Nelly was as much delighted as her brother; perhaps more so, but she had a different way of expressing it. She felt as she sat on a mossy bank, holding Joe's rough and horny hand within both her own, and looked away up the long avenues between the trees, and watched the dancing sunlight that was sifted down in golden patches, and listened to the dreamy murmur of the summer's wind through the leafy trees, mingling with the song of birds and the lowing of the cattle in the distant fields, as if she could have cried for very joy. It was all so solemn, and yet so delightful, so awe-inspiring and yet so gladsome, that she hardly knew whether to laugh outright, or hide her face on Joe's shoulder and have a good cry.
Benny, however, decided the matter for her. He had been wandering no one knew whither, and Joe was beginning to think that it was time to go off in search of him, when they heard him shouting at the top of his voice,—
"Joe, Joe! Golly! Make haste—quick, d' ye hear? Thunder!"
Judging by the tone of his voice, as well as by his words, that he was in a difficulty of some kind, Joe and Nelly started off in the direction from whence the sound came. They had not gone far, however, before they espied our hero, and at sight of him Joe stood stock-still and held his sides. For there was Benny suspended by his nether garment to the branch of a tree, and striking out with his hands and feet like a huge octopus in a frantic and vain endeavour to recover a horizontal position.
He had gone out on this branch, which was not more than six feet from the ground, for some unknown purpose, and, missing his hold, he slipped, and would have fallen to the ground but for the friendly stump that held him suspended in mid-air.
"Joe! Oh, do come! Murder and turf! D' ye hear? What's yer larfin at? Are 'e moon-struck? Oh—h—!" he shrieked out at the top of his voice, still going through most unheard-of gymnastic exercises, and vainly trying to raise his head to the level of his heels.
To make the matter worse, a young gentleman passing at the time inquired of Benny, with a very grave face, "Whether his was a new method of learning to swim on dry land? If so, he thought he had got the action nearly perfect, the only thing required was to keep his head just a trifle higher."
By this time, however, Joe had come to his relief, and easily lifted him down without further mishap.
The young gentleman tried to poke some more fun at Benny, but he would not reply, and soon after set off with Joe and Nelly to get some dinner. After dinner they took a ramble across the fields, in the direction of Raby Mere. Benny's adventure had rather sobered him, so he did not object to assist his sister in gathering wild flowers, while Joe artistically arranged them into what seemed to the children to be a magnificent bouquet.
Fleet-footed indeed were the hours of that long summer's afternoon. Benny wished a thousand times that the day could last for ever; and Nelly, though she was getting tired, watched with a look of pain in her eyes the sun getting farther and farther down in the western sky.