They stood at that part of the road which bridged one of the tributary streams that went down to the Wadron, losing itself for many yards where it crept among the bosky slopes nearest to the road, but making its course apparent by many a twinkle of quick water, and now and again by a crystal pool, overflowing among mossy stones and cascading where there was a broad steep rock. Again it disappeared among the wilderness of bramble, but when one looked for its continuation, its glistening, not directly downward, but many yards to one side, gave one a glad surprise.
And all its course was marked by primroses. The park through which it flowed was carpeted with primroses, and all the distance of the valley was tinted with ten thousand tufts. Only on one of the high banks of the parkland, where the pines stood in groups, was the brown earth covered with a haze of bluebells. Close though this bank was to the road, it was picked over with rabbit burrows, and when the girls came near there was a scurrying of brown and a flicker of white among the bluebells and the ferns.
“It is getting wilder and wilder,” said Rosa.
“Thank goodness!” added Priscilla. “It was the wisest thing that ever the owner did, to die and keep every one out of it for all these years.”
“Yes, so far as we are concerned,” said Rosa. “We have got more out of the place than any one else.”
“You would have been a visitor to the Manor in any case,” said Priscilla; “but what chance would I have had? Well, I might have come in under the shelter of your wing, not otherwise.”
“Perhaps the son’s wife might not have been so stuck up as the rest of the people in our neighbourhood,” remarked Rosa, consolingly.
Priscilla laughed.
“I think I should take their—their—standoffishness more to heart if you were not here, Rosa,” said Priscilla, thoughtfully “What shall I do when you go away?”
“Go away? I heard nothing about my going away.”