ets one do
just what one likes. His sisters are hateful women, and if I had not
been staying in the house I should certainly have played them some
trick or other just to pay them out. I wonder why they disliked me so
much. I could see it directly I arrived; but, after all, it didn't
matter much, except just at meals and in the evening. But though Mr.
Penfold was so kind, it would have been very stupid if it had not been
for Mabel Withers. We used to ride out or go for walks together every
day. She was a capital walker, and very jolly--almost as good as a
boy. She said several times that she wished she had been a boy, and I
wished so too. Still, of course, mother, I am very glad I am back.
There is no place like home, you know; and then there are the fellows
at school, and the games, and the sea, and all sorts of things; and
it's a horrid nuisance to think that I have got to go down there
regularly for my holidays. Still, of course, as you wish it, I will do
so; and now that I know what it is like it won't be so bad another
time. Anyhow, I am glad I have got another ten days before school
begins."

The following morning Ralph went down to the beach. "Why, Master
Conway," an old fisherman said, "you are a downright stranger. I have
missed you rarely."

"I told you I was going away, Joe, and that I shouldn't get back until
the holidays were nearly over."

"I know you did," the fisherman replied. "Still it does seem strange
without you. Every time as I goes out I says to Bill if Master Conway
was at home he would be with us to-day, Bill. It don't seem no ways
natural without him.' And there's been good fishing, too, this season,
first rate; and the weather has been just what it should be."

"Well, I am back now, Joe, anyhow; and I have got ten days before
school begins again, and I mean to make the most of it. Are you going
out to-day?"

"At four o'clock," the fisherman said. "Daylight fishing ain't much
good just now; we take twice as many at night."

"No trouble with the Frenchies?"

"Lord bless you I ain't seen a French sail for months. Our cruisers
are too sharp for them; though they say a good many privateers run in
and out of their ports in spite of all we can do, and a lot of our
ships get snapped up. But we don't trouble about them. Why, bless your
heart, if one of them was to run across us they would only just take
our fish, and as likely as not pay us for them with a cask or two of
spirits. Fish is a tre