alnuts.

"She said, 'All right,'" said Bunty gruffly.

Meg counted the eight chocolates out into his little grimy hand,
and resumed her mending with a relieved sigh. And Bunty, with a
defiant, shamed look in his eyes, stuffed the whole of the
sweets into his mouth at once, as if to preclude the possibility
of a sudden repentance.

The other note was equally unfortunate. Little Flossie went
home, her thoughts intent upon a certain Grannie bonnet Nell
had promised to make for her new doll.

"Gween with pink stwings," she was saying softly to herself as
she climbed the steps to her own door.

Alan was lying on the veranda lounge, smoking his black pipe.

"Gween what?" he laughed--"guinea-pigs or kangaroos?"

"Clawice Maud's bonnet," the little girl said, and entered forthwith
into a grave discussion with him as to the colour he thought more
suitable for that waxen lady's winter cloak.

Then she turned to go in.

"What's that sticking out of your wee pocket, Flossie girl?" he
said, as she brushed past him. She stopped a second and felt.

"Oh, nearly I didn't wemember, an' I pwomised I would--it's a
letter for you, Alan," she said, and gave Meg's poor little epistle
up into the very hands of the Philistine.

CHAPTER VIII

A Catapult and a Catastrophe

"Oh, sweet pale Margaret,
Oh, rare pale Margaret,
What lit your eyes with tearful power?"

The dusk had fallen very softly and tenderly over the garden,
and the paddocks, and the river. There was just the faintest
wind at the waters edge, but it seemed almost too tired after the
hot, long day to breathe and make ripples. Very slowly the grey,
still light deepened, and a white star or two came out and blinked
up away in the high, far heavens. Down behind the gum trees,
across the river, there was a still whiter moon; a stretch of
water near was beginning to smile up to it. Meg hoped it
would not climb past the tree-tops before eight o'clock, or the
long paddocks would be flooded with light and she would be seen.
At tea-time, and during the early part of the evening, she was
preoccupied and inclined to be irritable in her anxiety, and she
snubbed Bunty two or three times quite unkindly.

He had been hovering about her ever since six o'clock in almost
a pitiable way.

It was characteristic of this small boy that when he had been tempted
into departing from the paths of truth he was absolutely wretched
until he had confessed, an