“Why not!” cried Molly. You may be sure that she saw herself assisting in the rôle. “It’s a lovely day. Let’s start off at once.”
Antony had qualms of conscience. It was forbidden to go beyond the grounds.
“P’raps Granny wouldn’t like it,” he demurred. “P’raps I’d better ask her first. I think I haven’t got to be one this d’rectly minute, you know.”
Again Molly was frankly puzzled.
Then, once more, her brow cleared. She saw in the matter, though vaguely, some threat of possible punishment for misdemeanours. But here, assuredly, was actual opportunity to hand. It was too good to be let slip.
“Indeed, never mind,” she urged. “If they’ll be making you into a beggar any time, let’s just be beggars now, to show them we like it. We do like it,” she concluded, loftily magnificent.
“But,” argued Antony, “it won’t be nice to be a beggar.”
“Nice!” echoed Molly ecstatic. “Nice! why ’twill be real beautiful, it will. We’ll go in bare feet, and we’ll eat blackberries,—there’s a few ripe already,—and we’ll get apples from the orchards. Sure, it’s flint-hearted they’d be,” cried she on a note pathetic, “if they’d begrudge the bite of an apple to two hungry children. And we’ll be sleeping under a haystack, and we’ll paddle in the river, and—oh, we’ll have fine times, we will that.”
The river won the day.
Have you, I wonder, the faintest conception of its allurement? Can you see the water, clear as amber, rippling past mossy stones, feel its delicious freshness against bare feet, hear the gurgling music of its voice? Can you see the dragon-flies skimming its surface, the ragged-robin massed on its banks, the rushes standing proud and spearlike at its edge?