id you get?" retorted Miss
Penny.

"I got six and you got seven--"

"Seventeen, and you stole four of your six from Meg."

"Oh well, I found the mushrooms, coming home, and they were worth a
pailful of ormers."

"You didn't beat them long enough. Ormers take a lot of beating," she
explained to Lady Elspeth.

"Thumping, she means. My mushrooms beat them hollow,--tender and
delicate and fragrant"--and he sniffed appreciatively as though he
could scent them still.--"Your ormers were like shoe-soles."

"And as to the mushrooms," continued Hennie Penny, "you'd never have
found them if I hadn't tumbled into them, and then you thought they
were toadstools."

"Oh well!--Who can't take a hook out of a whiting's mouth? Who was it
screamed when the lobster looked at her?"

"It nearly took a piece out of me."

"Who nearly upset the boat when a baby devilfish came up in the pot?
And it wasn't above that size!"

"I draw the line at devil-fish. They're no' canny."

"Do they generally go on like this?" asked Lady Elspeth of Margaret.

"All the time," said Margaret, with a matronly air. "They're just a
couple of children. I keep them out of mischief as well as I can, but
it's hard work at times."

"She's just every bit as bad, you know, when we're alone," said Miss
Penny. "But she's got her company manners on just now. You should see
her when she's bathing."

"Ah--yes! You should see her when she's bathing," said Graeme, with a
smack of the lips. "All the little waves and crabs and lobsters keep
bobbing up to have another look at her. In Venus's Bath the other
day--"

"Now, children, stop your fooling. Where shall we go to-day?" laughed
Margaret, and Lady Elspeth could hardly take her eyes off her, so
winsomely, so radiantly happy was she.

"We old folks will stay at home and talk to Mrs. Carre," said Lady
Elspeth. "You young ones can go off and do what you like."

"Oh no, you don't," said Graeme. "You didn't come here to loaf in a
verandah. When you come to Sark you've got to enjoy yourselves,
whether you want to or not. Suppose we take lunch along to the
Eperquerie, and the elders can bask and snooze, and we'll bathe three
times off that black ledge under Les Fontaines. And if the Seigneur's
out fishing perhaps he'll take some of us with him, those who don't
scream when the poor fish gets a hook in its throat. And you'll see
Margaret out on the loose. She always goes it when she's swimming."

"I hope you won't