mine, but it wouldn't work," declared Ingred. "I
meant to tie my parcel to a balloon and then just lead it along by a
string. But I couldn't get a proper gas balloon for the business, and
that's what you ought to have."

"And suppose the wind were to blow it away from you, what then?"
inquired Miss Strong.

"I suppose I should have to cable it round my waist."

"Then you might be whisked up with it, and we should see you sailing off
into the clouds in a kind of aeroplane holiday instead of a walking
tour! I don't think we can patent your balloon dodge yet."

"What I want," said Kitty, "is a sort of child's light mail-cart
arrangement that I could wheel along. It's what Mother always says she
needs for shopping--a parcel-holder on wheels. Why doesn't somebody
invent one? He--or she (I'm sure it would be a _she_)--would make a
fortune."

"We might have borrowed a perambulator," said Belle, quite seriously,
"and have packed all our luggage into it."

"Oh, I dare say! And who would have wheeled it?"

"We could have taken it in turns."

"With long turns for the willing horses, and short turns for shirkers!
No, thanks! Better each to stick to our own."

"Besides which, forget stiles. We hope to try some field paths as well
as high roads," added Miss Strong. "Also I should decidedly have jibbed
at escorting a perambulator. Here comes the train! Let us make a dash
for an empty carriage and keep it to ourselves."

It was only a short journey to Carford, but it took them over twelve
rather uninteresting miles and put them down just at the commencement of
a very beautiful stretch of country where open uplands alternated with
wooded coombes, and where the stone-roofed villages were the prettiest
in the county.

Miss Strong, who had had some experience of mountaineering in
Switzerland, restrained the pace and kept them all at what she called a
"guide's walk."

"It pays in the long run," she assured them. "If you tear ahead at
first, you get tired later on, and we must keep fairly well together. I
can't have some of you half a mile behind."

The April days were still cold, but very bracing for exercise. Lambs
were out in the fields, primroses grew in clumps under the hedgerows,
hazel catkins flung showers of pollen to the winds, and in the coppice
that bordered the road pale-mauve March violets and white anemone stars
showed through last year's carpet of dead leaves. There was that joyful
thrill of spring in the air,