e_ we to do?" exclaimed Isobel anxiously. "We can't take the
pears when we haven't paid for them properly; it would be stealing."

"I'll bring her another halfpenny to-morrow," suggested Belle.

"But suppose before that she looks at the money and finds out; she'll
think we have been trying to cheat her."

"Perhaps she won't remember who gave it to her."

"Oh! but that wouldn't make it any better," said Isobel. "Look here; let
us take back the bag, and tell her we paid the wrong money, and ask her
to give us only half the pears."

"Very well," answered Belle. "You go in, will you? I don't like to."

Isobel seized the parcel, and quickly re-entered the shop.

"I'm ever so sorry," she said breathlessly, "but we find we've made such
a dreadful mistake. We meant to give you a penny, and it wasn't a penny
at all--only a halfpenny squashed out flat on the railway line; so,
please, will you take back half the pears, because we neither of us have
a proper penny in our pockets."

The woman laughed.

"I didn't think to notice what you give me," she said. "But you're an
honest little girl to come and tell me. No, I won't take back none of
the pears. You're welcome to them, I'm sure."

"It was very nice of her," said Belle sweetly, peeling the juicy fruit
slowly with her penknife as they turned away down the street. "So stupid
of me to make such a mistake! Have another, darling; they're quite
delicious, though they are so small."

Isobel walked along rather silent and preoccupied. Though she would not
allow it to herself, down at the bottom of her heart there was the
uncomfortable suspicion that Belle had known all the time, and had meant
to give the wrong coin.

"She _couldn't_!" thought Isobel. "She _must_ have made a mistake, and
thought she really had a penny in her pocket. Yet at the level crossing
she certainly said the halfpenny was all she had until she got her
weekly money to-morrow. Perhaps she forgot. Oh dear! I know she didn't
mean to cheat or tell stories--I'm sure she wouldn't for the world--but
somehow I _wish_ it hadn't happened."

CHAPTER VII.

THE "STORMY PETREL."

"A boat, a boat is the toy for me,
To rollick about in on river and sea,
To be a child of the breeze and the gale,
And like a wild bird on the deep to sail--
This is the life for me."

The United Sea Urchins' Recreation Society usually met every morning
upon the strip of green common underneath the cli