sizes and degrees of beauty. 'Miss
Queenie's baker's dozen,' the boys Geoff and Alick loved to tease her
by calling them.

At the Bunk there was a tiny, three-cornered room overlooking the bay,
too small for any purpose whatever, even for a storeroom. This niche
had been given up to Queenie as a play-room. In it the child kept her
thirteen children; and, in addition, all the accumulated toys of the
family which had come down to herself, the youngest Carnegy, were
therein hoarded and stored by that most staid and careful of little
maids.

'Where is us going to, Theo?' sedately inquired Queenie, after she had
settled her family to her mind in the boat.

'Across to the Vicarage, first. We are going to have tea with Mrs.
Vesey. I wrote this morning to say that we should come. And then, on
our way back, I shall pull round to old Mrs. Dempster's; I want to have
a talk with her about Ned. You won't mind sitting in the boat if I tie
her to the old punt, will you, deary?'

'Oh no!' tranquilly said Queenie. The little maid was quite as much at
home on the sea as on the land, for the Carnegy young folk took to the
water like ducklings, from the time they could walk. The family boat,
'The Theodora,' christened after Theo herself, was in daily use in the
bay, which was generally well sheltered, no matter how fierce the
storms that raged out their fury in the deep waters beyond. 'Is Ned a
naughty boy?' inquired the little girl presently, her watchful eyes
fixed on the waxen ladies and gentlemen who lay back languidly when
they did not abruptly slide altogether down to the bottom of the boat.

'Well, Ned's not a bad boy exactly!' said Theo slowly. 'He's not quite
satisfactory, though. I'm afraid our Alick is too much with Ned; they
are putting mischief into each other's heads, if I'm not mistaken!'
Theo had a trick of talking confidentially to her little sister, as if
she were grown-up enough to understand that this world is not made of
play-days. Possibly that was one of the reasons why Queenie seemed so
sedate and solemn.

'Alick's going to be a sailor, and find the North Pole,' observed
Queenie, administering a quiet box on the ear to an ill-behaved doll
that wobbled with the motion of the boat in a manner that was enough to
render anybody who watched her quite sea-sick. 'Who lost the North
Pole, Theo?' demanded the child.

Queenie's questions were usually of a most unexpected nature, and were
occasionally c