phill over the heather from
walking on a flat road. We're not going away this summer. Father has
taken some extra shooting, and we're to have a big house-party instead.
It's great fun! I like helping to carry the lunch in the little pony
trap on to the moors; and we have jolly times in the evening--games,
and music, and dancing. Have your people settled any plans yet,
Pauline?"

"They talk of Norway. It would be glorious to see the midnight sun, and
the lovely pine forests. I've wanted to go ever since I read _Feats
on the Fiord_."

"You won't find it so romantic as that," laughed Ruth Latimer. "Things
have changed since the time Harriet Martineau wrote about it. There are
no pirates nowadays, to try to kidnap bishops and burn farms. You
might, perhaps, find Rolf's wonderful cave, but I'm sure there isn't a
peasant left who believes in the water sprite, and the Mountain Demon,
and Nipen, and all the rest of the spirits of which Erica was so
afraid."

"Perhaps not; but the country's just as beautiful, and I shall see the
fiords, if I haven't any adventures there. I didn't say I wanted to
meet pirates among the islands; on the whole, I should prefer their
room to their company."

"Well, I wish you just one adventure, to keep up the element of
romance. Perhaps your boatman will row you into the middle of the
fiord, and demand your purse before he consents to take you back to the
vessel; or you may be shipwrecked on a sunken rock, and left stranded
in the Arctic Circle, dependent on the hospitality of the Laplanders!"

"No, thanks! I believe their tents are disgustingly dirty. I hope I may
see a Lapp settlement, all the same, and also a few seals. I'm afraid a
whale, or an iceberg, is too much to expect."

"Where are you going, Lettice?" enquired Chatty.

"Nowhere in particular, unless Maisie and I are asked to our aunt's.
But we shall have jolly fun at golf and tennis. When one has been at
school the whole term, one likes to be at one's own home, and to meet
all one's friends again. It feels such ages since one saw them."

"Yes; the middle part of the term always seems to drag dreadfully, and
then the last comes with a rush, and the exams. are on before one knows
what one is doing."

"Don't talk of exams!" cried Pauline. "I expect I shall fail in every
single one. I'm completely mixed up in chemistry, and I never can
remember dates and names properly. My history paper will be a series of
dashes: 'War with Franc