ds, then,--

"Look here, old girl," he said, "don't be silly. You'll have a red
nose for dessert."

"I don't care," Nesta blurted out.

"But you must care," Eustace said a little impatiently, "because
then mother will see you have been crying and find out we're
miserable."

"I don't care," sobbed Nesta again. "I can't hide it any more, and
I don't want to. I shall ask father to let me go home with him.
Nothing will make me stay here with these--these horrid people."

"Nesta!" Eustace exclaimed.

"Well, I can't help it; they are horrid, even if they are our
people. I never thought of them being anything like this. And I
can't--I won't stay with them."

"Rot," said Eustace angrily. "You know we can't help staying if
every one says we are to."

"Then," said Nesta, drawing herself up with a sudden attempt at
dignity, "I shall run away."

"Silly!" Eustace exclaimed irritably.

"You'll see it isn't silly when I do it," said Nesta gloomily. "I
shall tell father and mother everything about how horrid it is for
us, and then if they won't take us home--"

She stopped dramatically, leaving Eustace to fill in the threat for
himself.

"You really will tell mother, and spoil everything for her?" he
asked in a low, angry tone.

Nesta nodded defiantly.

"Then you are a little beast," said Eustace furiously--"a cruel
little beast."

Nesta rose with her nose very high in the air.

"Thank you," she said; "you are most awfully polite. I shall take
care not to tell you anything ever again."

Eustace knelt up on the seat, and leant out of the open window into
the soft evening air. He was too angry to speak coherently, too
bewildered to know what to say. With a toss of her head Nesta
turned and left him.

He heard her determined footsteps die away down the gallery, and
knew he was meant to understand he had her sincerest disapproval. A
few months earlier, he would presently have thrown off his sense of
irritation and laughed at Nesta's little airs of importance.
To-night he had no heart for the funny side of it. He was vexed to
have lost his influence over Nesta, and worried at the thought of
what an upset her headstrong course would make. Let alone his
mother's disappointment, there would be the grandparents'
indignation to reckon with, and Herbert's and Brenda's scornful
surprise. They would indeed think them wild Bush children, and be
justified in their present attitude of cool unfriendliness.

Yet to be left i