midday
Mark liked Aunt Keran and accepted her hospitality as a tribute to himself rather than to his position as the grandson of the Vicar . Miss Dale had been a schoolmistress before she came to keep house for her brother , and she worked hard to supplement what learning Cass could get from the village school before , some three years after Mark came to Nancepean , he was sent to Rosemarket Grammar School . Mark was anxious to attend the Grammar School with Cass ; but Mrs. Lidderdale 's dread nowadays was that her son would acquire a West country burr , and it was considered more prudent , economically and otherwise , to let him go on learning with his grandfather and herself . Mark missed Cass when he went to school in Rosemarket , because there was no such thing as playing truant there , and it was so far away that Cass did not come home for the midday meal . But in summertime , Mark used to wait for him outside the town , where a lane branched from the main road into the unfrequented country behind the Rose Pool and took them the longest way home along the banks on the Nancepean side , which were low and rushy unlike those on the Rosemarket side , which were steep and densely wooded . The great water , though usually described as heart-shaped , was really more like a pair of Gothic arches , the green cusp between which was crowned by a lonely farmhouse , El Dorado of Mark and his friend , and the base of which was the bar of shingle that kept out the sea . There was much to beguile the boys on the way home , whether it was the sight of strange wildfowl among the reeds , or the exploration of a ruined cottage set in an ancient cherry-orchard , or the sailing of paper boats , or even the mere delight of lying on the grass and listening above the murmur of insects to the water nagging at the sedge .