“Like so many sunbeams at play,” Mrs. Busson declared.
Early dawn had found Jack and Phil out in the hay-field, tossing the new hay with more energy than skill, and it had needed all Fay’s gentle persuasions to induce Hubert to attend to the most necessary details of his hurried toilette, before rushing out to join his brothers. As for Di, whose swiftness of foot, combined with her ruddy locks, had long ago earned her the title of “Scarlet Runner,” she too was up with the sun, or very nearly, and had found her way to the little stream which ran through the Crow-bell meadow, and was wading in its shallow waters in search of water-cress.
Little Marygold, her whole person, saving her head, concealed in a holland overall, was standing knee-deep in a tangle of sweet-briar, honeysuckles, climbing roses, and a score of sweet, old-fashioned blossoms which grew together to the left of the flower-garden, in a patch of rank disorder, under cover of which the “posy-border” melted into the orchard beyond, without making a too rude transition.
Marygold was supremely happy, searching the foxglove bells and the dew-brimmed cups of the lilies, in the fond hope of discovering some of those belated fairies, who, she firmly believed, took their night’s rest in these flowery shelters.
“There must be some somewhere,” she cried, in her clear, piping voice.
“Oh, Phoena, do come and help me to look for them.”
But though Phoena was not forthcoming, she was not far off.
For though she had left the house, intent on reaching a certain sainfoin field, whose brilliant blossoms gleamed bewitchingly in the early sunlight, her wanderings had been arrested after the first few yards. The sight of a wounded snail, crawling slowly, slowly even for a snail, along the ash-strewn path, which led from the back yard to the kitchen garden, had checked Phoena’s progress, who, wherever anything was sick or sorry, was a veritable sister of pity. Moreover, having lately heard about the snail’s marvellous faculty for mending its damaged shell, Phoena thought this was a favourable opportunity for seeing how this feat was performed. So, with the help of sticks and stones, she forthwith made it a hospital beneath the shade of a laurel bush. Converting her handkerchief into an awning above the sticks, Phoena conveyed her interesting patient into these specially prepared quarters, exhorting him to set to work at once on the repairing of his shell. She would gladly have foregone her breakfast for the pleasure of watching him, but she feared by so doing to draw public attention to her “anxious case.”
Accordingly, she reluctantly obeyed the summons of the loud breakfast bell, with the result, alas! that on her return, she discovered that the thankless snail, after the way of some vagrants, had decamped!
Out of the whole party, Andrew was the only “slug-a-bed,” and even he managed to be ready to go out by nine o’clock, having secured Faith’s attendance on himself as bearer of his butterfly net and sundry other things necessary to the success of his expedition.