No one can tell the happiness of those four,
only slightly diminished by Armine's getting bogged on his way to the
golden river of king-cups, and his mother in going after him, till
Allen from an adjacent stump pulled them out, their feet deeply laden
with mud.
They had only just emerged when the strokes of a great bell came
pealing up from the town below; Allen and his mother looked at each
other in amused dismay, then at their watches. It was twelve
o'clock! Two hours had passed like as many minutes, and the boys
would be coming home to dinner.
"Ah! well, we must go," said Carey, as they gathered up their
armloads of flowers. "You naughty children to make me forget
everything."
"You are not sorry you came though, mother. It has done you good,"
said Allen solicitously. He was the most affectionate of them all.
"Sorry! I feel as if I cared for nothing while I have a place like
that to drink up delight in."
With which they tried to make their way back to the path again, but
it was not immediately to be found; and their progress was further
impeded by a wood-pigeon dwelling impressively on the notes "Take two
cows, Taffy; Taffy take TWO!" and then dashing out, flapping and
grey, in their faces, rather to Barbara's alarm, and then by Armine's
stumbling on his first bird's nest, a wren's in the moss of an old
stump, where the tiny bird unadvisedly flew out of her leafy hole
full before their eyes.
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