Oh, what fun they had together in the oak parlour! Oh, the shouts of ringing laughter and the merry jest of words! Now and then Dick would bring home with him his special friend, Archie Trollope, and what a night would follow,—Winnie entering into their games with all the zest of her tomboy nature.
She never felt solitary or out of place in the company of these two boys; and they—why, they looked upon her as one of themselves: Dick describing her to his numerous companions as being a "tip-top" girl, and Archie singing her praises loudly to his own sisters who never knew what it was to join in a madcap frolic, and whose voices were strictly modulated to society pitch.
Sometimes, in the long winter evenings, the trio, tired with play, would lower the gas, and gathering round the large, blazing fire, tell ghost stories with such thrilling earnestness that often the ghastly phantoms seemed to merge almost into reality, and they found themselves starting at a falling cinder or the sound of a footstep in the passage outside. On those occasions the window-blind was usually drawn up to the top, that the pale, glimmering moonlight might stream in; and as the soft silvery beams stole silently into the room and laid their tremulous light on the young forms and awestruck faces, the flames leaping and crackling joined in enhancing the effect of the story by throwing on the walls weird shadows of a moving spectral band.
But the winter days were yet to come, though the cold autumn winds and falling leaves heralded their sure approach; and this evening Winnie and Dick were engaged—not in wandering hand in hand into wonderland, but in the prosaic occupation of making toffy.
Winnie, enveloped in one of nurse's huge bib-aprons, stood at a little distance from the fire, busily studying a book of recipes; while Dick, his honest face burnt to the colour of a lobster, was bending over a saucepan and stirring manfully the tempting contents.
"Yes," said the young lady, laying aside the well-thumbed volume and taking a step forward, "the quantities are correct. I am sure this will be excellent toffy, but—Dick, you shocking boy! whatever are you doing? Licking the spoon, I declare. How very vulgar!" and Winnie opened her eyes in horrified amazement at her brother's lack of good-breeding.
"Well, you see, Win," replied the culprit meekly, "you so often make mistakes and put in some awful compound that I am obliged to guard against being poisoned. Having a sincere affection for life, and not being like Portia 'aweary of this great world,' I consider it my duty to take all due precautions, and therefore pardonnez-moi for tasting the toffy."
The young cook drew her slight figure up and said with an air of offended dignity, "I flatter myself that I am quite capable of making excellent toffy, Richard Blake, and am well aware as to the proper ingredients."
"Doubtless," with a sweeping bow, "but 'accidents will happen in the best-regulated families;' and I remember how you substituted salt for sugar the last time, and apparently never discovered your mistake till you had dosed me with some of the vile concoction. It was cracking stuff, I can assure you." Here Dick became thoroughly convulsed at the remembrance of that disastrous night, and laughed so heartily that Winnie fled to the rescue of her beloved toffy, and seized the spoon from her brother's swaying hand.
"What an object you look!" she said scornfully, stirring the clear brown liquid and inhaling its savoury odour with intense satisfaction. "I don't see anything to laugh at;" and she began to hum the tune of an old nursery rhyme, as if utterly indifferent to both Dick and his laughter.