It was quite impossible not to laugh, but Mrs. Trevor herself laughed as heartily as any one, and at last, by turning her round and round as if we were playing at blind man's buff, and catching up first one poodle and then another, we got her free.
And of course the wool looked none the worse!
That laughing set us all still more at our ease, and by the time we had sobered down, Hoskins appeared to announce tea. And after the kind Trevors had said good-bye and gone, Denzil set us off laughing again by announcing in his solemn way that he didn't believe Mr. Trevor was at all ill; he ate such a lot of buttered toast!
This affair of poor little Roughie was, I think, the most exciting thing that happened to us all that spring and summer at the Hut. And though everybody, starting with the good-natured wee man himself, forgave Esmé thoroughly, we were none of us allowed to forget it. For my dog behaved in the funniest way. Nothing for at least a fortnight would persuade him to leave my room, where he installed himself in what he evidently thought a fortress of security, under the bed. And he would only come out if I called him, and then expected me to hold him in my arms as if he were a baby, which, as you can understand, was not very convenient.
But by degrees he got over it, and became his own happy little self again.
I think it was the very day after this thrilling experience that we got another really cheering and hopeful letter from papa. And once this happier turn of things began, it kept on pretty steadily; the only drawback to our thankfulness being that he could name no date—no probable one even—for his return. So the lengthening days followed each other till we got to midsummer, and then came July and August, specially lovely months that year, during which the sun looked down on a busy and happy party in the queer encampment that was our home for the time.
In September Rolf left us for the big school he was bound for. We missed him sadly, though we had the cheering hope that his aunt would let him come to us again for the winter holidays.
And so she did!
A few days before Christmas he and Taisy—Taisy had spent the autumn with her grandmother—arrived again, together this time, though less like snails, as they had left their houses behind them when they went away. And some changes in the arrangements were made. Taisy had Geordie's room, and Geordie, to his great delight, took up his quarters in her waggon, as mamma did not like the idea of a girl's being outside—even though so near—through the long, dark nights. It was not a cold winter; it is never very cold at Eastercove, and where the Hut stands it seems even milder than higher up. So Rolf stuck to his tent, and was very pleased to have an excuse for keeping his patent stove going all the time. Those holidays came to an end only too soon.
In March, just about a year after he had left, came the news of papa's return being fixed for June. It all fitted in. The Trevors had taken the house for twelve months, and with the fine weather meant to go back to their own home in the north. And now there was no talk of letting our dear home again, or, as far as we could see, of ever leaving it except for pleasant reasons. But we kept the Hut just as it was, for papa to see. Rolf would not even have his tent moved till after that summer, and Taisy's waggon is to this day somewhere about the premises, and mamma still has her movable 'boudoir' wheeled about to different parts of the grounds, as it suits her.