heir
beauty for them!"

"If ever we _do_ see them again we'll tell you," Anthea said; and
Robert, fixing his eyes fondly on the cold beef that was being brought
in on a tray by cook, added in heartfelt undertones--

"And we'll take jolly good care we never _do_ see them again."

And they never have.

CHAPTER II

GOLDEN GUINEAS

Anthea woke in the morning from a very real sort of dream, in which she
was walking in the Zoological Gardens on a pouring wet day without an
umbrella. The animals seemed desperately unhappy because of the rain,
and were all growling gloomily. When she awoke, both the growling and
the rain went on just the same. The growling was the heavy regular
breathing of her sister Jane, who had a slight cold and was still
asleep. The rain fell in slow drops on to Anthea's face from the wet
corner of a bath-towel out of which her brother Robert was gently
squeezing the water, to wake her up, as he now explained.

"Oh, drop it!" she said rather crossly; so he did, for he was not a
brutal brother, though very ingenious in apple-pie beds, booby-traps,
original methods of awakening sleeping relatives, and the other
little accomplishments which make home happy.

[Illustration: The rain fell in slow drops on to Anthea's face]

"I had such a funny dream," Anthea began.

"So did I," said Jane, wakening suddenly and without warning. "I dreamed
we found a Sand-fairy in the gravel-pits, and it said it was a Sammyadd,
and we might have a new wish every day, and"----

"But that's what _I_ dreamed," said Robert; "I was just going to tell
you,--and we had the first wish directly it said so. And I dreamed you
girls were donkeys enough to ask for us all to be beautiful as day, and
we jolly well were, and it was perfectly beastly."

"But _can_ different people all dream the same thing?" said Anthea,
sitting up in bed, "because I dreamed all that as well as about the Zoo
and the rain; and Baby didn't know us in my dream, and the servants shut
us out of the house because the radiantness of our beauty was such a
complete disguise, and"----

The voice of the eldest brother sounded from across the landing.

"Come on, Robert," it said, "you'll be late for breakfast again--unless
you mean to shirk your bath as you did on Tuesday."

"I say, come here a second," Robert replied; "I didn't shirk it; I had
it after brekker in father's dressing-room because ours was emptied
away."

Cyril appeared in the doorwa