August was drawing to its end, and, with August, the holidays of the Blacksod Grammar School. The young aristocrats of Ramsgard had several weeks more before their new term began, but the humbler pupils whom it was Wolf’s destiny to teach were now on the eve of their return to work.
Anxious to make the utmost of these precious mornings of leisure, now so soon to be snatched from him, Wolf had lately got into the habit of persuading Gerda to start out with him, for some sort of rural expedition, directly the breakfast-things had been washed up.
They had explored the country in this way in almost every direction; but he found that the easiest thing to do was to have some sort of picnic-lunch in the direction of King’s Barton, so that when they separated he could reach his afternoon’s work at the manor without arriving too tired or too late.