As a rule the others left Betty to find the answer to her own arguments, so she expected none from them.  She got none now.  They were all too busy and too hungry to argue.  Tony alone was not eating.  He was sitting with his pasty in one hand, while the other one was full of anemones that he had gathered on his way, intending to take them home to Fanny; but already the pretty delicate heads had begun to droop, and Tony was gazing with troubled eyes at them.  He loved flowers so much he could never refrain from gathering them, but the clasp of his hot little hand was almost always fatal, and then he was grieved and remorseful.

Kitty, watching him, knew well what was in his mind.  He looked up presently and caught her eye.

“I think I would put them in the river, if I were you, dear,” she said.  “You see we shan’t get home for hours yet, and they will be quite dead long before that.  If you put them in the river they will revive.”

“Won’t it be drowning them?” asked Tony anxiously.

“No; they will float.”

“I know what I will do,” he said, cheered by an idea that had come into his head.  He laid down his pasty and trotted down to the edge of the river.  In the wet sand he made little holes with his fingers, put the stems in the holes, and covered them up as though they were growing; then, greatly relieved, he returned and ate his pasty contentedly.

A pasty, even to a Cornish child, makes a satisfying meal, and when it is flanked by sandwiches, and apples, and a good draught of river water, there is no disinclination to remain still for a little while.  The four sat on quietly, and talked in a lazy, happy way of the present, the future, and the past—­of what each one hoped to be, and of Dan’s career in particular; whether he would go away to school, and where.  Aunt Pike came under discussion too, but not with that spirit of bitterness which would have been displayed at home, or before a less satisfying repast.  Here, in the midst of this beauty and peace, everything seemed different.  Wrongs and worries appeared so much smaller and less important—­any grievance was bearable while there was this to come to.

They talked so long that a change came over the aspect of the woods.  The sun lost its first clear, penetrating brilliancy, and took on a deeper glow.  Dan noticed it first, and sprang to his feet.

“Let’s move on,” he cried, “or it will be tea-time before we have done anything.”

“If we are going to have ham and eggs for tea,” said matter-of-fact Betty, “I think one of us had better order them soon, or Mrs. Henderson may say she can’t cook them in time.”

The appeal did not touch them so keenly as it would have done had their last meal been a more distant memory.  But, at the same time, the ham and eggs and cream tea was to be a part of their day, and they were not going to be deprived of it.  So they clambered up through the woods again till they reached the railway line, and strolled along it until they came to the farm.