“How interesting!” said Mrs. Parker.  “If I were you, I would go back to the old name:  there is a reverence about it there is not about the other.  Only think of bands of pilgrims coming across the moor there!”

“Yes, in their gowns and rope girdles, with wallets and scallop-shells,” said Bessie.  “It must have been a curious old world then:  one could sit here and muse by the hour on all that has come and gone.  I often bring up my work or my book here in summer and think of it.”

“I do like old things,” said Mrs. Parker, “and old families and old names.  Our name, for instance, has no smack of age about it, and it is so short and perky:  it must have been given to some one who had to do with parks.”

“But parks may be a very old institution,” said Bessie, “if we looked into the thing, though not so old as Forrester:  that is an ancient name,” glancing at Edwin, who was leaning against a sentry-box listening and watching the sun putting out the lights in his bed-chamber; “yet not nearly so ancient as Ormiston.  I always feel it is fitting we should live in an old castle, we are so ancient ourselves.”

“Are we?” said John:  “I never knew that before.”

“Ormiston,” she said, “is perhaps as pure a Saxon word as now exists.  It was during the Roman invasion our ancestor led an army through a dense mist against the invaders:  just as he came up with them the sun shone out and the mist.  The legions were taken by surprise, for the advancing enemy had been hidden by the mist, and they were utterly routed.  The Saxon king—­”

“What was his name?” asked John.

“John,” she said, “don’t seek to be wise above what is revealed.  The king called our ancestor to the front and made him earl of Ormiston on the spot—­’Gold-Mist-on;’ that is, ‘Be ever in the van;’ and a proud race were the earls of Ormiston, and well they answered to the name.  But their fortunes waned when the modern upstart, the Norman William, laid his greedy hands on everything for himself and his mob of pirates, and at present we are only middle-class people, but our blood must be the bluest of the blue.”

“Mine must be as blue,” said Edwin, “for the Forresters came in with the trees, and the trees were early settlers.”

“But the mists were first by a very long time,” answered Bessie.

“I don’t believe that story,” said John.  “I have read about the Cakeholy business somewhere, but you have made that Or-Mist-on affair out of your own head:  isn’t that true, Bessie?”

“I am not bound to answer unbelievers, John.”

“Besides,” said John, “Ormiston is far; liker French than Saxon.”

“Mr. Parker,” said Bessie, “there was an abbot John of Cakeholy who flourished in the thirteenth century:  his ghost is said to revisit its old habitation, or rather the place where it stood.  I should like to meet it and have a talk over things; it would be very interesting.”