-boy. These, with Melia Mundy, the house-girl, whose parents
lived on Brefar, made up Farmer Tregarthen's employ, and took their
meals at table with the family.

The school which Annet, Linnet, and Matthew Henry attended had been
built by the Lord Proprietor on Inniscaw shore, to serve the three
islands of Inniscaw, Brefar, and Saaron. The children brought their
school-pence weekly, on Friday mornings; but, of course, their pence
did not pay--scarcely even began to pay--for the cost. Also there were
days, and sometimes many days together, when no boat could be put
across; and, considering this, the Lord Proprietor (who was a
philanthropist in his way, but his way happened to be a despotic one)
had commanded his architect to prepare plans for a smaller school on
Brefar. This, to be sure, would not help the three children on Saaron;
but it gave him yet another reason to feel indignant with that fellow
Tregarthen for clinging so obstinately to his solitude and barren
acres.

The children themselves did not regret living so far from school; for
they were ordinary healthy youngsters though brighter-witted than most,
and felt as other youngsters feel towards that wise and elderly
beneficence which boxes them up in a room for instruction. To be sure
they missed the games in the play-ground before and after school; but
this was no such loss as the reader, remembering his own childhood,
might be disposed to think. For, sad to tell, only a few of the
hundreds of thousands of children attending schools really understand
games, or can be said to have learnt to play, and the Island children
were in this respect some way behind their brothers and sisters on the
mainland. If at whiles the small trio looked back wistfully as old Jan
rowed them homeward, or if the shouts that followed across the water
from the playground now and again reproached them, on the whole they
would not have changed places with their school-fellows even at a
price. After all, no island in the world could compare with Saaron.
Their father had never said this, but they were sure that he thought
it; and their father knew everything. As he walked along he would say
suddenly, "Go there"--but without lifting his eyes, just waving his
hand towards the spot--"and there you will find a bunting's nest, or a
stone-chat's"; nor once in a dozen times would he be mistaken.

There were compensations, too, in living on an island where on any
morning you might wake and find