"I s'pose there are buckets 'round here. Oh, aren't you glad we came to Castle Cliff?" said Lucy, pirouetting around Jimmy.
"Bab will be glad, too," she thought. For Lucy never could look forward to any pleasure without wishing her darling "niece" to share it with her.
"Well, I guess we've seen everything there is to see," remarked Nate, who had now told all he knew and was ready to go.
While they still wandered about, talking of "tailings" and "nuggets," they were startled by the peal of a bell.
"Twelve o'clock! Two minutes ahead of time though," said Nate, taking from his pocket a handsome gold watch which Jimmy had always admired.
"What bell is that? Where is it?" they all asked. "And what is it ringing for?"
"It's on top of the schoolhouse and it's ringing for noon. 'Twill ring again in the evening at nine o'clock. But I can tell 'em they ought to set it back two minutes."
"A nine o'clock bell? Why, that's a curfew bell! How romantic!" cried Kyzie. She had read of "the mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells," but had never heard it. "Let's go to the schoolhouse."
As luncheon at the Templeton House would not be served for an hour yet, they kept on to the hollow where the schoolhouse stood. It was a small, unpainted building in the shade of three pine trees.
"Just wait a minute right here," said Edith, the young artist, unstrapping her kodak. "I want a snap-shot at it. Stand there by that tree, Jimmum. Put your foot out just so. I wish you were barefooted!"