Dr. Carlyon groaned and shook his head despairingly.
“If I am not driven crazy first with trying to answer your questions,” he said, “I will take you one day soon to that very place, and then you will see for yourself that it is sea, and not sky.”
“But supposing it isn’t all sea, but some of it is sky, and we didn’t know it, and all got lost!” Priscilla looked up at her father with big, awed eyes. “I shall hold on to you all the time, father.”
“Very well. I’ll promise you we won’t walk through the clouds by mistake, and if they do catch us and wrap us round, we will all be wrapped round together.”
CHAPTER III
ON THE ROAD TO LANTIG
BY the time Dr. Carlyon and the children had finished discussing the sea and the sky, they had reached the end of the level high ground and come to a steep descent, at the bottom of which was another little stretch of level road, and then a long, long, rather steep hill up—Lareggan Hill it was called. The country around Trelint was very hilly indeed; as a rule, if you weren’t going up a hill you were going down one. Betsy trotted down now in fine style, and along the bit of level ground, and the pace at which she went carried her a little way up the hill before her, but not far. She considered she had done her duty when she had trotted up a little way, and was at perfect liberty to crawl up the rest of it at her own pace.
As soon as they slackened speed Priscilla looked up expectantly; it was always her duty to drive up the hills when she was out with her father, while he read aloud. As a rule, Dr. Carlyon handed the reins over to her at once, and took out his book. He was a great reader, and a very busy man, and unless he read while on his rounds he would have been scarcely ever able to do so at all. When Hocking was driving him he read “to himself,” but when Priscilla was his companion he almost always read aloud to her. Priscilla loved these readings and these drives more than anything, for though there was often much that she could not understand, there was also a great deal that she could, and some that she put her own meaning to, and some that her father explained.
But to-day Dr. Carlyon forgot to hand over the reins. Perhaps he was still busy thinking of the answers to Priscilla’s questions, or perhaps Loveday and her pink parasol made things seem different. At last, after looking at him questioningly for a few moments—as well as she could, that is to say, with Loveday between them—she reached out her hand and touched the reins.