staircase. And the house was
surrounded by a real deep moat, with clear water in it, and long weeds
and water-lilies and fish--the gold and the silver and the everyday
kinds.

[Illustration: Early next morning he tried to catch fish with several
pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin.]

The first evening of Kenneth's visit passed uneventfully. His bedroom
window looked over the moat, and early next morning he tried to catch
fish with several pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin kindly
lent to him by the parlourmaid. He did not catch any fish, partly
because he baited the hairpin with brown windsor soap, and it washed
off.

'Besides, fish hate soap,' Conrad told him, 'and that hook of yours
would do for a whale perhaps. Only we don't stock our moat with whales.
But I'll ask father to lend you his rod, it's a spiffing one, much
jollier than ours. And I won't tell the kids because they'd never let it
down on you. Fishing with a hairpin!'

'Thank you very much,' said Kenneth, feeling that his cousin was a man
and a brother. The kids were only two or three years younger than he
was, but that is a great deal when you are the elder; and besides, one
of the kids was a girl.

'Alison's a bit of a sneak,' Conrad used to say when anger overcome
politeness and brotherly feeling. Afterwards, when the anger was gone
and the other things left, he would say, 'You see she went to a beastly
school for a bit, at Brighton, for her health. And father says they must
have bullied her. All girls are not like it, I believe.'

But her sneakish qualities, if they really existed, were generally
hidden, and she was very clever at thinking of new games, and very kind
if you got into a row over anything.

George was eight and stout. He was not a sneak, but concealment was
foreign to his nature, so he never could keep a secret unless he forgot
it. Which fortunately happened quite often.

The uncle very amiably lent Kenneth his fishing-rod, and provided real
bait in the most thoughtful and generous manner. And the four children
fished all the morning and all the afternoon. Conrad caught two roach
and an eel. George caught nothing, and nothing was what the other two
caught. But it was glorious sport. And the next day there was to be a
picnic. Life to Kenneth seemed full of new and delicious excitement.

In the evening the aunt and the uncle went out to dinner, and Ethel, in
her grown-up way, went with them, very grand in