"Don't go near thim ruins till after Saturday, when we will clean every dirty spalpeen out of the place like thunder on the mountains," cried Mike, who, like some other people, loved to round off his sentences with sounding expressions without troubling himself much as to whether they fitted the place or not.
"Thank you!" cried Prissy over her shoulder, with a sweet and grateful, but quite uninforming smile.
She continued on her way till Mike was out of sight, without altering her course from the straight road to the wooden bridge which led into the town of Edam. Then at the edge of the hazel copse she came upon a small footpath which meandered through lush grass meadows and patches of the greater willow herb to the Castle of Windy Standard. The willow herb flourished in glorious red-purple masses on the ancient masonry of the outer defences, for it is a plant which loves above all things the disintegrating lime of old buildings from which its crown of blossom shoots up three or four, or it may be even six feet.
She skirted the moat, green with the leaves of pond-weed floating like small veined eggs on the surface. From the sluggish water at the side, iris and bog-bean stood nobly up, and white-lilies floated on the still surface in lordly pride among the humbler wrack and scum of duckweed and water buttercup. The light chrome heads of "Go-to-bed-John" flaunted on the dryer bank beyond.
Prissy eyed all these treasures with anxious glances.
"I want just dreadfully to gather you," she said. "I hope all this warring and battling will be over before you have done blooming, you nice waterside things."
And indeed I agree with her, for there is nothing much nicer in the world than wayside and riverside flowers—except the little children who play among them; and nothing sweeter than a bairns' daisy-chain, save the fingers which weave it, and the neck about which it hangs.
Prissy had arrived within sight of the castle now. She saw the flaunting of the red republican flag which in staggery capitals condemned her parent to instant dissolution. She stood a moment with the basket on her arm in front of the great ruined gate. A sentry was pacing to and fro there. Bob Hetherington was his name, and there were other lads and boys lounging and pretending to smoke in the deep embrasures and recesses of the walls. Clearly the castle was occupied in force by the enemy.
Prissy stopped somewhat embarrassed, and set down her basket that she might have a good look, and think what she was to do next. As she did so she caught the eye of Nosie Cuthbertson, a youth whom Nipper Donnan permitted in his corps because his father had a terrier which was undoubtedly the best ratter in Edam. But the privilege of association with such a distinguished dog was dear at the price, for no meaner nor more "ill-set" youth than Nosie Cuthbertson cumbered honest Bordershire soil. Nosie was seated trying to smoke dry dock-leaf wrapped in newspaper without being sick, when his eye caught the trim little figure on the opposite side of the moat.
"Hey, boys!" he cried, "here's the Smith lass. Let's go and hit her!"