not have been high enough
to wash him off going round that rock, or the other children would not
have gone round it.'

'Oh, I suppose he ran after a wave,' said Ida hastily.

'Do you know,' said Rose mysteriously, 'I could have declared I saw him
that very evening, and with his nursery-maid, too!'

'Nonsense, Rose! We don't believe in ghosts!' said Ida.

'It was not like a ghost,' said Rose. 'You know I had come down for the
bank-holiday, and went back to finish my quarter at the art embroidery.
Well, when we stopped at the North Westhaven station, I saw a man, woman,
and child get in, and it struck me that the boy was Master Michael and
the woman Louisa Hall. I think she looked into the carriage where I was,
and I was going to ask her where she was taking him.'

'Nonsense, Rose! How can you listen to such folly, Herbert?'

'But that's not all! I saw them again under the gas when I got out. I
was very near trying to speak to her, but I lost sight of her in the
throng; but I saw that face so like Master Michael, only scared and just
ready to cry.'

'You'll run about telling that fine ghost-story,' said Ida roughly.

'But Louisa could not have been a ghost,' said Rose, bewildered. 'I
thought she was his nursery-maid taking him somewhere! Didn't she--'
then with a sudden flash--'Oh!'

'Turned off long ago for flirting with that scamp Rattler,' said Herbert.
'Now she has run off with him.'

'There was a sailor-looking man with her,' said Rose.

'I never heard such intolerable nonsense!' burst out Ida. 'Mere
absurdity!'

Herbert looked at her with surprise at the strange passion she exhibited.
He asked--

'Did you say the Hall girl had run away?'

'Oh, never mind, Herbert!' cried Ida, as if unable to command herself.
'What is it to you what a nasty, horrid girl like that does?'

'Hold your tongue, Ida!' he said resolutely. 'If you won't speak, let
Rose.'

'She did,' said Rose, in a low, anxious, terrified voice. 'I only heard
it since I came home. She was married at the registrar's office to that
man Jones, whom they call the Rattler, and went off with him. It must
have been her whom I saw, really and truly; and, oh, Herbert, could she
have been so wicked as to steal Master Michael!'

'Somebody else has been wicked then,' said Herbert, laying hold of his
sister's arm.

'I don't know what all this means,' exclaimed Ida, in great agitation;
'nor what you and Rose are at! Making up such hor