"Tell me what you used to do, auntie! It must be so nice to have
someone to play with. Do tell me some of your escapades!" she pleaded
wistfully, and Miss Munns shook her head, and assumed a great air of
disapproval, though it was easy to see that she cherished a secret pride
in the remembrance of her own audacities.

"I am afraid we were very naughty, thankless children. One day, I
remember, Teddy, as we used to call him, had been very rightly punished
for disobedience, and he confided in me that he intended to run away,
and go to sea, as a cabin-boy. We always did everything together in
those days, so of course nothing must suit me but I must go too. We got
up early the next morning, and ran out into the garden, where we were
allowed to play before breakfast, and then slipped out of the side door,
to walk to Portsmouth.

"Portsmouth was eighteen miles away, and I was only six, and before we
had walked two miles, I was crying with fatigue and hunger. Teddy had
brought some bread-and-butter, so we sat under a hedge to eat it, and he
told me we must be very nearly there. Just then up came a tramp, and
stopped to ask why we were crying, and what we were doing out there in
the road at that hour in the morning. `We are going to Portsmouth to be
cabin-boys,' we told him, and I can remember to this day how he laughed.
`If you are going to be cabin-boys, you won't want those clothes,' he
said. `You had better take them off, and give them to me, to change for
proper sailor things.'

"We thought that a splendid idea, so he took Teddy's suit, and my frock
and hat, and left us shivering under the hedge waiting his return. Of
course he never came, and an hour or two later, my father came driving
along to look for us, and we were taken home, and punished as we
deserved. That is to say, Teddy was whipped, and I was only put to bed,
for he insisted that the idea was his, and that he alone was to blame."

"Nice little Teddy!" murmured Sylvia fondly, looking down at the
pictured face, which, despite grey hair and wrinkles, had still the
gallant air of the little boy who shielded his sister from blame.

Having once started, Miss Munns told one story after another of her
childhood's days; of the lessons which brother and sister used to learn
together--a whole page of Mangnall's Questions at a time, and of the
dire and terrible conspiracy, by which they learnt alternate answers,
easily persuading the docile governess to ta