So away they went to church, through mud and mire and water, with the nine collie dogs at their heels, and Mr McAllister bearing them company.
Fred and McAllister walked together in rear of the rest, conversing earnestly, for the latter was learned in theology, and the former dearly loved a philosophical discussion. Mr Sudberry and Lucy walked in advance. As he approached the well-known bush, the force of habit induced him almost unconsciously to pick up a stone and walk on tip-toe. Lucy, who did not know the cause of this strange action, looked at her father in surprise.
Whirr! went a black-cock; bang! went the stone, and a yell instantly followed, accompanied by a hat—it was his best beaver!
“Why, dear papa, it is Sunday!”
“Dear me, so it is!” The good man was evidently much discomfited. “Ah! Lucy dear, that shows the effect and force of bad habit; that is to say, of habit, (for the simple act cannot be called bad), on the wrong day.”
“You cannot call throwing your best hat in the mud a good habit on any day,” said Mrs Sudberry, with the air of a woman who regarded her husband’s chance of mending as being quite hopeless.
“It was only forgetfulness, my dear!” said the worthy man, putting his hat quite meekly on the back of his head, and pushing forward in order to avoid further remarks. Coming to a hollow of the road, they found that it was submerged a foot deep by the river, which had been swollen into a small lake at that spot. There was much trouble here. McAllister, with native gallantry, offered to carry the ladies over in his arms; but the ladies would not listen to the proposal, with the exception of Tilly, who at once accepted it gladly. The rest succeeded in scrambling along by the projecting stones at the base of the wall that ran alongside of the road, and gained the other side, after many slips, much alarm, and sundry screams.
“Oh, you darling!” cried Tilly, suddenly. She pointed to a hole in the wall, out of which peeped the most wide-awake weasel that ever lived. Its brown little head and sharp nose moved quickly about with little jerks, and its round lustrous black eyes seemed positively to glitter with surprise, (perhaps it was delight), at the Sudberry Family. Of course Jacky rushed at it with a yell—there was a good deal of the terrier in Jacky—and of course the weasel turned tail, and vanished like a flash of light.
When they came to the narrowest part of the pass which opened out of their own particular valley—Rasselas Vale, as Lucy had named it—Tilly was fortunate enough to set eyes on another “darling,” which, in the shape of a roe deer, stood, startled and trembling, in the centre of the pass. They came on it so suddenly that it seemed to have been paralysed for a moment. A shout from the imp, however, quickly dissolved the spell; with one graceful bound it cleared the wall, and was far away among the brackens on the mountain-side before the party had recovered from their delight and surprise at having met a real live wild deer, face to face, and not twenty yards distant, in this unexpected manner.
Nothing further occurred to arrest their progress to church, which was upwards of four miles from their home among the hills.