'Perhaps they would have gone too far,' suggested Jasper, 'and then you would have to gnaw your hand like Giant Pope, as Wilfred says.'

'Catch me, while I could do something better.'

'If one only lived long enough,' speculated Fergus, 'one might find out what everything was made of, and how to do everything.'

'I wonder if the people did before the Flood, when they lived eight or nine hundred years,' said Fly.

'Perhaps that is the reason there is nothing new under the sun,'

suggested Valetta, as many a child has before suggested.

'But then,' said Mysie, they got wicked.'

'And then after the Flood it had all to be begun over again,' said Ivinghoe. 'Let me see, Methuselah lived about as long as from William the Conqueror till now. I think he might have got to steam and electricity.'

'And dynamite,' said Gillian. 'Oh, I don't wonder they had to be swept away, if they were clever and wicked both!'

'And I suppose they were,' said Jasper. 'At least the giants, and that they handed on some of their ability through Ham, to the Egyptians, and all those queer primeval c.o.o.ns, whose works we are digging up.'

'From the Conquest till now,' repeated Gillian. 'I'm glad we don't live so long now. It tires one to think of it.'

'But we shall,' said Fly.

'Yes,' said Mysie, 'but then we shall be rid of this nasty old self that is always getting wrong.'

'That little lady's nasty old self does so as little as any one's,'

Jasper could not help remarking to his sister; and Fly, pouncing on the first purple orchis spike amid its black-spotted leaves, cried--

'At any rate, these dear things go on the same, without any tiresome inventing.'

'Except G.o.d's just at first,' whispered Mysie.

'And the gardeners do invent new ones,' said Valetta.

'Invent! No; they only fuss them and spoil them, and make ridiculous names for them,' said Fly. These darling creatures are ever so much better. Look at Primrose there.'

'Yes,' said Gillian, as she saw her little sister in quiet ecstasy over the sparkling bells of the daffodils; 'one would not like to live eight hundred years away from that experience.'

'But mamma cares just as much still as Primrose does,' said Mysie. 'We must get some for her own self as well as for the church.'

'Mine are all for mamma,' proclaimed Primrose; and just then there was a shout that a bird's nest had been found--a ring-ousel's nest on the banks. Fly and her brother shared a collection of birds' eggs, and were so excited about robbing the ousels of a single egg, that Gillian hoped that Fergus would not catch the infection and abandon minerals for eggs, which would be ever so much worse--only a degree better than b.u.t.terflies, towards which Wilfred showed a certain proclivity.

'I shall be thirteen before next holidays,' he observed, after making a vain dash with his hat at a sulphur b.u.t.terfly, looking like a primrose flying away.

'Mamma won't allow any "killing collection" before thirteen years old,'

explained Mysie.

'She says,' explained Gillian, 'by that time one ought to be old enough to discriminate between the lawfulness of killing the creatures for the sake of studying their beauty and learning them, and the mere wanton amus.e.m.e.nt of hunting them down under the excuse of collecting.'

'I say,' exclaimed Valetta, who had been exploring above, 'here is such a funny old house.'

There was a rush in that direction, and at the other end of the wide home-field was perceived a picturesque gray stone house, with large mullioned windows, a dilapidated low stone wall, with what had once been a handsome gateway, overgrown with ivy, and within big double daffodils and white narcissus growing wild.

'It's like the halls of Ivor,' said Mysie, awestruck by the loneliness; 'no dog, nor horse, nor cow, not even a goose,'

'And what a place to sketch!' cried Miss Vincent. 'Oh, Gillian, we must come here another day.'

'Oh, may we gather the flowers?' exclaimed the insatiable Primrose.

'Those poetic narcissuses would be delicious for the choir screen,'

added Gillian.

'Poetic narcissus--poetic grandmother,' said Wilfred. 'It's old b.u.t.ter and eggs.'

'I say!' cried Mysie. 'Look, Ivy--I know that pair of fighting lions--ain't these some of your arms over the door?'

'By which you mean a quartering of our shield,' said Ivinghoe.

'Of course it is the Clipp bearing. Or, two lions azure, regardant combatant, their tails couped.'

'Two blue Kilkenny cats, who have begun with each other's tails,'

commented Jasper.

'Ivinghoe glared a little, but respected the sixth form, and Gillian added--

'They clipped them! Then did this place belong to our ancestors?'

'Poetic grandmother, really!' said Mysie.

'Great grandmother,' corrected Ivinghoe. 'To be sure. It was from the Clipps that we got all this Rockstone estate!'

'And I suppose this was their house? What a shame to have deserted it!'

'Oh, it has been a farmhouse,' said Fly. 'I heard something about farms that wouldn't let.'

'Then is it yours?' cried Valetta, 'and may we gather the flowers?'

'And mayn't we explore?' asked Mysie. 'Oh, what fun!'

'Holloa!' exclaimed Wilfred, transfixed, as if he had seen the ghosts of all the Clipps. For just as Valetta and Mysie threw themselves on the big bunches of hepatica and the white narcissus, a roar, worthy of the clip-tailed lions, proceeded from the window, and the demand, 'Who is picking my roses?'

Primrose in terror threw herself on Gillian with a little scream.

Wilfred crept behind the walls, but after the general start there was an equally universal laugh, for between the stout mullions of the oriel window Lord Rotherwood's face was seen, and Sir Jasper's behind him.

Great was the jubilation, and there was a rush to the tall door, up the dilapidated steps, where curls of fern were peeping out; but the gentlemen called out that only the back-door could be opened, and the intention of a 'real grand exploration' was cut short by Miss Elbury's declaring that she was bound not to let Phyllis stay out till six o'clock.

Fly, in her usual good-humoured way, suppressed her sighs and begged the others to explore without her, but the general vote declared this to be out of the question. Fly had too short a time to remain with her cousins to be forsaken even for the charms of 'the halls of Ivor,' or the rival Beast's Castle, as Gillian called it, which, after all, would not run away.

'But it might be let,' said Mysie.

'Yes, I've got a tenant in agitation,' said Lord Rotherwood mischievously. 'Never mind, I dare say he won't inquire what you have done with his b.u.t.ter and eggs.'