his turn to hold the treasured glass.
Quick as thought he waved it to and fro, and the Pet threw up her
hands, unable to withstand the glare. Safe in the seclusion of their
distant room, the twins shrieked with exultation, and had much ado to
keep their position behind the curtains. Jill kept endeavouring to
snatch the glass from her brother, but Jack was too intent on his work
to take any notice of her efforts.

The Pet lifted one hand from her eyes and cautiously peeped out. The
sun was shining with unusual brilliancy for an October morning, but
there was not the slightest difficulty in viewing the landscape as fully
as she liked. She turned her head from side to side in a curious
inquiring fashion, and Jack, with an artist's appreciation of the right
moment, waited until she had abandoned the search, and was about to
settle down again, when another blinding flash of light fell full on her
face, and she shrank back into the shade with a startled gesture.

Seated in this last position, she exactly faced the schoolroom, and the
twins had a moment's horrified fear that she had caught a glimpse of
their peeping faces, but her next movement put an end to suspicion, for
she took up her book and settled down again to her reading exactly as if
she had never been interrupted.

And then an extraordinary thing happened! The mane of golden hair was
tossed back, leaving the face fully exposed, yet though the twins
flashed the light on both eyes and book, the Pet read on stolidly,
turning over the pages with leisurely enjoyment, apparently no whit
disturbed.

"What's the matter with her all of a sudden? Is she blind?" Jill
queried impatiently.

Jack grunted, and flashed more vigorously than ever, but the Pet might
have been a hundred miles away for all the effect produced. It was most
mysterious and perplexing, not to say exasperating to the last degree.
After ten minutes' fruitless effort, Jack went off in search of fresh
victims, and Jill sorrowfully returned to her lessons.

How interested they would have been if they could have overheard a
conversation which was even then taking place across the road!

"Dear child!" cried a lady lying on a sofa at the far end of a
beautifully-furnished drawing-room. "Dear child, what are you doing?
For the last five minutes I have been watching you pretending to read
with your eyes shut. It's not a lesson book, and Miss Mason is not
here, so what can you be thinking about, dea