must know you're
perfectly splendid at gym, Babs. Now, don't you?'

'I'd quite forgotten,' confessed Barbara, as they resumed their stroll.
'I'm so bad at most things that I'd got out of the way of thinking I could
do gymnastics. But, of course, the boys always said I wasn't bad, for
a girl; and once I got the prize at my class in London. There were only
thirty of us, though,' she added modestly.

They strolled on as far as the gate at the bottom of the field, and
stood looking over it into the lane below. The lane was out of bounds,
which lent it an added charm; and they liked nothing better than to come
here on half-holidays and lean against the gate, and wonder where the
grass-grown path led to and what it looked like when it got round the
corner by the old elm tree. To-day, they had scarcely taken up their
position there when they were startled by sounds of distress from below;
and the next minute a small boy came slouching along the lane, crying
bitterly.

'Hullo!' said Jean. 'What's the matter?'

The boy was so surprised that he stopped crying and looked up. He was a
very pitiable little object, in corduroy garments that could not properly
be called knickerbockers and yet were too short for trousers, with a
small area of grey flannel shirt appearing above them, and a red worsted
comforter twisted round his neck, making an unbecoming patch of colour
against his pinched and tear-stained little face.

'What is the matter?' asked Angela, pityingly.

'Have you hurt yourself?' added Barbara, as the child only stared at them
vacantly.

With a little more coaxing and the bribe of a piece of dusty chocolate
that came from the depths of Barbara's pocket, he was at last induced to
mumble out a confused statement of his woes. Between the quaver in his
voice and the broadness of his speech they had a hard matter to understand
what he said; but Angela, who lived in another part of the same county,
managed after a while to translate to the others that he was crying
because his father was away looking for work, and his mother could not
pay the rent, and they were all going into the 'house' to-morrow. To
Bobby Hearne, who was smarting under the remarks of the neighbours'
children, it was the last part of his story that seemed the worst;
but the triumvirate only grasped the fact that starvation and poverty
really stood before them in the person of the small boy with the red
comforter round his neck. They looked at one anoth