lightly outside the
door. Kit rearranged his tie, put his spectacles straight, and peered
up at the unappreciative listener who towered above him.

'As I was saying,' he resumed gently, 'Auntie Anna can give us all points
when it comes to being 'cute.'

The next day or two proved the truth of what, in his shrewd way, he
had already guessed for himself. Yet the Berkeleys were hardly to be
called unfeeling, because they appeared to take their father's departure
so coolly; for it would have been difficult to remain unhappy long, when
there were so many delightful things to distract them. Besides their
excitement, town-bred as they were, at finding themselves in a real
country-house, with an oak staircase, a secret room, and a ghost story,
there were separate joys waiting for each one of them as well. There
was a horse for Egbert to ride to hounds, and a well-stocked library
for Christopher to bury himself in, and a lumber-room for Wilfred to turn
into a laboratory; while Peter was allowed, the very first day, to go out
shooting with the keepers, and Robin promptly became the pet of all the
men on the estate, and spent long, happy hours with them down at the
stables and the farm. If there was any one in the family who was not
perfectly content, it was Barbara.

No doubt, she would have been quite as absorbed as the others were in
their new home, if she had not been going to another one herself the very
next day. As it was, she found it a little difficult to share their
enthusiasm since she had a private enthusiasm of her own. But the boys
did not understand this at all. They were very affectionate to her in
their rough, undemonstrative way, and they were always telling her that
she would be sure to 'pull through all right'; for they naturally supposed
that she wanted the kind of pity they wanted so much themselves at the
stated, horrible periods when they went back to school. But as to grasping
her notion that she was going to enjoy life at Wootton Beeches, that
was not to be expected of them. So Barbara felt that her interests, for
the first time in her life, were not the same as theirs; and a queer
sort of feeling crept over her, that changes--even nice, interesting
changes--occasionally had something strange and uncomfortable about them.
She grew so perplexed over it, at last, that she even went to Jill for
sympathy. Jill was at least a girl, and Jill had been to school, in the
same delightful place to which she was go