her basket full of the soft, loamy soil; the girls
roamed up and down making up bouquets of wild roses, honeysuckle, and
fragrant meadowsweet; the boys were blissfully happy, risking life and
limb in an exciting endeavour to travel from top to bottom of the bank
without once touching grass. An occasional tree-trunk was permitted as
a foothold, otherwise you swung yourself from one branch to another, or
took flying leaps into space, and trusted to fate to catch hold of
something before you fell.

Russell's hairbreadth escapes would have terrified his mother had she
been there to see, but the boys were wise in their generation and had
quietly worked their way round to the opposite bank before beginning
their experiments. It took a considerable time to call them back and
rally forces in time to catch the eight o'clock train, and it was a
dishevelled and by no means aristocratic-looking party which climbed
over the high stone stile leading into the high-road.

It seemed hard luck that this last mile, when every one was feeling
tired and a trifle flat, should have to be traversed along a dusty,
uninteresting road, and the straggly line grew even farther and farther
apart as the distance to the station decreased. Dan led the way,
walking in the middle of the road, his head flung back with the old
proud air of detachment. The two mothers plodded steadily in the rear.
Russell, scratched and dusty, and looking more like a street arab than a
youth renowned for gentlemanly demeanour, scuffled in the gutter,
kicking up the gathered dust which enveloped him as in a cloud; Harry
and John bore the big hamper slung on a stick, the ends of which they
frequently released for the purpose of straightening their backs and
rubbing their tired hands. Plain Hannah limped on the sideway, being
afflicted with corns which, as she expressed it, always "came on" at the
end of a day's pleasuring. Vie and Clemence, arm-in-arm, were deep in
sentimental conclave. Darsie, the last of the line, hung back of intent
until a curve in the road hid the others from sight. A shadow of
melancholy had descended upon her spirit during the last hour; that fear
of "the last time" which at times makes cowards of us all, was strong
upon her; the possibility of separation suddenly became a terror which
gripped her breath and left her faint and weak.

Mother--Father--Home! The dear delights of the sea. Could she--could
she _bear_ to give them up? Darsie wh