gentlemen had brought to Father. But they kept hinting
that they could tell a great deal if they chose--and this was not
comfortable.

One day when Peter had made a booby trap over the bath-room door, and
it had acted beautifully as Ruth passed through, that red-haired
parlour-maid caught him and boxed his ears.

"You'll come to a bad end," she said furiously, "you nasty little limb,
you! If you don't mend your ways, you'll go where your precious Father's
gone, so I tell you straight!"

Roberta repeated this to her Mother, and next day Ruth was sent away.

Then came the time when Mother came home and went to bed and stayed
there two days and the Doctor came, and the children crept wretchedly
about the house and wondered if the world was coming to an end.

Mother came down one morning to breakfast, very pale and with lines
on her face that used not to be there. And she smiled, as well as she
could, and said:--

"Now, my pets, everything is settled. We're going to leave this house,
and go and live in the country. Such a ducky dear little white house. I
know you'll love it."

A whirling week of packing followed--not just packing clothes, like when
you go to the seaside, but packing chairs and tables, covering their
tops with sacking and their legs with straw.

All sorts of things were packed that you don't pack when you go to
the seaside. Crockery, blankets, candlesticks, carpets, bedsteads,
saucepans, and even fenders and fire-irons.

The house was like a furniture warehouse. I think the children enjoyed
it very much. Mother was very busy, but not too busy now to talk to
them, and read to them, and even to make a bit of poetry for Phyllis to
cheer her up when she fell down with a screwdriver and ran it into her
hand.

"Aren't you going to pack this, Mother?" Roberta asked, pointing to the
beautiful cabinet inlaid with red turtleshell and brass.

"We can't take everything," said Mother.

"But we seem to be taking all the ugly things," said Roberta.

"We're taking the useful ones," said Mother; "we've got to play at being
Poor for a bit, my chickabiddy."

When all the ugly useful things had been packed up and taken away in a
van by men in green-baize aprons, the two girls and Mother and Aunt Emma
slept in the two spare rooms where the furniture was all pretty. All
their beds had gone. A bed was made up for Peter on the drawing-room
sofa.

"I say, this is larks," he said, wriggling joyously, as Mother tuc