"It would have been better," Kink said, "if your uncle had handed you the license right away--not made a mystery of it.""Oh, no," said Hester.
As it happened, they were destined not to reach Evesham that day, for at Abbots Salford Moses cast a shoe, and that meant the blacksmith and delay.
When the accident was discovered, and the children were surrounding Moses and helping Kink in his examination of the hoof, a farmer who was walking by stopped and joined them.He asked the trouble, and offered them his advice.
"You put your caravan in my yard there," he said, pointing to a beautiful gateway just ahead, "and you make yourselves comfortable there while the horse is being shod.I'll show you the house if you like," he added; "it's very old, and haunted too, and there's a grand boatingplace at the weir just across the meadows.Don't worry about the horse or anything.
If you go to bed early and get up early, it will come to the same thing as if you had gone right on."Everyone except Robert, who liked to see his time-tables obeyed, and perhaps Gregory, who had been deprived for some days of his office of asking leave for a camping-ground, and was now balked again, was glad of the mischance that brought camp so early, and Hester was wild with pleasure, for Salford Hall is an old mansion of grey stone, built three hundred years ago, and now mysterious and, except for a few rooms, desolate.It has also an old garden and a fish-pond, and a little Roman Catholic chapel whose altar-candles have been alight for centuries.
The farmer was very kind.He gave the children leave to go anywhere and everywhere, but they must not, he said, run or jump, because the floors were not strong enough.He led them from room to room, to the dancing-gallery in the roof.
There was a very old bagatelle-table in one room, all moth-eaten, and a few old pictures still on the walls--a knight and his lady with Elizabethan ruffs, and a portrait of a greyhound.From a top window the farmer showed them Evesham's bell-tower.
But the most exciting moment was when each of them in turn was allowed to hide in the priest's hiding-hole.This was a very ingenious cupboard behind a row of shelves intended to have books or china on them, which swung back when you loosened a catch.Hester crouched here and shut her eyes, and firmly believed that the Protestants were after her.
In her next letter she implored her mother to take the Hall, and live there in the summer."I am sure," she wrote, "it would be very cheap, because it is so shabby and is crumbling away in many places.I would gladly live in the priest's hiding-hole always.Please think about it seriously."Afterwards the farmer showed them the way down to the weir, over the railway, and advised them to have the caravan taken down there, and sleep there that night near the rushing water.
"You couldn't have done it two months ago," he said.
"Why not?" Robert asked.
"Guess why," said the farmer.
And will you believe it, none of them could guess.
"Because it was flooded," said the farmer."In winter it's often just a great lake, from the railway at the foot of our garden right to the Marlcliff Hills."And so Moses (with a beautiful new shoe) was put into the shafts again, and they went gently over the soft green meadows to the weir, and there they had their supper, and explored the mill and the shaggy wood overhanging it, and rowed a little in a very safe boat, and stood on the little bridges, and watched the rushing water, and then walked slowly beside the still stream higher up as the light began to fade, and surprised the water-rats feeding or gossiping on the banks--none of which things could they have done had Moses had the poor sense to retain his near fore-shoe.
