiny ripples and wavelets against their sedge-grown banks.
Along that silvery waterway they shall go, the children decide. Up there, beyond the hills, they say, rise the walls of the Beautiful City. That radiance is assuredly reflected from its streets of gold. Those big, fleecy clouds certainly curtain the approach to the portals of pearl!
Just then, emerging from behind a screening clump of trees, the Smiling Jane, as the dingy old boat was called, slowly hove in sight. They would run fast and coax the man to take them on board when he stopped to get his vessel through the lock; or, better still, they would slip in unnoticed when he was otherwise engaged. Without a thought of wrong, with never a qualm of fear as to failure or consequences, hand in hand they raced along in the direction of the canal, casting not so much as a glance behind.
And thus it came about that Darby and Joan set out to seek the Happy Land.