“Hold your tongue,” said Mrs. Busson, “I’d a deal sooner break all my own. Just you go down in a minute, Ruth, and take a birds’-eye view of the little dears, to make sure they are going on all right.”
Ruth did go, and brought back a very satisfactory report.
“They’ve all settled down as quiet as lambs,” she declared, “Miss Fay’s needle-working, Miss Di seems writing a letter, Miss Phoena’s got a book, and all the young gentlemen look like going to sleep.”
“Bless their dear hearts, they must be just a picture for good behaviour,” said Mrs. Busson fervently; and so they were, at any rate at the moment when Ruth saw them.
“Beware of the bluest sky,” says the old adage, and the picture of good behaviour in the Cuckoo-copse was alas! not painted in durable colours. Di was the first to break the sleepy silence which had reigned at most for ten minutes.
“I say, boys,” she began, “isn’t this just the sort of copse to make exploring expeditions in?” and, heedless of Fay’s imploring look, signifying that she would do well to let “sleeping boys” lie, Diana proceeded to demonstrate how twenty travellers at least might set out in as many different directions, without interfering with each other’s field of enterprise.
“Oh! yes, oh! yes,” cried the younger children, “let’s start exploring.”
“P’raps we’ll find some more buried gardens,” suggested Hubert.
“Or earfmen, little earfmen,” shrieked Marygold.
Even Phoena dropped her book, fired by a sudden desire to hunt an ant’s nest.