Peace was barely restored before voices were heard, and in came Fergus, bringing Alexis with him. They had met on the beach road in front of the works, and Fergus, being as usual full of questions about a crane that was swinging blocks of stone into a vessel close to the little pier, his aunt had allowed him to stay to see the work finished, after which Alexis would take him to join his sister.
So it came about that they all walked home together very cheerfully, though Gillian was still much vexed under the surface at Kalliope’s old-maidish particularity.
However, the aunts were not as annoyed at the delay as she expected. Miss Mohun said she would look out some papers that would be convincing and persuasive, and that it might be as well not to enrol Miss White too immediately before the Christmas festivities, but to wait till the books were begun next year. Plans began to prevail for the Christmas diversions and entertainments, but the young Merrifields expected to have nothing to do with these, as they were to meet the rest of the family at their eldest uncle’s house at Beechcroft; all except Harry, who was to be ordained in the Advent Ember week, and at once begin work with his cousin David Merrifield in the Black Country. Their aunts would not go with them, as Beechcroft breezes, though her native air, were too cold for Adeline in the winter, and Jane could leave neither her, nor her various occupations, and the festivities of all Rockstone.
It is not easy to say which Gillian most looked forward to: Mysie’s presence, or the absence of the supervision which she imagined herself to suffer from, because she had set herself to shirk it. She knew she should feel more free. But behold! a sudden change, produced by one morning’s letters.
‘Oh, Fergus! That’s not a thing to say,’ cried Valetta.
‘I don’t care! It is a beastly shame not to go to Beechcroft, and be poked up here all the holidays.’
‘But you can’t when Primrose has got the whooping-cough.’
‘And welcome; but you would find it bother you, I believe.’
‘I shouldn’t catch it. I want Wilfred, and to ride the pony, and see the sluice that Uncle Maurice made.’
‘Then I should stay there instead of coming back to school! I say it is horrid, and beastly, and abominable, and--’