ff in a hurry. "I wonder," she
continued shyly, "if you would care to have a cup of tea. I could make
it in a moment, if you wouldn't mind drinking it out of a tin mug."

"Miss Robinson Crusoe is very hospitable. I haven't had a picnic for
years. The tin mug will recall my early soldiering days. I have
bivouacked in places which were not nearly so comfortable as this."

He took a seat in a sand armchair, and looked on with amusement while
Isobel made her preparations. Something in the set of her slim little
figure and the fall of her long straight fair hair attracted him, and he
caught himself wondering of whom her gray eyes reminded him. He liked
the quiet way she went about her business, and her frank, unaffected
manners--so different from Belle's self-conscious assurance.

"Why can't the other child wear a plain holland frock?" he thought. "It
would look much more suitable for the sands than those absurd trimmed-up
costumes. What a pity she hasn't the sense of this one! Well, it's no
use; it evidently isn't in her, and I doubt if any amount of training at
a good school will make much difference."

Isobel in the meantime having brewed the tea handed it to him upon the
scarlet tray.

"I'm sorry we haven't a cream jug," she apologized. "We always bring our
milk in medicine bottles. Do you mind sugar out of the packet? I wish I
had some cake, but Mrs. Jackson didn't put any in my basket to-day, and
I don't like taking the others' without asking them. I hope it's nice,"
she added anxiously. "I'm so afraid the water's a little smoked."

"Delicious," said the colonel, who would have consumed far more
unpalatable viands sooner than hurt her feelings, and who tried to
overlook the fact that the tin mug gave the tea a curious flavour, and
the bread and butter was of a thickness usually meted out to schoolboys.
"But aren't you going to have any yourself?"

"Not now, thank you. I'd rather wait for the others. I promised to have
everything ready for them when they came back."

"I see. You're 'Polly, put the kettle on,' to-day, and 'Sukey, take it
off again,' also, as they appear to have 'all run away.' No more,
thanks. One cup is as much as is good for me. Why, in the name of all
that's mysterious, who has been writing these?"

The colonel jumped up and strode to the other end of the hut, having
suddenly caught sight of the quaint letters which Isobel had drawn upon
the wall.

"I have," replied Isobel simply.

"Then,