Part 9 (1/2)
”Cherry ja-pan,” Aunt Mary was saying ”That will be a treat for you, Mollie, my dear”
CHAPTER IV
The Treasure-hunters or The Duke's Nose
”Cherry jam is certainly very _runny_,” said Aunt Mary at tea-tiooseberries into it?” Mollie asked rather dreamily, as she tried in vain to spread her scone tidily
”Gooseberries! Why, no; I never thought of it It ood idea”
”Or red currants?” Mollie went on
”Red currants! Bless the child! I didn't know you were a cook, Mollie”
”Neither I a herself up to the fact that she was back in Chauncery, and ue Why was it, she wondered, that she forgot Chauncery so ot the children when she was at Chauncery? ”I once heard a person say they put gooseberries and red currants into cherry jam, and I suddenly remembered,” she told Aunt Mary
”Well, it is too late for cherries, but I will try it for the strawberries to- experihts about the cherry garden and its occupants into the background, and gave her wholea little tired of jig-saw
But when that was over, and Grannie was absorbed in casting on a stocking-top with an intricate pattern, while Aunt Mary wrote letters, she began again to think and wonder about her curious journey, which for soe to-day than it had done yesterday She pondered over ways and h, ”or whatever you call it when you travel in Tiht be the best word I do _wish_ I could tell Aunt Mary”
She looked thoughtfully at her aunt, whose head was bent over her writing, the shtly in the larown-ups would scoff at her tale if she told it, Mollie thought Grown-up people as a rule love best to jog along on well-trodden, safe, commonplace paths, and avoid adventurous by-ways, but Aunt Mary, Mollie felt sure, was an anti-jogger, so to speak, and would always choose adventures if she had a choice ”It's funny to think,” Mollie reflected, ”that she can't be so very er than Mrs
Campbell is--was--is--was then I suppose she is about thirty-five, and Mrs Cah to be Aunt Mary's ; she can beat htfully keen on aeroplanes; I'm sure she would fly if it weren't for Grannie I wonder why she never got e of sentiment, but now and then she reached forward a little and surveyed its possibilities, and now she paused awhile to , however; she decided that Aunt Mary le, and returned to the et dick into the Ca
”Grannie, raphs?” she asked ”dick has a way of copying thes, and the old-fashi+oned ones are the prettiest”
”By all means, if he will be careful,” Grannie answered, nine-tenths of herfixed on her new pattern and only one-tenth upon her grandchild's peculiar fancy for Victorian photographs So Mollie wrote a short letter to her brother, enclosing the group which had worked the ic char post-bag with a sigh ”If that doesn't do it I _can't_ think of anything else,” she said to herself
It is remarkable how quickly one beco more use of her hands and head because she could not use her feet She was fond of writing, and decided next e adventure while it was still fresh in her mind In the intervals of other plans for her future career she had drea a writer of books, but her difficulty hitherto had been that the usual sort of book is so ordinary, and she had never been able to think of anything reraphy of a person who could live in various periods of the Christian Era ht, if only people would believe that it was true The trouble was thatit, ”and anyone can _invent_ any old thing And this is only the beginning of hly learnt how to Tio back much further--perhaps to the French Revolution, and watch people being guillotined”
She scribbled diligently in the thick exercise-book, which Aunt Mary produced without once asking what it anted for ”It just shows--”
Mollie ratefully; ”some people would have teased me to death”
And so tiain in the usual inevitable way, and Mollie lay expecting Prudence as cal fro the pages in search of a new photograph, when in the twinkling of an eye Prue was there
”We don't need that now,” she said, ”but we must have Aunt Mary's tunes Where is she?”
”Oh dear, dear, I forgot!” Mollie cried in dis strawberry jaooseberries and red currants, and her head will be full of theet otten At that very an--a tune Mollie kneell this ti it in London:
”Oh, darkies, how roeary, Far from the old folks at home”