essed a sterling
character. Since her sister's disastrous marriage she had come to look
upon a taste for fishing as more or less of a moral safeguard. She had
often reflected that if only Fay had not been so lukewarm with regard to
the gentle craft--and so bored in a heavenly place where, if it did rain
for twenty-three of the twenty-four hours, even a second-rate rod might
land fourteen or fifteen pounds of good sea-trout in an afternoon--she
could never have fallen in love with Hugo Tancred, who was equally
without enthusiasm and equally bored till he met Fay. Jan was ready
enough now to blame herself for her absorption at this time, and would
remember guiltily the relief with which she and her father greeted Fay's
sudden willingness to remain a week longer in a place she previously had
declared to be absolutely unendurable.

The first time Tony's sister went to Amber Bridge Meg took them both.
Little Fay descended from her pram just before they reached it,
declaring it was a "nice dly place to walk." She ran on a little ahead,
and before Meg realised what she was doing, she had scrambled up on to
the top of the low wall and run briskly along it till her progress was
stopped by a man who was leaning over immersed in thought. He nearly
fell in himself, when a clear little voice inquired, "Do loo mind if I
climb over loo?"

It was Farmer Burgess, and he clasped the tripping lady of the white
woolly gaiters in a pair of strong arms, and lifted her down just as the
terrified Meg reached them.

"Law, Missie!" gasped Mr. Burgess, "you mustn't do the like o' that
there. It's downright fool'ardy."

"Downlight foolardy," echoed little Fay. "And what nelse?"

According to Mr. Burgess it was dangerous and a great many other things
as well, but he lost his heart to her in that moment, and she could
twist him round her little finger ever after.

To be told that a thing was dangerous was to add to its attractions. She
was absolutely without fear, and could climb like a kitten. She hadn't
been at Wren's End a week before she was discovered half-way up the
staircase on the outside of the banisters. And when she had been caught
and lifted over by a white-faced aunt, explained that it was "muts the
most instasting way of going up tairs."

When asked how she expected to get to the other side at the top, she
giggled derisively and said "ovel."

Jan seriously considered a barbed-wire entanglement for the outside edge
of her stai