(Jessie.)
"Exactly like King Midas." (Babie.)
The exclusion from the grounds was a serious grievance, entailing
much loss of time and hindrance to the many who had profited by the
private roads. The Sunday promenade was a great deprivation; nurses
and children were cut off from grass and shade, and Mother Carey and
her brood from all the delights of the enchanted ground.
She could bear the loss better than in that first wild restlessness,
which only free nature could allay. She had made her occupations,
and knew of other haunts, though many a longing eye was cast at the
sweet green wilderness, and many regrets spent on the rambles, the
sketches, the plants, and the creatures that had seemed the certain
entertainment of the summer.
To one class of the population the prohibition only gave greater
zest-—namely, the boys. Should there be birds' nests in Belforest
unscathed by the youth of St. Kenelm's? What were notice-boards,
palings, or walls to boys with arms and legs ready to defy even the
celebrated man-traps of Ellangowan, "which, if a man goes in, they
will break a horse's leg?" The terrific bloodhound alarmed a few
till his existence was denied by Alfred Richards, the agent's son;
and dodging the keepers was a new and exciting sport.
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