"Hasn't it been delicious?" said Molly. "And my doll was chosen first. Lucy Bigg, with the rash on her face, got it. I wish little Sarah had had it. I do love Sarah so very much; but Sarah had yours, Ruth, with the real pocket and the handkerchief in it. That will be a surprise for her when she gets home. And that new gentleman was so kind about the teapots, wasn't he? He always filled mine first. He's coming to see me very soon, and to bring a curious black dog that he has of his very own, called—"
"Stop, Molly," said Ruth, as the donkey's head was being sawed round towards the blazing high-road; "let us go home through the woods. I know it is longer, but I can't stand any more sun and dust to-day."
"You do look tired," said Molly, "and your lips are quite white. My lips turned white once, before I had the measles, and I felt very curious inside, and then spots came all over. You don't feel like spots, do you, Cousin Ruth? We will go back by the woods, and I'll open the gates, and you shall hold the reins. I dare say Balaam will like it better too."
Molly had called her donkey Balaam, partly owing to a misapprehension of Scripture narrative, and partly owing to the assurance of Charles, when in sudden misgiving she had consulted him on the point, that Balaam had been an ass.
Balaam's reluctant underjaw was accordingly turned in the direction of the woods, and, little thinking the drive might prove an eventful one, Ruth and Molly set off at that easy amble which a well-fed pampered donkey will occasionally indulge in.
CHAPTER VI.
After the glare and the noise, the shrill blasts of penny trumpets, and the sustained beating of penny drums, the silence of the Slumberleigh woods was delightful to Ruth; the comparative silence, that is to say, for where Molly was, absolute silence need never be feared.
Long before the first gate had been reached Balaam had, of course, returned to the mode of procedure which suited him and his race best, and it was only when the road inclined to be downhill that he could be urged into anything like a trot.
"Never mind," said Molly, consolingly to Ruth, as he finally settled into a slow lounge, gracefully waving his ears and tail at the army of flies which accompanied him, "when we get to the place where the firs are, and the road goes between the rocks, it's downhill all the way, and we'll gallop down."