mselves the pleasant influences about them, of the soft
sunshine and the cloudless sky, seen through the network of branches
overhead, of the balmy air and sweet murmurs of bird and insect life
rejoicing in the spring-time; but they felt them nevertheless.

"How very happy us would have been to-day if it hadn't been for the bowl
being brokened," said Duke.

"No, it began before that," said Pamela. "It was the not telling
Grandmamma. I fink that was the real naughty, bruvver. I don't _fink_
Grandmamma would have minded so much us giving the bread and milk to
Toby."

"Her wouldn't have given us any treat," objected Duke.

"Well, that wouldn't have mattered very much for once. And perhaps it
would have been a good fing; _perhaps_ Grandmamma would have told Cook
not to send up quite so much, and----"

"Why do you say that _now_?" said Duke rather crossly; "it's only making
it all worser and worser. I wish----"

But what Duke wished was never to be known, for just at that moment
sounds coming down the lane, evidently drawing nearer and nearer, made
him start up and peep out from behind the few thin low-growing shrubs at
the top of the wall.

"Hush, sister," he said, quite forgetting that it was himself and not
"sister" who had been speaking,--"there are _such_ funny people coming
down the lane. Come here, close by me; there, you can see them--don't
they look funny?"

Pamela squeezed herself forward between Duke and a bush, and looked
where he pointed to. A little group of people was to be seen making
their way slowly along the lane. There were a man, two women, and two
boys--the women with red kerchiefs over their heads, and something
picturesque about their dress and bearing, though they were dirty and
ragged. They, as well as the man, had very dark skins, black hair, and
bright piercing eyes, and the elder of the two boys, a great
loose-limbed fellow of sixteen or so, was just like them. But the other
boy, who did not look more than nine or ten, though his skin was tanned
by the weather nearly as brown as his companion's, had lighter hair and
eyes. He followed the others at a little distance, not seeming to attend
to what they were saying, though they were all talking eagerly, and
rather loudly, in a queer kind of language, which Duke and Pamela could
not understand at all. The younger boy whistled as he came along, and he
held a stout branch in his hand, from which, with a short rough knife,
he was cutting away