ere very happy indeed. We did a little
lessons--at least Anne and I did regularly. Miss Stirling had set me
some Latin and French, and Anne didn't want to get behind me in Latin,
so she did it with me, and she was very good in helping me with my
French, for she's much farther on than me in French.

That was in the mornings, for an hour or so. Then we used to go what
nurse calls a 'good bracing walk,' right over the heath that edges the
woods, for two or three miles sometimes. We used to come in for dinner
pretty hungry, I can tell you. But Mrs. Parsley didn't mind how much she
had to cook for us. She was as pleased as if you'd given her a present
when nurse said she never had known our appetites so good.

Sometimes we met the getting-well children from the Home. But I rather
fancy the people there had heard about the whooping-cough; for though
the young lady who was with them smiled at us very nicely always, she
rather shoo'd them away from us. And it was always the same round-faced,
beamy-looking girl--not Miss Cross-at-first, certainly.

Then in the afternoons we mostly played or sat about the woods, coming
in for tea, and sometimes, when it was very fine and mild, nurse let us
go out again a little after tea. But if it was the least chilly or windy
or anything, she wouldn't let the girls go out, and then we sat all
together playing games, or now and then telling stories till bed-time.
Very often dear Mrs. Parsley would come in, and we always made her sit
down and talk to us. And sometimes I'd go out a stroll by myself in the
evening--towards the village generally, for there was often a letter to
post or some little message for nurse to the shop. And then I got
another reason for walking that way in the evening, which I'll tell you
about directly.

We had been five weeks at the farm when one day we got very jolly news
from mums. The news had been pretty jolly all the time; Hebe had gone on
getting better, though the doctor at Ventnor had thought her very weak
at first, and so she and mums had stayed on longer than they'd expected
they would. But this letter told that they had really fixed a day for
coming back to London, and that the nice Ventnor doctor said no air
could be better for Hebe now than Fewforest, and so mums was going to
bring her down the very next Friday to be with us for the last three
weeks. Mums was coming herself too, to stay from Friday to Monday, for
father had to be away with gran those two da