ed respectively ten, nine, and five, bonny mischievous
urchins, who were alternately Beatrice's pride and despair. By vigorous
measures she managed to keep them in tolerably good order, but she could
never be sure what pranks they would play next, and was generally
prepared for emergencies. She always had supplies handy of arnica,
sticking plaster, and rags for cut fingers, and would toil away
patiently mending long rents in small knickerbockers or darning holes in
stockings and jerseys. Giles and Basil went daily to a branch
establishment of Rodenhurst, kept by Miss Roscoe for boys under twelve;
and Martin learnt his letters at home, and trotted about the house and
parish in Beatrice's wake. He was a sweet little scamp, and the apple of
her eye, for she had brought him up from babyhood, but she sometimes
felt it would be an intense relief when he was old enough to go to
school with the others.

For seven years the Gascoynes had lived at the little parsonage at
Skelwick Bay. It was a small, low, creeper-covered place, built behind
a sheltering spur of hill, to protect it from the fierce winter gales
and the driving spray of the sea. Four latticed bedroom windows caught
the early morning sun, and a stone porch shielded the front door,
which opened directly into the sitting-room. There was nothing at all
grand about the house, but, thanks to Beatrice, it was neatly kept,
and had an air of general comfort. All articles likely to be broken by
small fingers were wisely put away, or placed in father's study, a
sanctum where no one might intrude without express permission; but
books, paint boxes, &c., were freely allowed, and each member of the
family had a special shelf on which to keep his or her particular
possessions. Beatrice had many excellent rules, and though in the
enforcement of these she was strict to the verge of severity, in the
main she was just, and had her father's full sanction for her
authority.

The garden at the Parsonage was a great joy, with its thick hedge of
fuchsias, and its beds of fragrant wallflowers, and its standard roses
growing among the grass, and its clumps of Czar violets under the
sheltered wall. Here Winnie toiled early and late, getting up
sometimes with the sun that she might put in an hour's work before
breakfast, weeding, replanting, pruning, raking, and tying up. It was
chiefly owing to her exertions that the show of flowers was so good,
though Gwen was her ally in that respect, and