“Well, you can ask Walter to come with
us. I daresay he will be very glad,” said his mother, calling back from the staircase, for she was in a hurry about some household affair.
Harry clapped his hands, and ran to tell Walter, who was equally overjoyed at the idea of going to Kingshaven with Harry. So they set to work and counted the weeks and days that must elapse until the holidays came round, and then they once more thoroughly overhauled the “good ship Rover” to see if it was water-tight and ready for its first voyage.
It would be literally its first voyage. Harry and Walter had tried the green tub that belonged to the nursery, but in vain. It was not nearly long enough. Cook would not let them try the fixed tubs in the laundry, and it was very doubtful if even they would have held the Rover.
The bath would have done so easily, and
longing eyes had often been fixed on it with that idea. But Mrs. Leslie was inexorable—no such dabbling among water, either hot or cold, was to be permitted; so the Rover still stuck high and dry in the nursery window.
II. THE SEA! THE SEA!
The midsummer holidays at last came round, and Mrs. Leslie, who had been busy packing up and arranging things for some weeks, now resolved to shut up the house for a whole month and, with the family, set off for Kingshaven.
It was a long way off—some thirty or forty miles—so it was quite like an adventure to Harry Leslie and his little brothers and sisters, and scarcely less so to Walter Hammond, who was to accompany them.
Dr. Hammond could not leave home on account of his numerous patients; and had it not been for this fine chance, Walter would have had only a few days in the country now and then. He was a good-tempered, sensible boy, and a pleasant guest in any household. Mr. Leslie would be able to go down with his family to Kingshaven; but was to leave them there and return to business, making his home for the time at a married sister’s house in Rosehampton. So everything seemed promising; and even Mrs. Leslie, naturally of a most anxious and troubled disposition, set off with hardly a cloud on her horizon.