“It might be, or it might not be, just as it happens,” answered Miss Campbell. “Felicia Rivers may have obtained a position as housekeeper. They do say that most of the lodging-house keepers in London were formerly housekeepers. But I wonder at any one’s engaging a great creature like that to look after his house.”
“And you won’t write home to mother and father that I have been naughty?” asked Nancy, embracing Miss Campbell.
“No, child, I won’t even scold this time. I strongly suspect that the ruin of your best hat was punishment enough.”
That night the Motor Maids had a serenade. A chorus of eight robust voices sang beneath their windows to an accompaniment of banjos and guitars. It began with “Nancy Lee” and the chorus of “Yo-ho-ho’s” nearly rocked the old building on its ancient foundations; and it ended with “The Moon Is Rising Slow, My Love,” sung with so much feeling and such wistful cadences that the four young girls kneeling at the windows, wrapped in shawls and dressing-gowns, shook with suppressed laughter. One of them blushed at the disquieting thought that eight hearts could be beating for her own self in unison.
The next morning Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids achieved a triumphal departure from the ancient city of learning. Eleven students of the Universities of Oxford gathered in front of the hotel and waved them a last farewell.
CHAPTER XVII.—AN INCIDENT ON THE ROAD.
No rain came to mar their excursion to Stratford-on-Avon, the home of Shakespeare. All day they lingered in the quaint, charming town and, under the spell of traditions and memories, their own identities seemed to fade into insignificance. Journeying thus, the most carefully brought up person may become a happy vagabond, without past or future and only a delightful present.
That night they slept in the town of Warwick and the next day explored the old city and the splendid castle, the ancient and stately home of the Earls of Warwick.
“It’s so beautiful and so what a castle should be, it makes me feel like weeping,” Mary exclaimed.
Feargus, who knew the country well, had conducted them to a bridge spanning the Avon, where just at sunset they took a last long look at the towers and battlements, the massive buttresses and walls of the historic place.