With such talk, the strong, healthy young folk little heeded the surface mud or the lanes. Even Dolores when she heard her father’s name in the reminiscences,’ was interested for a time, and was always hoping that the others would fly off and leave her to her uncle; but she was much less used to country mud and stout boots than the others, and she had been very much tired by her expedition on the previous day, so that she had begun to find the way very long before they came out on an open green, with a few cottages standing a good way back in their gardens, and as their centre, one of the great old coaching inns of past days, now chiefly farmhouse, though a sign, bearing a golden bugle-horn upon a blue ground, stood aloft in front of it, over the heads of the speckled mass of tan, black, and white, pervaded with curved tails, over which the scarlet-coated whips kept guard, while shining horses, bearing red coats and black coats, boys, and a few ladies, were moving about, and carriages drew up from time to time. There was a long standing about, and Colonel Mohun, being a stranger there himself, kept his flock on the outskirts, only Jasper plunging in, at sight of a mounted schoolfellow, while Gillian and Mysie told the names of the few they recognized. At last there was a move, and Jasper came back to point out the wood they were going to draw, close at hand. Should they not all go on and see it? ‘Oh! let us! do come, Uncle Regie,’ cried Mysie and Val. ‘Look here, Gill,’ said the uncle, ‘this child doesn’t look fit to go any farther.’ ‘I’m very tired, and so cold,’ said Dolores. ‘Yes,’ said Gillian, ‘we ought to go home now.’ Not me! not me;’ cried the other two girls; ‘Uncle Regie will take care of us.’ ‘I think you must come,’ said Gillian, ‘mamma said you had better come home when I do.’ ‘Yes,’ said Wilfred, ‘we don’t want a pack of girls to go and get tired.’ ‘We shall go into all sorts of places not fit for you,’ said Jasper; ‘you wouldn’t come back with a whole petticoat among you.’ ‘And Val would be left stodged in a ditch for a month of Sundays,’ added Wilfred. ‘I am afraid we had better part company, Gill,’ said the colonel. ‘I would take you on a little further, but this poor little Londoner won’t have a leg to stand upon by the time she gets home.’ ‘More shame for her to come out to spoil our fun,’ muttered Valetta, too low for her uncle to hear. ‘Mamma will think we have gone quite far enough, thank you, uncle,’ said the sage Gillian, ‘and I think Fergus had better come too.’ ‘That he had,’ said Jasper. ‘Fancy him over Peat Hill.’ ‘He’ll be left behind to be picked up as we come back,’ said Wilfred. ‘No, no, no! I can keep up better than you can, Wil! Take me, Uncle Regie.’ The little boy was so near a howl that good-natured Colonel Mohun’s heart was touched, and he consented to let him come on, though Jasper argued, ‘You’ll have to carry him, uncle.’