'll talk about that later on. Where's the rest of the island, and
how do you get to it?"

"Old ladies and luggage ride. We youngsters walk. There's Charles
waiting for you at the carriage. There you are! Au revoir!"

As the young people breasted the steep, Pixley--forgetting entirely
his vow never to do it on foot again--unfolded to them Lady Elspeth's
idea, which simply was, that if the Red House could hold them all,--of
which she had her doubts, in spite of his assertions,--they should all
share expenses and such household duties as so large a party would
involve.

"You see--if you don't mind it, Mrs. Graeme,"--with an apologetic look
at Margaret,--"it will give the two old ladies something to do and
will leave us young folks freer to get about."

"It's a capital arrangement if the old ladies don't mind. Mrs. Carre
can get in another girl. It will keep them all busy seeing that we
have enough to eat. But they'll soon get used to looking forward two
or three days and ordering Friday's dinner on Tuesday."

"How long can you stop, old man?" asked Graeme.

"A fortnight--all being well," and there was a touch of soberness in
it as he said that. "There's really nothing doing, and Ormerod's a
good fellow and insisted on it."

"We can do heaps in a fortnight," said Miss Penny jubilantly. "However
did you manage to catch Lady Elspeth?"

"She's a grand old lady. I found her with my mother when I got there.
She'd been with her ever since--since the trouble. And when I proposed
bringing my mother she said at once that she was coming too. She had
crows to pick with you two, and so on. I expect she thought my mother
would feel things less if she was with her."

"She's an old dear," said Margaret. "They shall both have the very
best time we can give them."

"I shall take them conger-eeling," said Graeme,--"and to Venus's Bath"

"And down the Boutiques and the Gouliots"--suggested Margaret.

"And ormering in Grande Greve," laughed Miss Penny, who had spent a
day there on that alluring pursuit and had come home bruised and wet
and dirty.

"Oh, there's lots of fun in store for them," said Graeme, laughing
like a schoolboy out for a holiday. "And, as Hennie Penny says, we can
do heaps in a fortnight."

VI

Having made up their minds that there was no earthly reason why
Charles Pixley and Hennie Penny should not be as happy as they were
themselves, Margaret and Graeme saw to it that nothing should be
awanting in the