lly gentle
spirit was greatly roused. "She didn't speak to you as she did to
Esther."

Penelope gave Poppy a warning glance. "Well, she _can_ be nice," she
repeated, for want of something else to say. "Now come along, girls; do
let's get back to 'the Castle' and have some lunch, and we'll forget all
about Miss Row being so nasty. It is the Poppy's birthday, and we've
_got_ to think only of nice things. Now let's join hands and run down
this slope."

With Poppy tightly grasped by her two eldest sisters, they flew over the
ground as fast as their legs could go. Poppy, her feet scarcely touching
the ground, shrieked with the greatest delight. Guard, who had been
distractedly hovering between the two couples while their party was
divided, barked and danced, and raced away and back again, as pleased as
any of them.

They were quite exhausted before they reached 'the Castle,' and Poppy and
Angela had to be allowed to sit down to recover their breath.

"I will go on and begin to get out the baskets," said Esther, "and unpack
them by the time you come. You won't stay here very long, will you?"

Penelope was lying on her back gazing up at the blue sky and the swarms of
tiny insects which hovered and darted between her and it. She was too
comfortable to move, even to help get the lunch, so Esther and Guard went
alone.

'The Castle,' the children's favourite play-place, was a group of huge
boulders, like closely set rough pillars, so arranged by nature as to
enclose a considerable space, like a tiny room, while outside was a kind
of natural staircase leading to what they sometimes called 'upstairs,' and
sometimes 'the roof,' which was formed of a large flat boulder, forming a
natural roof, and keeping the interior dry and cosy save for the breezes
which blew through the various openings, large and small, between the
pillars.

It was in this centre, close to a pillar, and well out of sight, that the
children had hidden their things; and here Esther came now, and pushing
her arm through a narrow opening, groped about for the familiar baskets,
and groped in vain.

"I thought we put them here," she said to herself, "but I must have come
to the wrong opening." She went to another, and groped again in vain.

"Well," she said perplexed, and beginning to feel troubled, "I am certain
it was in one of those. We didn't go round to the other side, I am sure
we didn't. I'll go inside and look."

She went to what they c