United States or British Indian Ocean Territory ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She was not sure how her father and mother would view the idea, but rather to her surprise they both readily acquiesced. "We shall have to get your grandfather to come over and hear you," said Mr. Haselford. "Oh yes! And may I ask Ingred to stay with us for the week-end? You see, she can't come all the way from Wynch-on-the-Wold for Sunday recitals, and it's entirely owing to her that I'm playing.
Ingred, after a blissful week-end, returned to Grovebury by the early train on Monday morning, and, wrenching her mind with difficulty from the interests of Wynch-on-the-Wold, focused it on school affairs instead. There was certainly need of mental concentration if she meant to make headway in the College.
Many people who had been friendly in the Rotherwood days did not trouble to come so far as Wynch-on-the-Wold to pay calls, and the numerous invitations which had formerly been extended to the young folks decreased this Christmas to very few. First and foremost amongst these scanty festivities came Mrs. Desmond's dance.
It was arranged by the team, and for any girls from the college who cared to come as spectators, to meet at the railway station at 10:15, and travel together under the escort of Miss Giles. Ingred, who was a keen player, and very proud of having been placed in the reserve, was to spend Friday night at the hostel, instead of returning as usual to Wynch-on-the-Wold.
"If we'd been living in Grovebury," she remarked, "we should probably have taken a jaunt to Wynch-on-the-Wold as a special treat. Let us think ourselves lucky in being on the spot and only having to turn out of our own door to be at once in such lovely scenery. It's like having a country holiday at Christmas instead of midsummer a thing I always hankered after and never got before!"
The realization of them is worth far more than anything that money can buy, for it's the 'joy that no man taketh from you. I have grown to love Wynch-on-the-Wold so dearly that I shall beg Father to keep on the Bungalow as a country cottage, and I shall run out here for holidays when I feel Rotherwood is too much for me, and I want to be alone for a while with Nature."
The scenery was very beautiful, for trees edged the river, and clothed the slopes till they gave way to the gorse and heather of the wild moorlands. Wynch-on-the-Wold was a hamlet which, since the opening of the electric railway, was just beginning to turn into a suburb of Grovebury.
The Saxon family had squeezed themselves and certain of their possessions into the little home at Wynch-on-the-Wold, and while flowers still bloomed in the garden and apples hung ripe on the trees it seemed a kind of continuation of their summer holiday; but as the novelty wore off, and stormy weather came on, their altered circumstances began to be more evident.
I felt as if it wasn't half good enough," answered Bess, giving a nervous little shiver now that the ordeal was over. When Ingred returned to Wynch-on-the-Wold next Friday afternoon she found the family had some news for her. Old Mr. Haselford had been to Mr. Saxon's office, and had confided to him a scheme that lay very near to his heart.
She had to take a tram to the Waterstoke terminus, then change on to a light electric railway that ran along the roadside for seven miles to Wynch-on-the-Wold. Grovebury, an old town that dated back to mediæval times, lay in a deep hollow among a rampart of hills, so that, in whatever direction you left it, you were obliged to climb.
Word Of The Day