"That she does, in looks and voice, but she could not act here in public. However, we will lay it before the Mouse-trap. Was it printed?"

"Lance had enough for the performers struck off. Francie could send some up."

"After all," said Cherie, "the desert island full of savages and wreckers is not more remarkable than the 'still-vex'd Bermoothes'

getting between Argiers and Sicily."

"It _really was_ one of the Outer Hebrides," said Gerald, with the eagerness that belonged to authorship, "so that there could be any amount of Scottish songs. Prospero is an old Highland chief, who has been set adrift with his daughter--Francie Vanderkist to wit--and floated up there, obtaining control over the local elves and brownies.

Little Fely was a most dainty sprite."

"I am glad you did not make Ariel an electric telegraph," said his aunt.

"Tempting, but such profanity in the face of Vale Leston was forbidden, and so was the comic element, as bad for the teetotallers."

"But who were the wreckers?" asked Anna.

"Buccaneers, my dear, singing songs out of the 'Pirate'--schoolmaster, organist, and choir generally. They had captured Prospero's supplanter (he was a Highland chief in league with the Whigs) by the leg, while the exiled fellow was Jacobite, so as to have the songs dear to the feminine mind. They get wrecked on the island, and are terrified by the elves into releasing Alonso, etc. Meantime Ferdinand carries logs, forgathers with Miranda and Prospero--and ends--" He flourished his hands.

"And it wasn't acted!"

"No, we were getting it up before Christmas," said Gerald, "and then--"

He looked towards Clement, whose illness had then been at the crisis.

"Very inconsiderate of me," said Clement, smiling, "as the old woman said when her husband did not die before the funeral cakes were stale.

But could it not come off at the festival?"

"Now," said Gerald, "that the boy is gone, I may be allowed a gla.s.s of beer. Is that absurdity to last on here?"

"Adrian's mother would not let him come on any other terms," said Mrs.

Grinstead.

"Did she also stipulate that he was never to see a horse? Quite as fatal to his father."

"You need not point the unreason, but consider how she has suffered."

"You go the way to make him indulge on the sly."

"True, perhaps," said Clement, "but I mean to take the matter up when I know the poor little fellow better."

Gerald gave a little shrug, a relic of his foreign ancestry, and Anna proposed a ride to Clipstone to tell Gillian Merrifield of the idea.

"Eh, the dogmatic damsel that came with you the year we had 'Midsummer Night's Dream'?"

"Yes, sister to Uncle Bernard's wife. Do you know Jasper Merrifield?

Clever man. Always photographing."

So off they went, Gerald apparently in a resigned state of mind, and came upon dogs and girls in an old quarry, where Mysie had dragged them to look for pretty stones and young ferns to make little rockeries for the sale of work. 'The Tempest' was propounded, and received with acclamation, though the Merrifields declared that they could not sing, and their father would not allow them to do so in public if they could!

Dolores looked on in a sort of silent scorn at a young man who could talk so eagerly about "a trumpery raree-show," especially for an object that she did not care about. None of them knew how far it was the pride of authorship and the desire of pastime. Only Jasper said when he heard their report--

"Underwood is a queer fellow! One never knows where to have him.

Socialist one minute, old Tory the next."

"A dreamer?" asked Dolores.

"If you like to call him so. I believe he will dawdle and dream all his life, and never do any good!"

"Perhaps he is waiting."

"I don't believe in waiting," said Jasper, wiping the dust off his photographic gla.s.ses. "Why, he has a lovely moor of his own, and does not know how to use it!"

"Conclusive," said Gillian.

CHAPTER X. -- n.o.bLESSE OBLIGE

The other won't agree thereto, So here they fall to strife; With one another they did fight About the children's life.

Babes in the Wood.

"I say, Aunt Cherry," said Adrian, "the fossil forest is to be uncovered to-morrow, and Merrifield is going to stay for it, and I'm going down with him."

"Fossil forest? What, in the Museum?"

"No, indeed. In Ans...o...b.. Cove, they call it. There's a forest buried there, and bits come up sometimes. To-morrow there's to be a tremendous low tide that will leave a lot of it uncovered, and Merrifield and I mean to dig it out, and if there are some duplicate bits they may be had for the bazaar."

"Yes, they have been begging Fergus's duplicates for a collection of fossils," said Anna. "But can it be safe? A low tide means a high tide, you know."

"Bosh!" returned Adrian.

"Miss Mohun is sure to know all about the tides, I suppose," said Clement; "if her nephew goes with her consent I suppose it is safe."

"If--" said Mrs. Grinstead.

Adrian looked contemptuous, and muttered something, on which Anna undertook to see Miss Mohun betimes, and judge how the land, or rather the sea, lay, and whether Fergus was to be trusted.

It would be a Sat.u.r.day, a whole holiday, on which he generally went home for Sunday, and Adrian spent the day with him, but the boys' present scheme was, to take their luncheon with them and spend the whole day in Ans...o...b.. Cove. This was on the further side of the bay from the marble works, shut in by big cliffs, which ran out into long chains of rocks on either side, but retreated in the midst, where a little stream from the village of Ans...o...b.., or rather from the moorland beyond, made its way to the sea.

The almanacks avouched that on this Sat.u.r.day there would be an unusually low tide, soon after twelve o'clock, and Fergus had set his heart on investigating the buried forest that there was no doubt had been choked by the combined forces of river and sea. So Anna found that notice had been sent to Clipstone of his intention of devoting himself to the cove and not coming home till the evening, and that his uncle and aunt did not think there was any danger, especially as his constant henchman, Davie Blake, was going with him, and all the fisher-boys of the place were endowed with a certain instinct for their own tides. The only accident Jane Mohun had ever known was with a stranger.

Anna had no choice but to subside, and the boys started as soon as the morning's tide would have gone down sufficiently, carrying baskets for their treasures containing their luncheon, and apparently expecting to find the forest growing upright under the mud, like a wood full of bushes.

The cove for which they were bound was on the further side of the chain of rocks, nearly two miles from Rockquay, and one of the roads ran along the top of the red cliffs that shut it in, with no opening except where the stream emerged, and even that a very scanty bank of shingle.