e turned to kiss Ninian, who pushed a sleepy face against hers.

8

In the morning, there were fried plaice for breakfast, and Henry ate two
of them.

"These are some of the fish you saw on the beach last night," said Mrs.
Graham.

"Oh, yes," said Henry, reaching for the toast, and swallowing a mouthful
of the fish. "And jolly nice, too!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Dog-fish.]

THE THIRD CHAPTER

1

He stayed at Boveyhayne until the time came to return to Rumpell's, and
the holiday passed so quickly that he could not believe that it was
really over. They had picnicked in the Smugglers' Cave and on Boveyhayne
Common where the gorse was in bloom, and Henry had plucked whinblossoms
to dye Easter eggs when he found that the Grahams did not know that
whinblossoms could be used in this way. "You boil the blossoms and the
eggs together, and the eggs come out a lovely browny-yellow colour. We
always dye our eggs like that in the north of Ireland!" And on the day
they picnicked on Boveyhayne Common, Mrs. Graham took them down the side
of the hill to the big farm at Franscombe and treated them to a
Devonshire tea: bread and butter and raspberry jam and cream, cream
piled thick on the jam, and cake. (But they ate so much of the bread and
butter and jam and cream that they could not eat the cake.) And they
swam every day.... Mary was like a sea-bird: she seemed to swim on the
crest of every wave as lightly as a feather, and was only submerged when
she chose to thrust her head into the body of some wave swelling higher
and higher until its curled top could stay no longer and it pitched
forward and fell in a white, spumy pile on the shore. She would climb
over the stern of a rowing-boat and then plunge from it into the sea
again, and come up laughing with the water streaming from her face and
hair, or dive beneath Ninian and pull his feet until he kicked out....

And then the last evening of his visit came. The vicar of Boveyhayne and
his wife were to dine at the Manor that night, and so they were bidden
to put on their company manners and their evening clothes. Ninian
grumbled lustily when he heard the news, for he had made arrangements
with a fisherman to "clean" a skate that evening when the trawlers came
home. "I bet him thruppence I could do it as good as he could, and now
I'll have to pay up. Beastly swizz, that's what it is!" he said to Henry
in the stable where he was busy rubbing down Peggy, although Peg