home and play
like a baby?"

Susie was hastily rubbing the sand out of her toes and hunting for her
stockings. Her feet were very cold, and her fingers seemed thumbs. She
did not answer Dot. She did not feel quite sure what to say; things
always looked so different before and after, and what nurse had said
about a _wearing time_ stuck in her mind.

"Well, aren't you?" said Dot impatiently.

"No," said Susie bluntly.

She stopped to lace Tom's boots, and then looked up with a face that had
grown suddenly red.

"I can't help it," she said desperately, "but I never _am_ glad
afterwards."

She went on lacing laboriously, whilst Tom lay on his face kicking and
plunging about. Dot looked at her curiously.

"But you wanted to come on the rocks?" she said.

"Oh yes," said Susie. "I shall always want to come, but I shall be sorry
afterwards. I think I ought to warn you because I am like that. I can't
help it. It is silly of nurse," she went on, as she tied the lace in a
draggled knot. "Why shouldn't we play with you? I feel _perfectly
certain_--" She seemed to remember using those words before on an
unfortunate occasion, so she hastily changed them. "I am _quite sure_
that you are a very good companion. Me and Tom couldn't learn any
harm from you."

She was persuading herself, not the twins, but it was a twin who
answered.

"We can have lots of fun," said Dot, "and no one will know. The first
chance we will cut over the rocks to the town and buy some sweets."

"Generally I have to look after the little ones," said Susie.

"Well, no one would eat them if they stayed here alone till you came
back, would they, stupid?"

"No," said Susie, rather shortly.

She was not quite sure that she liked being called "stupid."

* * * * *

"I can't think how all this sand has got into your stockings," said
nurse. "I should hope you didn't paddle after I left you, against my
orders!"

There was silence, and in another moment Susie would have told the truth,
but before the words came faltering out nurse spoke again.

"But there! I can trust you, with all your troublesome ways," she said.

And this time Susie _could not_ speak.

CHAPTER VII.

As time went on it grew so perilously easy to be deceitful! No one
thought of doubting them--no one thought of asking what they did when
they were left alone.

Day after day, as nurse's toiling figure disappeared up the wooden steps
on to t