And there is one seat among the trees on which they very often rest. It is the rustic daïs on which Peggy was sitting with her dog that day, when quietly up behind her came the gentle lady with the snow-white hair.
Willie Randolph, Peggy’s old favourite, she is going to see frequently, also poor little Gourmie.
As for Molly. Oh, bless my soul, my dear young reader, I wouldn’t forget her for the world. She is a resident at Wycliffe now, and looks after the plate and the linen, and is just as happy as the twenty-first of June is long.
Molly says she is getting old. “Getting” you know, and Peggy smiles kindly on her when she says so. “And my poor back, Miss Peggy,” she says, “it do ache unkimmon sometimes, with that plaguey rheumatiz. But what can I expect, dear Missie. I be’s six-and-forty years o’ age. Ay, be I.”
I think myself that if Molly had said sixty-four instead of forty-six she would have been nearer the mark. The same figures, four and six, but the dear old lady had put the cart before the horse.
What matters it? Old Molly is happy.
Both Fitzroy and Johnnie are frequently down at Wycliffe enjoying a few days’ sport, for game abounds on the estate.
And right happy days these are. Johnnie is going into the Army. I am curious to know what sort of a soldier he will make. I shall keep my weather eye lifting, but I feel sure that if Johnnie doesn’t win the Victoria Cross it will be through no fault of Johnnie’s.
But the dear old life in wayside camp and caravan is not going to be altogether given up. No, because with her mother’s sanction Peggy is preparing for a grand tour right away from the beautiful New Forest in Hampshire to the wild grandeur of the Sutherland Highlands, far beyond the Caledonian Alps. Peggy’s caravan will be no longer the little one over the half-door of which she was leaning when we first made her acquaintance. It is to be the most spacious and the handsomest travelling car on the road, saloon-cabin and after-cabin. But Peggy’s mother will go also, and old Molly and Ralph as well.
Peggy has told me that she does not mean to do things by halves, and that not only shall Gourmie be one of the crew, but little Willie the violinist, and Fitzroy himself.