his murmurs with sand.

"I always think," said Mrs. Bax dreamily, "that 'the more the merrier,'
is peculiarly true of picnics. So I have arranged--always subject to
your approval, of course--to meet your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Red House,
there, and----"

We drowned her conclusive remarks with a cheer. And Oswald, always
willing to be of use, offered to go to the 'Ship' and see about the
waggonette. I like horses and stable-yards, and the smell of hay and
straw, and talking to ostlers and people like that.

There turned out to be two horses belonging to the best waggonette, or
you could have a one-horse one, much smaller, with the blue cloth of the
cushions rather frayed, and mended here and there, and green in patches
from age and exposition to the weather.

Oswald told Mrs. Bax this, not concealing about how shabby the little
one was, and she gloriously said--

"The pair by all means! We don't kill a pig every day!"

"No, indeed," said Dora, but if "killing a pig" means having a lark,
Mrs. Bax is as good a pig-killer as any I ever knew.

It was splendid to drive (Oswald, on the box beside the driver, who had
his best coat with the bright buttons) along the same roads that we had
trodden as muddy pedestrinators, or travelled along behind Bates's
donkey.

It was a perfect day, as I said before. We were all clean and had our
second-best things on. I think second-bests are much more comfy than
first-bests. You feel equivalent to meeting any one, and have "a heart
for any fate," as it says in the poetry-book, and yet you are not
starched and booted and stiffened and tightened out of all human
feelings.

Lynwood Castle is in a hollow in the hills. It has a moat all round it
with water-lily leaves on it. I suppose there are lilies when in
season. There is a bridge over the moat--not the draw kind of bridge.
And the castle has eight towers--four round and four square ones, and a
courtyard in the middle, all green grass, and heaps of stones--stray
bits of castle, I suppose they are--and a great white may-tree in the
middle that Mrs. Bax said was hundreds of years old.

Mrs. Red House was sitting under the may-tree when we got there, nursing
her baby, in a blue dress and looking exactly like a picture on the top
of a chocolate-box.

The girls instantly wanted to nurse the baby so we let them. And we
explored the castle. We had never happened to explore one thoroughly
before. We did not find the deepest dungeon belo