ame forward to greet
them.

Meryl shook hands with her face all aglow with interest; and to their
humble apologies that they had only huts to invite them into, she
said, "But it is so nice of you to invite us at all. You wouldn't
believe how proud I am to come here to see you, and how tremendously
interested."

And Diana, with a droll expression, remarked, "You seem to live rather
in the nethermost depths. You must feel as if you were going to heaven
literally and figuratively every time you ascend to the outer world."

The elder brother laughed pleasantly, but the younger, who had a white
face and a delicate, refined air, looked at her a little wistfully.
Meryl chatted on with the elder, but Diana, with her quick perception,
scented a silent, wordless, plucky endurance of adverse conditions in
the younger, and gave her attention to him.

Then they went into the dining-room hut, and found a meal spread on a
roughly made table, with only two chairs for seats and all the rest
packing-cases.

"Who has to sit on a chair?" asked Diana. "I needn't, need I?..."

"Why, they are quite sound!... Are you afraid of a spill?..." asked
Lionel Macaulay, looking amused.

"No, only I can sit on a chair any day of my life. I simply insist
upon having a packing-case when such a good opportunity offers."

So Meryl and her father were duly ensconced in the only two chairs,
and Diana mounted gaily on to a tall, thin packing-case, which would
certainly have gone over backwards if Colin, the rather sad-eyed
brother, had not caught her just as she was overbalancing.

"How clever of you!..." she laughed. "What happens when you two
overbalance and don't happen to be near enough to catch each other?...
Does the dinner come in and find you both sprawling on the floor?"

"Well, we've had a good deal of practice, you see," he told her,
already cheering visibly. "The tables are turned for us, and we choose
a chair when we can get it, for a treat."

Afterwards she made him show her all his clever contrivances for
packing-case furniture, and admired his sackcloth curtain, barrel
washhand stand, and made him feel vigorous and hopeful.

Stanley was talking to Meryl, and Lionel Macaulay was showing Mr. Pym,
the engineer, and Carew over the mine, so she gossiped away to him all
by herself. And she drew from him a little of the bitter
disappointments they had encountered in the country. A story of first
one mine and then another failing them;