We brushed our way down through the meadows, and father went straight to the place where the Grass of Parnassus had been growing when he was a boy. It was growing there still—and thriving too. We called on a big bumble-bee, of the kind that has its stinging end very blunt and red. It was not at home, but the hole in the bank which it had occupied thirty years ago was now let to a Rabbit family, the younger members of which scuttled away at our approach, though without too much alarm. We could see their tails bobbing among the ferns and undergrowth. And then we came to the Stepping-Stones. It was ten years since I had seen them, and then I was quite a little girl. But I remembered everything at once, even to the small starry green plants that grew beneath the water, and the sharp stones that get between your toes when you wade too far out. The woods were as green and as solitary as ever—cool too, and all the opposite ground elastic with pine-needles that were not nearly so uncomfortable for the bare feet as you would suppose. We waded for quite a long time, and then sat and ate our lunch on the big middle bowlder, alternately dabbling our feet in the clear olive-green water and drying them in the sunshine. Father told stories. No, I don't mean that he made them up—only that, as is usual at such times, all sorts of funny memories went and came in his head—all of the people about whom he told them as completely passed away as the orange-trousered bee we had gone so vainly out of our way to seek.

Then we went to the little farmhouse up the loaning, where they took us for ordinary tourists, and pointed out to us the sights. More than once I glanced at father, but he had so grave a face that the kind and pretty girl who showed us over evidently took him for a very severe critic of his own books, an enemy of dialect in any form. So, ceasing her legends, she offered us refreshments instead. After that we tramped away over the "Craigs" and the heather by the very little path along which father used to go his three-and-a-half miles along the lochside to school. I saw the Truant's Bathing-Place, the Far-Away-Turn, the Silver Mine (where once on a time father had found half-a-crown, and dreamed of it for years), and the Bogle Thorn, now sadly worn away since the days of the "Little Green Man." After that I kept on asking questions till we got to Laurieston, when I stopped, not because I had finished, but because tea was waiting for us. They called us names, and said that they had eaten up all the good things. But father answered, laughing, that it was written that man should not live by bread alone, and that what he had seen that day ought to suffice any one. But really I did not see that it made any difference to his appetite, and, for all they said, there were plenty of nice things left for us.

Then we came to Castle Douglas, and what I remember best is the big courtyard of the hotel, the noise and rattle of horses' hoofs passing through the narrow entry on to the street, the kind people who welcomed us, and the home-like air of everything about the "Douglas Arms," which I never have seen about an hotel before, though I had been in many.

Our journey was done. So it was quite proper that things should begin to look a bit home-like. We had quite a nice homecoming. Cissy Carter met us at the station in a pretty dark-blue dress, smartly belted in at the waist, but with some flour on her right shoulder. And when I asked her what she had been doing to herself, she answered in a matter-of-course tone, "Oh, only helping Elizabeth!"

"What Elizabeth?" I had the strength to gasp.

"Why, Elizabeth Fortinbras, of course," she answered, quite sharply for her; "whom else?" And this proved to me that the world had not been standing still in Edam while we were whirling through Father's Country at the tails of Jim's spanking chestnuts! I asked how about the pride of all the Davenant Carters, and if her father knew that his only daughter was assisting in a sweet-shop. Cissy held up her rounded chin with a pout that made me at least almost forget our noble family motto: "WE DO NOT KISS AT STATIONS!"

"I did not say that I was in the shop," said Cissy. "I am learning how to make pastry rise till it is flake-light. And even you, Miss Priscilla Picton Smith, could not do that without getting flour on your shoulder!"

Now I would quite well like to stop here, and, indeed, I could easily do so. For a Diary, however dear, is not like any other book. When you finish one year's doings, you just get another ruled book and start with January First again. Only it is explained to me that I must not quite do that. At any rate I must absolutely tell what became of my characters! Now this is awfully funny. For, quite different from all the other story-books I ever read—nothing at all happened to any of them. Cissy is not married. No more is Elizabeth Fortinbras. No more, thank goodness, am I. Hugh John can't be—not for a long time yet. As for Toady Lion, he upholds the honor of his country (and of the Benbow Dormitory) by not being sick on the stormiest seas—a thing which none of the rest of the family would even attempt.

But there is one thing that I must tell. It is just as well that I wrote down all about Torres Vedras, and the woods, and everything. For—sad it is to tell it—strange children dig and play there now. All our old beloved names for places and things and people would soon have been lost if they had not been written down in this book. We have set up a new home on the other side of the Edam Valley, and in some ways it is nicer. But in others it can never have the charm of the "Wampage," the "Scrubbery," the Low Park where the three bridges are, the Feudal Tower, and Picnicville, up among the Sentinel Pines! They make one's heart warm—only just the names of them said low in the heart, but now never spoken out loud by the tongue!

Our new house is on a hill, and not in the howe of a valley. From the front door (and almost from every window) we can see woods and fields, and far-away cows that are no bigger than ants. Then on the hills beyond are sheep that you cannot see at all without one of father's big glasses, such as only the boys can use. Beyond those, again, there are the mountains that run right away down into England in wave after purple wave, each bending over a tiny bit as if it were real water just on the point of breaking. Eastward and southward there are "Pens" and "Muirs" and "Cairns" without number, and out of the window on clear mornings, as I lie in bed, I can watch the tasseled larch and white-stemmed birch sending scaling-parties up every ravine and watercourse, while the big white clouds, hump-backed ones, sail majestically over all.