CHAPTER IX.
BY LERRYN WATER.
"O will you accept of the mus-e-lin so blue, To wear in the morning and to dabble in the dew ?" _Old Song_.
Miss Marty had duly visited the meadow and eaten and paid for her breakfast of bread and cream.

But she had eaten it in some constraint, sitting alone.

She had never asserted her position as the Major's kinswoman in the eyes of Miss Pescod and the ladies of Miss Pescod's clan, who were inclined to regard her as a poor relation, a mere housekeeper, and to treat her as a person of no great account.

On the other hand, the majority of the merrymakers deemed her, no doubt, a stiff stuck-up thing; whereas she would in fact have given much to break through her shyness and accost them.
For these reasons, the meal over, she was glad to pay her sixpence and escape from the throng back to the woodland paths and solitude.
The children by this time had grown tired of straying, and were trooping back to the village.

Fewer and fewer met her as she followed the shore; the two slumberers were gone from the mossy bank; by and by the procession dried up, so to speak, altogether.
She understood the reason when a drum began to bang overhead behind the woods and passed along the ridge, still banging.