A Tale of the Summer Holidays

by Geraldine Mockler

"Well, don't run about much in the sun," nurse said, only half satisfied. "You are looking very pale. Put on your straw hat too; that little cap is of no use at all. And don't go eating any green apples or gooseberries. I expect you have been in the kitchen-garden this morning, and that is what is the matter with you."

But it was neither green apples nor gooseberries which had given Hal the very uncomfortable sensations from which he was suffering. That, however, he did not explain to nurse; and feeling very wretched and unhappy he wandered out into the garden, and flung himself under a big, shady elm-tree. The others were nowhere in sight, and he felt injured that they should, even after his conduct of the morning, have left him to himself.

"A nice, sociable set they are," he said moodily. "Oh dear, how I do wish that I had somebody sensible to play with!"

But though he chose to grumble, he knew perfectly well that he was not just then in the humour to appreciate any society, however sensible, and pillowing his head upon his arm he dropped off to sleep.

Meanwhile, Drusie had planned a busy afternoon for herself and the others, for they intended to go to the fort and make ammunition for Tuesday.

Few children had nicer grounds to play in than the Danvers children. The garden was very large, and besides the lawn and the winding walks among the shrubberies, which afforded such capital hiding-places when they played hide-and-seek, there was the large kitchen-garden as well. Beyond the kitchen-garden lay pleasant, sunny fields, at the foot of which flowed a small stream that farther down joined the river in which Jumbo had been so nearly drowned. On the other side of the stream lay a long slip of land which Mr. Danvers always spoke of as a waste piece of ground, and over which he sometimes threatened to send the plough. But partly because the ground was really too poor to be of much good, and partly because the children begged him to leave it alone, it had never yet been disturbed, and the Wilderness, as they had named it, remained theirs to all intents and purposes.

That the Wilderness was a brambly place could not be denied. It had originally been a grove of nut trees, and though some of these still flourished and bore nuts that had not their equal for size and flavour in all the country-side, they had for the most part been strangled by blackberry bushes and briers, and smothered by masses of wild clematis.

The fort stood in a corner of the Wilderness. Within a few yards of it on one side was the stream; on the other and at the back it was surrounded by densely-growing hawthorn bushes. But the front was open and exposed to attack, for a cleared space in which only a few scattered nut trees grew lay before it.