Chapter 6

Next day, after lunch, when the Duchess had retired to her room, George took Bee by the hand.
“Come along,” he said to her.
“Where?”
“Hush!”
They went down the stairs and crossed the courts. When they had passed the gate Bee asked a second time where they were going.
“To the lake,” George answered decisively.
The mouth of the stupefied Miss Bee gaped. Was it sensible to go that distance, and in satin slippers? For her slippers were of satin.
“We must go there, and we need not be sensible.”
Such was the lofty answer given by George to Bee. She had put him to shame, and now she pretended to be astonished. It was now his turn to refer her disdainfully to her doll. Girls goad a man into adventures, and then draw back. Her behaviour was disgraceful. She might stay behind, but he would go himself.
She took him by the arm. He pushed her away. She flung herself round the neck of her brother.
“Little brother!” she said sobbing, “I will follow you.”
Her repentance was complete, and it moved him.
“Come along,” he said, “but do not let us go by the town, we might be seen. We had better follow the ramparts and reach the high road by a short cut.”
They went holding each other by the hand. George explained the scheme he had drawn up.
“We will follow the road we took to go to the Hermitage; we are certain to see it as we saw it last time, and then we will go straight to it across the field in a bee-line.”
In a bee-line is a pretty country way of saying a straight line, but the name of the little maid occurring quaintly in the idiom made them laugh.
Bee picked flowers growing by the ditch: flowers of the mallow and the mullein, asters and oxeyes, making a posy of hem; the flowers faded visibly in her little hands, and they looked pitiful when Bee crossed the stone bridge. As she did not know what to do with her posy, the idea occurred to her of throwing them in the water to refresh them, but she preferred to give them to the ‘”Headless Woman.”
She asked George to lift her in his arms to make her tall enough, and she placed her handful of country flowers in the folded hands of the old stone figure.
At a distance she turned her head and saw a dove on the shoulder of the statue.
They walked some time, and Bee said:
“I am thirsty.”
“So am I,” said George, “but the river is far behind us, and I can see neither stream nor spring.”
“The sun is so hot, it must have drunk them all up; what shall we do?”
Thus they talked and complained, when they saw a countrywoman with a basket full of fruit.
“Cherries,” cried George. “What a pity it is that I have no money to buy any!”
“I have some money,” said Bee.
She drew out of her pocket a purse with five pieces of gold in it, and addressed the countrywoman.
“Good woman,” she said, “will you give me as many cherries as my dress can carry.”
As she spoke she held out the skirt of her frock with both hands. The countrywoman threw two or three handfuls of cherries into it. Bee took the fold of her skirt in one hand and with the other held out a piece of gold to the woman and said:
"Is that enough, that?"
The countrywoman seized the piece of gold, which would have been a high price for all the cherries in the basket, with the tree on which they had grown, and the orchard on which the tree was planted, and she cunningly answered:
“That will do to oblige you, my little Princess."
"Then," replied Bee, "put some more cherries in my brother's hat, and I will give you another gold piece."
This was done and the countrywoman pursued her way thinking of the old stocking under the mattress in which she was to hide her two pieces of gold. And the two children went on their road eating the cherries, and throwing the stones to the right and the left. George looked for cherries held together in pairs by the stalk to make earrings of them for his sister, and he laughed to see the beautiful vermeil-coloured twin fruit swinging on the cheek of Bee.
A pebble checked their joyful progress. It had stuck in the slipper of Bee, who began to limp. At each hop she took her gold curls waved on her cheeks, and limping thus, she went and sat down. There her brother, kneeling at her feet, took off her satin slipper; he shook it, and a little white pebble rolled out.
Then looking at her feet, she said
"Little brother, when we go again to the lake, we will put on boots."
The sun had by now declined in the radiant sky.
A breath of wind fanned the necks and the cheeks of the young travellers who boldly, and with fresh alacrity, pursued their travels. To walk more easily, they held each other by the hand and sang, and they laughed to see their two black shadows, likewise united, moving in front of them. They sang:

Marian the maid,
Demure and staid,
Went riding to the mill,
She placed her load
Of corn, and rode
Upon her donkey Bill.

But Bee stops. She cries:
"I have lost my slipper, my satin slipper."
And it was as she said. The silk bows of the little slipper had got loose as she walked, and it lay all dusty in the road. Then she looked behind her, and seeing the towers of the castle swimming in the distant mist, she felt a pang, and tears came into her eyes.
"The wolves will eat us,” she said, "and our mother will never see us again, and she will die of grief."
But George brought her slipper to her and said:
“When the castle bell rings for supper, we will be back at the Clarides. Forward!”

The miller tight,
With flour white,
Stood close under the mill,
And fair and free,
Cried, “To that tree
Tie up your donkey Bill,"

“The lake, Bee, look: the lake, the lake, the lake."
"Yes, George, the lake!”
George cried hurrah! and threw his hat in the air. Bee was too well behaved to throw up her coif in the same fashion. But taking off her slipper which barely held, she threw it over her head to show her joy. There it was, the lake, at the bottom of the valley the slopes of which ran round the silvery waters, holding them as in a cup of foliage and flowers. There it was, calm and clear, and a shiver still ran over the ruffled grasses of its banks. But the two children could not discover any road in the thickets to take them to this lovely mere. As they searched, their legs were bitten by geese, who were followed by a little girl, dressed in a sheepskin, with a switch in her hand. George asked her what she was called.
“Gill.”
“Well, Gill, how do you go to the lake?”
“I don't go.”
“Why?”
"Because."
“But if you did go?”
“If I did go, there would be a road, and I would take the road."
There was no answer to be given to the goosegirl.
“All right," said George, “we will certainly find a path in the wood further on."
"We will pick nuts there," said Bee, "and eat them, for I am hungry. We must, when we come again to the lake, bring a bag full of things good to eat."
George:
"We will do as you say, little sister. I now approve the plan of the squire Freeheart, who, when he set out for Rome, took with him a ham for hunger and a demijohn for thirst. But we must hurry, for it seems to me it is getting late, though I do not know the time."
“Shepherdesses know it by looking at the sun," said Bee; “but I am not a shepherdess. Yet it seems to me that this sun, which was above our heads when we started, is now over there, far behind the town and the land of the Clarides. I wish I knew whether this is the case every day, and what it means."
While they thus observed the sun a cloud of dust rose on the road, and they saw horsemen, who moved towards them at full gallop and whose armour glittered. The children were very frightened and went and hid in the underwoods. They are robbers, or rather ogres, they thought. But really they were men-at-arms sent by the Duchess of Clarides to search for the two little adventurers.
The two little adventurers found a narrow path in the underwood which was not a lover's path, for two could not walk side by side holding each other by the hand, as lovers do. Further, the footprints were not human. Only a track made by a multitude of little hoofed feet was visible.
“These are the footprints of elves," said Bee.
“Or roedeer," said George.
The problem is as yet unsolved. But what is certain is that the path led by an easy descent to the edge of the lake, which now unfolded itself to the children in all its languid and silent beauty. Willows bent their tender foliage over it. Reeds, like pliant swords, swayed their delicate plumes on the water. They stood ruffling in islands, and around them the water-lilies spread their broad heart-shaped leaves and their pure white flowers. Over the flowering islands shrill dragon-flies flew, whirling and darting, with emerald or sapphire breastplates and wings of flame.
And the two children enjoyed the exquisite pleasure of dipping their burning feet into the wet gravel where the thyme grew thick and the cattail darted its long spikes. From its lowly stem the iris yielded them its scent; all around the ribwort unrolled its lace on the edge of the sleeping waters which were studded with the loosestrife’s purple flowers.

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