As to Betsy--faugh! I need not
make myself uneasy about her; she knew what a civil word was worth
much better than I did.
He showed considerable affection for Clarence after a fashion of his
own, which we three perfectly understood, and preferred to anything
more conventional. Griff was always delightful, and he was
especially so on that vacation, when every one was in high spirits;
so that the journey is, as I look back on it, like a spot of
brilliant sunshine in the distant landscape.
Mrs. Fordyce kept house with her father-in-law, little Anne, and
Martyn, whose holidays began a week after we had started. The two
children were allowed to make a desert island and a robbers' cave in
the beech wood; and the adventures which their imaginations
underwent there completely threw ours into the shade.
The three ladies and I started in the big Hillside open carriage,
with my brothers on the box and the two fathers on horseback. Frank
Fordyce was a splendid rider, as indeed was the old rector, who had
followed the hounds, made a leap over a fearful chasm, still known
as the Parson's Stride, and had been an excellent shot. The
renunciation of field sports had been a severe sacrifice to Frank
Fordyce, and showed of what excellent stuff he was made. He used to
say that it was his own fault that he had to give them up; another
man would have been less engrossed by them.
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