“Wishing, Elsie? Well, you don’t look merry. What were you wishing?”
“I was wishing the old days were back again, when—when father was rich; before the awful fire came, and the plague, and everything. It has made us all old, I think. Wouldn’t you like father was rich again?”
“I am not certain; but wishes are not horses, you know.”
“No,” said Elsie; “only if it could even be always like this, and if you and Rupert and I could be always as we are now. I think that, poor though we are, everything just now is so pretty and so pleasant. But you are going away to the university, and the place won’t be the same. I shall get older faster than ever then.”
“Well, Elsie,” said Archie, laughing, “I am so old that I am going to make my will.”
Rupert put down his book with a quiet smile.
“What are you going to leave me, old man? Scallowa?”
“No, Rupert, you’re too long in the legs for Scallowa, you have no idea what a bodkin of a boy you are growing. Scallowa I will and bequeath to my pretty sister here, and I’ll buy her a side-saddle, and two pennyworth of carrot seed. Elsie will also have Bounder, and you, Rupert, shall have Fuss.”
“Anything else for me?”
“Don’t be greedy. But I’ll tell you. You shall have my tool-house, and all my tools, and my gun besides. Well, this room is to be sister’s own, and she shall also have my fishing-rod, and the book of flies that poor Bob Cooper made for me. Oh, don’t despise them, they are all wonders!”