MISS MOUSE 'AT HOME'
The next half-holiday came on a Saturday—the Saturday of that same week—and as the weather was lovely just then, Aunt Mattie begged her sister to allow the three elder boys to spend it at Caryll, as she had planned with Rosamond.
So it was arranged that, as soon as morning lessons were over, the four children should walk back together in time for early dinner at Rosamond's home. In one sense it was scarcely correct to call Saturday a half-holiday, as the boys did not go to the vicarage at all that day, though they were supposed to spend two hours at home in preparation of Monday's lessons.
By twelve o'clock they were all under way, Rosamond feeling not a little important at the prospect of acting hostess to the Hervey boys.
'How shall we go?' said Archie, as they stood on the drive for a moment or two looking about them.
'By the moor, of course,' said Justin at once, 'turning down the path that brings us out near the cross-roads—the way we go on middling days, you know,' he added to Rosamond.
'I think it would be more of a change to go all the way by the road,' said Pat. 'We've gone so much by the moor lately with its being so fine. You can't be wanting to see Bob again to-day, you'd quite a long talk with him on our way home yesterday.'
'As it happens,' said Justin, 'I do want to see him, and he'll be on the look-out for us,' and without saying more he turned towards the kitchen garden, from which a door in the wall opened on to the fields, beyond which lay the moor.
The others followed without saying anything more; cool determination to have your own way reminds one of the old saying that 'possession is nine points of the law'—it generally carries the day, as Justin had learnt by experience.
Rosamond did not care particularly which way they went, but she did mind Justin's masterful manner of settling things according to his own wishes, so there was a slight cloud over the little party following him, and some half-muttered 'too bads' and 'never lets us choose,' from Pat and Archie. But once out on the moorland the bright sunshine and fresh bracing air blew away all cobwebs of discontent.