ut Lynn's tonic embittered life for her for a considerable time before
taking, as well as for several minutes afterwards, until a long drink
and a chocolate removed the nauseous taste.

She was playing this morning, before Anna's call, in a mood of chastened
joy.

Her conscience was always a prickly little affair, and forced her to
confess to her sins almost before she had committed them. But she told
herself this morning that it was certainly no business of hers to point
out to Miss Bibby Miss Bibby's forgetfulness. And she was just
comfortably settled up in the big quince tree as Fritz, in
"Falconhurst," when that soul-vexing cry about "medsun" shrilled through
a window.

"'Tend you don't hear; it's only Anna," said Pauline in swift sympathy.

Lynn flattened her body along a bough and drew up a possibly betraying
leg.

"Do I show?" she whispered.

Paul shook her head, and moved with Muffie hastily away from the tree
and began to run towards Anna, who, failing to obtain her quarry with a
shout, was now seen rapidly coming to the Island of the Robinson family,
late of Switzerland.

"Anna," shouted Pauline, one of the most resourceful young people in the
world, "have you seen Lynn anywhere?"

Anna pulled up.

"No, I haven't," she said.

"Are you _sure_ she's not in the house?" persisted Paul.

"If she is and heard me calling, I'll give it to her, or my name's not
Anna," said that maiden irately.

"Do you think she can have gone again over to 'Tenby'?" pursued Pauline.

"That's it--that's what's got her," said Anna; "and fine and mad Miss
Bibby will be with her, going worrying that book-man again. Well, I'm
not going trapesing over there in this sun, but I'll make her take two
doses at lunch if I have to put it down her back."

And with this frightful threat Anna returned to the house.

Poor Fritz nearly fell out of "Falconhurst" in his agitation.

"Oh, I think I'll go up and take it, Paul," she said; "two doses
together would be too awful."

Her eyes grew round with horror at the mere thought.

"You could shut your teeth hard, after the first spoonful," said Paul,
"and refuse, firmly refuse more."

"You could spit it out," said Muffie eagerly, "like when they gave me
the castor-oil; and it was the last in the bottle, so they couldn't give
me any more."

"But there are _gallons_ more in my bottle," Lynn said dolefully, "and
you heard what she said about putting it down my back."

"Look here," s